Best of Comedy Competition Finalists Head for Port Townsend

You have to walk through the flames, comic Jaci Terjeson says. 

“It’s such a good teacher: trial by fire,” she says, when you’re building a career as a comedian, or any kind of artist. Terjeson, an award-winning performer based in Tacoma, will appear with fellow comic Paul Goodwin in the Best of the Seattle Comedy Competition show at 7:30 p.m. Saturday, April 4, at Fort Worden State Park’s Wheeler Theater. This is a kind of showcase for contest finalists: Terjeson placed in the top five in 2024, and Goodwin won third prize in the 2025 event. Comic Xander Beltran will serve as host of the show, for which tickets are available at seattlecomedycompetition.com.

Terjeson has been learning the game—and loving it—for nearly nine years now. She specializes in the absurdities of our shared existence, and is known for her wild energy.  

“I have a lot of physical, silly comedy, and a lot of real-life stuff. I’m a mom, so I talk about parenthood,” Terjeson said in a phone interview. 

The show will juxtapose her view of reality with that of Goodwin, who’s from Mississippi and has the drawl to prove it. Since landing the equivalent of a bronze medal at the Seattle Comedy Competition last year, “other comedians have been treating me like I climbed Mount Everest,” he quipped. 

It was the U.S. Navy that brought Goodwin to Washington state. He served in the military for four years—something he said shocks most people.

“I don’t seem like a rules and regulations guy,” he acknowledges. 

Goodwin still lives in Bremerton, but he’s veered away from any rigid rules: he writes songs, poems and personal essays, plays guitar and does standup comedy in a variety of venues. 

“I love the artistry of it. I do like the human connection,” Goodwin said of live comedy. The hard part, he added, is resisting the drive to coast on what he’s written rather than create new material. 

“It’s a matter of making your machine faster; and stronger all the time. I battle that out within myself,” he said. 

Goodwin and Terjeson have different demeanors. While Terjeson is zany and joyous, you could say Goodwin is not only low-key, but slow-key.  

“I like to talk about the duality of Southerners. I was raised in a very conservative environment,” he said. 

“I was the opposite of what was around me.” 

And here’s Terjeson: “I love performing. Being creative is such a huge outlet for me . . . I like having a concept or a premise for a joke, like a puzzle, and I’m fleshing it out, solving the equation to get to the funny.”

Terjeson has a podcast, “The Manic World of Jaci Terj,” where she and fellow comedians dive into the moments they’ve completely lost it. Which is fun, but “I just love being on stage,” she said. 

Each comedy show, Terjeson added, is a one-time thing. Maybe she’s told these jokes before, but during the performance, there’s this moment between the comic and the audience that is not and will not be replicated. 

For Goodwin, there’s the endorphin rush, which he feels whether there’s a crowd of 1,000 people in the theater or 30 in a saloon. 

But really, of all the things to do on the first Saturday night of April, why should we go to this show? Terjeson’s response is pistol-quick. 

“If you miss it, you’re going to regret it. The way things are in the world, we really need to laugh,” she said. 

“Give yourself the gift of release, of laughter.”