There’s no stage at Red Zone Bar and Grill in West Babylon, where comedy open mic nights happen every Thursday.

But for seven minutes, local comedians can take the floor next to the bar and stumble through a set, test jokes and ideas they wrote down and maybe get some laughs — though that’s not guaranteed, or expected.

“This is the trenches,” said Victoria Hughes, 30, of Kings Park, during a mid-May show. “Statistically, you’re bombing every time, but you still have to do it. It’s humbling. Stand-up comedy can be very vulnerable.”

Hughes, a college administrator by day, was one of 10 comics pursuing their passion that night — ranging in age, skill level and style.

Some punch lines landed, to scattered chuckles, while others fell flat for an audience of mostly performers and a few patrons eating and drinking.

Getting up in front of a microphone and making a room full of people laugh is no joke. Even for the biggest names in stand-up comedy, which famously include Long Islanders like Massapequa-raised Jerry Seinfeld and Roosevelt’s Eddie Murphy, it takes years of grinding to hone the equally thrilling and punishing craft.

A number of Long Islanders are devoting nights and weekends to it, around their normal jobs, across bars, clubs and bigger venues in the local circuit and beyond. Many are just having fun, while others are more serious about a future in comedy.

Netflix specials and multimillion-dollar podcasts are the modern idea of “making it big” in the industry, but Hughes said she hopes for any outcome where she’s able to financially support herself solely as a comic — a goal shared by some of the most dedicated in the scene.

Even in the age of social media, where comedians gain traction through clips and reels, it starts with being strong in front of a mic and a crowd, those interviewed said. “If I don’t grind it out onstage, I have nothing to offer the algorithm,” Hughes said. “There’s also something gratifying about the instant reaction. You’re gonna know immediately whether they’re enjoying it or not.”

Alfonso Cutillo, 28, of Selden, who works for the Smithtown Highway Department, said he never does well at open mics, but loves the “trial and error” process: “You have to be addicted to that.”

For Cutillo, who said he’s always been afraid of failure and often quits things to avoid that risk, stand-up has been different: “I’m eight months in, and I haven’t stopped,” he said.

Hughes and Cutillo, who were prepping for a show at Governor’s Comedy Club at McGuire’s in Bohemia two nights later, met in September through Stand-Up University, a seven-week program run by professional comedians Rich Walker and Peter Bales at The Brokerage comedy club in Bellmore.

“You can’t teach funny — either you are or you’re not,” Hughes said, pointing out the bad rap comedy classes get as some kind of “shortcut.”

“Stand-Up U” instead focused on individual skills, she said, including stage presence and technique to support each person’s original material.

“There are many different levels you can survive in this business and make money,” said Walker, who encouraged students to write clean acts to find success anywhere — from American Legion halls to theaters to cruise ships. “But you’ve got to want this, live it, breathe it. It has to be in your blood.”

More than anything, the class pushed Hughes and Cutillo to turn secret lifelong dreams of being funny onstage into reality, culminating in a live show in front of 80 people in mid-October. “My grandma was there,” Hughes said. “It takes her 40 minutes to get down her stoop, but she showed up.”

She said when her father, a “big funny influence,” died about 10 years ago, she leaned heavily on her humor as a coping mechanism.

“I’m always like, ‘all right this sucks,’ and need to beeline to ‘where’s the joke in this?’ ” she said, which is how she cheers up other people too. “If I can give someone five seconds of relief from whatever they’re going through, I’ll try to do that.”

Cutillo said the idea of doing comedy had been bubbling since he was a teen.

Raised in a “huge, loud” Italian and Puerto Rican family, he fought for attention by acting out and going for laughs; his grandmother shaped his comedy tastes early on, showing him classic comedies and reruns of “The Tonight Show With Johnny Carson.”

Contemplating stand-up in high school, he ultimately retreated: “I was just scared,” he said.

Then, in 2020, after losing his father at 50, Cutillo said he detached from the world for a while — until last year. He started at Red Zone, then did a show at McGuire’s in front of 200 people before enrolling in Stand-Up U.

He said making people laugh was the only form of therapy that worked after his loss.

“Comedy is the reason” that he’s interacted with people outside his family again, he said. “I’m mentally able to open myself up more . . . and can focus on putting in the hard work.”

He’s since done sets at the Village Idiot in Patchogue, a small toy store in a city subway station and even a strip club in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania. Right now, “making it” means getting better, doing as many shows as possible and ultimately headlining.

“I’m not that good, but I’m getting there,” he said.

After sets, comics in the local scene will often gather to talk shop, trade stories, rib each other and give feedback.

“The camaraderie is the coolest part — I always root for the people who are with me,” said Johnnie Antetomaso, 29. The Rockville Centre-based comic, who works as a secretary comptroller for the Town of Hempstead, prepares for shows by going on four to five nights a week at places like Red Zone. “It’s wild how many outrageously funny comics are out there doing this,” he said.

Alongside him is his uncle, Peter Brasile, 62, who performed his first open mic in 2019 after retiring from New York City Transit.

“I like doing it, and I meet great people,” Brasile said. “Everyone wants to help one another.”

Over at McGuire’s on May 17, it was a packed house ahead of a show of 10 stand-ups.

Hughes and Cutillo’s performances were more polished than the ones at Red Zone two days earlier, but both left antsy to work on the material again: “It’s a constant chase for laughs,” Hughes said.

John Butera, who owns the stand-up promotion company Aragona’s Comedy and who produced and headlined the show, said he loves working with up-and-comers. “A lot of them are hungry, a lot are scared,” he said. “That’s what [nights] like this are for: building a community for people to feel comfortable.”

Another young comedian on the bill was Jason Pallini, 22, of Holbrook, who began grinding at open mics at 19. “I couldn’t even drink at the bars I was performing at,” he said.

A sushi delivery driver and seasonal manager at Spirit Halloween, Pallini has since performed around the Island and in Tampa, Florida, with an upcoming show lined up at Mohegan Sun casino in Uncasville, Connecticut. “It was kind of a bucket list thing,” he said of the first time he took the stage as a comic. “[I thought] ‘Let me do this, it’s gonna suck and I’ll never do it again,’ but it went really well.”

The next afternoon, in the green room backstage at Governor’s Comedy Club in Levittown, Beverly Munter was calm and relaxed, surrounded by 11 nervous comics, some about one-third of her age.

The 91-year-old Plainview grandmother cheered on the first-time comedians who each did a seven-minute set in front of nearly 300 people, the grand finale to an eight-week “Comedy College.”

She was eager to make her triumphant return to the stage for the first time since 2016.

“I’m pissed if I don’t have a big crowd!” she said ahead of the show, with a mischievous laugh. “I just want people to see me the way I am ... with my terrible potty mouth.”

Munter was the last one up, for a reason: “No one wants to follow her,” said John Trueson, the host and teacher of the program.

On stage, during one of her few jokes fit for publication, she talked about a return to dating when her husband of 51 years died in 2004. “I talked to 1,200 men and dated 43 of them. … No. 44 is the one I’ve been living with for 19 years now, in sin,” she said.

Her daughter, Holly Koenig, 66, said she was always this way. “She tells everybody, ‘Never give up your dreams ... you can get up there at any age,’ “ Koenig said.

Munter made good on that when she joined this recent class: “I figured I’m 91, I better go back,” she said. “I love being with young people — I relate to them.”

Munter became fast friends there with Charles Happel, 36, a prominent Queens-based architect who grew up in Merrick. Waiting to go on right before Munter, he paced a narrow hallway, holding an invisible microphone and running his set to himself.

For Happel, this brand-new role has been long in the making. Coming out as gay at 14, he endured cruel treatment in high school, but he said his lifelong knack for comedy saved him. “By being funny and making people laugh and making them want to be my friend,” he said, “I could change their homophobia in some weird way. ... This is what I truly love.”

Happel and other graduates of the comedy class will start on their journeys in the local scene after the show. As for Munter, who initially thought it would be her last performance, she wants to do it again soon after the response she got.

“I feel at home on stage,” Munter said. “My one regret is that I didn’t do this more, but I’m not waiting a long time this time. I’m starting to write new material.

“Unfortunately, it’s a little crude.”