It’s nearly the end of June, and you know what that means: Pride month, the first month of the Gay New Year, is almost over. Y’know what else that means?
Nothing.
It doesn’t mean we have to put away our rainbow flags or stop holding hands in the street or stop loving the people we love. So there.
I apologize for my defensive tone, but I just learned that Justice Kennedy retired and remembered that our world is kind of a garbage fire.
Fortunately, in dark times, the citizens of the world can turn to comedy to lighten the mood. And, luckily for those of us in the comedy community, it’s actually a really exciting time to be an LGBT comedian, according to The News. And when I look at the recent successes of some of my favorite queer comics, I’d have to agree. Ellen is beloved by our moms and teachers. Kate is one of a handful of consistently good performers on SNL. Cameron and Rhea made a show that didn’t immediately get canceled.
There are a lot of good things happening for us, and it’s important to remember them in the midst of darker headliners.
But while I’ll never stop celebrating the highly public good fortunes of Tig or Abbi, I wanted to see how LGBT comedians a bit closer to home felt about their experiences in the DC comedy community.
Get to know your fellow comedians like I did and hear some of their thoughts about practicing their craft in DC.
LGBT comedians’ thoughts on DC comedy
For the sake of transparency, I don’t know many of the District’s LGBT comics. Furthermore, since the majority of my own involvement in DC’s comedy scene is in improv, most of the performers I reached out to were improvisers. If it seems like there are quite a few perspectives missing from the DC stand-up and sketch community, that’s because I couldn’t hunt them down.
To put this post together, I reached out to the handful of queer comedians to ask them a few questions, but both my query and response pools were pretty shallow. If you’re an LGBT comedian who would like to share some of your thoughts on DC comedy, please reach out via the comments section or message me directly. I’d love to get a broader conversation going.
At the same time, the LGBT comedians I did manage to get in touch with were pretty great and had quite a few insights about the comedy community in DC. Check out their thoughts, as well as some of my own, below.
The good news about DC
Of the handful of comedians I spoke to, all of them felt that DC was, in general, a pretty accepting space. That probably comes as no huge surprise to those whose gaydar is attuned to the inclusiveness of various cities and states. The District often shows up as one of the most LGBT-friendly cities in America, and we’re even known internationally as a welcoming city for LGBT tourists.
In my own experience as a Midwestern transplant, the amount of visibility the queer community in DC has was mind-boggling to me when I first moved here. And though I never did comedy there, I feel much safer being publicly queer in DC than I did in Chicago, where I went to school.
Many LGBT improvisers felt that the improv community was particularly welcoming. Olivia Martinez, who identifies as a lesbian and does improv in DC, says that her experience as an LGBTQ performer “has been overwhelmingly positive.” The improv community, especially, “feels inclusive, and even creates intentional space for queer players.”
Nick Martinez, a queer, Latino improviser in DC, echoes her sentiment, saying that, “although someone may put their foot in their mouth” from time to time, in his experience “the majority of players [in the DC improv scene]—gay, bi, or straight—play queer characters with the same level of care as they play straight characters.”
And an LGBT performer who wishes to remain anonymous confirms, stating that, “the DC improv scene is full of some great allies,” noting that they’ve “rarely felt uncomfortable when performing in DC, which is great.”
Alexander Mell-Taylor, a queer, non-binary improviser who also does stand-up in DC, thinks that, “In general, DC is a great place to be for a queer person,” citing the lack of “outward experiences of bigotry” they’ve experienced as a definite plus. As far as the comedy scene goes, “I have never had an audience in the greater DC area that isn’t on board [when I’m] talking about queer issues in my stand-up or improv,” Alexander says.
All in all, LGBT comedians seem to agree about the fact that DC welcomes performers of various sexualities and identities to its stages. Especially given negative experiences in other cities’ scenes, DC is one of the more inclusive places to perform in terms of its audiences and players.
However, despite the comparative inclusivity, performers are quick to note that there’s still room for improvement in the DC comedy scene.
Issues with inclusivity and acceptance in DC comedy
If I could find even one LGBT performer who hasn’t experienced some weird moment related to their sexual identity on stage or off, either as a player or audience member, I would be surprised.
In my own experience, while I never felt like anything bad would happen if I came out to my classmates while going through the improv curriculum at Washington Improv Theater, I also wasn’t sure that something bad wouldn’t happen. For that reason, I often waited until classes were over or until I knew specific individuals well to mention my girlfriend or allude to the fact that I’m gay in any way.
I think I was afraid of two things:
- Potentially making people uncomfortable once they realized they were playing with a lesbian improviser.
- Feeling forced to play into stereotypes or opening the door to that possibility.
If this seems like something that only happened as a hypothetical in my mind, I can assure you that it’s not. I’ve witnessed my fair share of uncomfortable jabs at the queer community as an audience member in DC. I was once outed to an entire improv class by someone who, I believe out of ignorance, wasn’t aware that she might be putting me in an uncomfortable situation. And although I’ve never been in a situation where I’ve had to play out stereotypes on stage, others haven’t been so lucky.
Alexander, for example, confides that they’ve “noticed there is an expectation to conform to gay stereotypes” when performing. In their experience, “This is usually as a petty, over-sexed person that queer and straight people alike can gawk at.” This impacts how they behave onstage, and they note that they “get the most laughs when [they] play into these stereotypes, unfortunately.”
It’s one thing to choose to play into stereotypes, even if it feels limiting to realize that these are you most successful bits. It’s another thing entirely to be forced into playing a stereotype and having to react in real time.
Olivia offers a pretty good breakdown of the hoops one’s mind can jump through when receiving this type of information about their character from scene partners:
I have a hard time with people ‘gifting’ me sexual identities—gay or straight—in scenes, because it often feels very loaded. Are they making me straight because they’re not comfortable with it? Are they giving me such stereotypically ‘gay’ traits because that’s all they know about LGBTQ people? I’ve found that the same people that do this also are the ones that make iffy comments about my race or give me stereotypical women characters. Shout-out to the guy who in one scene made me ‘Maria the janitor’ and in the next made me his ‘butch, overalls-wearing, skateboarding sister.’
Our anonymous contributor articulates their feelings about playing into these stereotypes, as well. Though they’re quick to note that this type of play isn’t typical of the DC comedy scene, they admit:
It grates on me when a stereotypical gay character is brought into a scene for no reason other than to just play it. Because it is not a joke. I feel similarly when an improviser does a therapy scene or a drunk character. It just seems like punching down to me because these are actual lives.
As Alexander notes, these “more subtle forms of homophobia or transphobia, (i.e., microaggressions)” don’t necessarily have any intentional malice behind them. Rather, they see it as: “Basically, people unconsciously say and do a lot of bigoted things without realizing it.”
While progress can be made by opening a dialogue with someone about these hurtful actions, as members of historically oppressed communities know, it’s exhausting to have to constantly defend not only your dignity, but often your very existence as a human of equal worth.
Bill Nelson, an improviser who identifies as gay, hits on the possible source of this defensiveness:
Inclusivity is a great goal and I wholeheartedly support those who wholeheartedly strive for it but what non-Queer people need to understand is how inclusivity can be a fraught concept. Inclusivity implies permission, and permission can always be revoked.
Bill adds that there’s an idea of a “default” state that automatically “others” queer performers. “The default in our society is non-queer and it’s no different in the improv world. That’s not a read, it’s just the way it is.”
Olivia is quick to note, too, that inclusion often has a default state, where the visible representation of inclusivity is “mostly white gay men.” She also notes, as I did when compiling a list of performers to reach out to, “There’s only a handful of queer women I know in the improv community, and minimal trans representation. […] We have a lot of work to do as a community on intersectional inclusion.”
While DC has a head start in terms of overall LGBT friendliness throughout the city, the comedy scene still has some strides to make to increase visibility and include a more diverse set of players.
Making space for queer comedians
Some comedians are experimenting with flipping the inclusion default on its head by creating spaces or performance groups for queer cast members and queer identities.
Nick’s group, Conversion Therapy, is part of that movement. The ensemble plays “in a world where everyone is queer.” Resetting to this default takes some queer cast members out of their heads, including Nick. “I love being able to start a scene and not having to figure out if I’m in a gay relationship if I’m on stage with another guy. We just get it,” he says.
Olivia is also part of Conversion Therapy and participated in last year’s Improvapalooza Pride Parade show. “I’ve loved getting to be a part of [different teams] where different aspects of living as an LGBTQ person are celebrated and played with,” she says.
She also notes that these positive feelings extend outside exclusively queer shows and ensembles. “I feel a sense of camaraderie with the other queer women I know around the community, and it honestly just makes it feel safer and easier to play when I’m not the only one.”
When Olivia mentioned the idea of how easy it is to play with other queer women, I immediately brought up a scene we were in together during a Social Capital Mash show where we played queer women who were married to each other. We were explaining how not to be a homophobe to “our son,” and the game became how many times we could repeat the term “my gay vagina” until our son broke. In my memory, the audience was loving it. Olivia corroborated, saying, “Honestly, it killed.”
It was one of the few—possibly the only—scenes I’ve played with another queer woman as a queer character in the two years I’ve been doing improv, and it was thrilling. I can’t speak for Olivia’s state of mind, but I know that I was able to skip some of the mental hurdles I might have had to jump over if I’d had a straight scene partner: “Is this next joke going to make them feel uncomfortable? Is their next joke going to make me feel uncomfortable? If I say something that’s too much of a ‘gay inside joke,’ will they still get it and be able to respond?” And the fact that the audience also seemed to be having an amazing time didn’t hurt.
Olivia and I were also quick to note how rarely those types of scenes can happen in a “default hetero” setting.
Due purely to statistics, most LGBT comedians will often be the only queer person in a group, whether it’s in a class or workshop or as part of an ensemble, unless they do what Nick did and start exclusively queer ensembles. Because of that fact, flipping the default from strictly straight to something that more closely aligns with your own identity is often an entirely internal exercise.
Playing LGBT characters in rooms full of straight people
Bill brought up an interesting question when talking about the realities of being an LGBT performer in a default-straight environment:
An inclusive cast playing in an inclusive space isn’t the same as a queer cast playing in a queer space, is it? I actually don’t know. I haven’t experienced that Queer Improv Comedy Utopia… yet. I’d bet a lot of money it is different, based wholly on experience.
After snapping out of my reveries about a “Queer Improv Comedy Utopia,” I tried to consider some of my go-to actions on stage. While I’ve never felt shamed for playing queer characters, I realized that I have a tendency to say something like, “Hi, honey!” and expect my scene partner to react heteronormatively. So if I used a higher-pitched voice, my scene partner is obviously my husband or boyfriend. Or if I used a gruffer voice, my scene partner is clearly my girlfriend or wife. Very rarely do I assume that another player will respond as an individual of the same sex. And very rarely do I want them to respond that way, since I don’t want that aspect of our relationship to become the joke of the scene.
I think another part of this tendency is that, especially as a woman who dates other women, I know that people don’t always read two women together as two women in a romantic relationship. Even while holding hands with my girlfriend, people will ask if we’re very good friends—or worse, if we’re sisters. And I’ve had multiple coaches and instructors respond to some performances where I felt that I was obviously in a romantic relationship with my scene partner’s same-sex character—using cute nicknames and being overly touchy—by saying they had no idea what was going on with us relationship-wise. Sometimes playing straight seems to be the quickest way to get the audience to understand what’s going on.
Olivia echoed many of these same feelings, saying:
It’s so easy and automatic in scenes to say I have a husband because that’s just the stories I’m used to seeing. I also have a little fear about playing queer characters on stage. I worry that it’ll be seen as a distraction, or an audience member will get uncomfortable, or it’ll become the butt of the joke.
However, in examining her own tendencies, she was quick to say that, internally, she’s tried not to give in to those nagging feelings:
I’ve decided to just say screw it, and if I am openly out and proud in my everyday life, there’s no reason I shouldn’t be on stage. And oftentimes I end up creating scenes that are funnier or more interesting because it feels true to who I am.
But it seems getting over that mental block might be the biggest part of the battle when it comes to trying to default to queer characters, or just characters who are more like you. I know I haven’t completely gotten over it myself, although, like Olivia, I’m trying to consciously recognize when and why I automatically play a straight character.
Bill had some great insights about beginning to think about playing queer characters when you’re surrounded by people whose default is straight:
Generally speaking, in improv you play either a character very much like yourself (me but as a doctor) or something crazy (a lobster on the moon). It took me until the middle of the WIT curriculum to really understand that, unless otherwise named by another player, that character I am playing is gay. The scene could have no elements of sexuality or gayness or queerness but nonetheless that character is gay just by mere virtue of me playing it. And I found that notion really empowering. I could play every doctor and lawyer and roommate and lobster on the moon and they’d each be gay.
Turning off or ignoring that voice inside your head that says you have to be straight is something all of us did at some point or another in our personal lives. Why not in our performance lives, as well?
To all the gay lobsters on the moon…
As the first month of the Gay New Year comes to a close, I call for a community-wide resolution: Let’s all be the gay lobsters on the moon that we want to see in the world.
Or, maybe more realistically, let’s all be the characters of diverse and varied sexualities and identities and personalities that we wish to see on the stage. That doesn’t mean avoid playing straight characters, but it does mean asking yourself whether and why you might default to playing them.
As one of my favorite comics, Rhea Butcher, said, “Visibility is the baseline of every civil rights movement.”
No matter the type of character you’re portraying, it’s possible they could be living out their gay life in a scene without even alluding to the fact that they’re gay. If you’re an LGBT performer, you probably do this every single day in your real life, so you know how to do that on stage. You could be the only one who even knows your character is gay, and that’s perfectly fine. In one way or another, you’ve made a little space for yourself and for the rest of us.
