The Laugh Gap

A friend of mine who is deeply involved in stand-up said something to me about the comedy club world that reminded me of something familiar. You see, I’ve been dating this lovely musician for a number of years now, and subsequently I’ve been a roadie for his band for about the same amount of time. I have followed these guys from bar to bar, and seen them play more times than I can count. They’re immensely talented guys who play intelligent, intricate music, and they put on a hell of a show, but I have seen them get passed over for lesser bands time and time again. Why? Because they don’t bring the same crowd. They’re brilliant, but most of them aren’t party people, so I see worse bands show up with thirty people and do shots all night, play unoriginal, sloppy sets, and get the better shows and better set times, because my guy’s band is in there with two girlfriends and five guys who were able to get the night off of work, and that doesn’t make the bar money. Then the bands that get the best set times get the most exposure, continue to build a better fan base, have more time to drink and party with the crowd, and their entourage grows while this excellent band waits to play the last set for a handful of guys who have been drinking for three hours. It’s not helping. Well, from what I’ve been told, comedy clubs function in much the same way. It’s called a “bringer” system, and it is all about the money. Comics who bring a crowd, bring in money. Comics who bring in money get more opportunity to bring in more money. This friend of mine, Eric, also said to me that the number of open mic nights and bringer shows he has attended with zero female audience presence is amazing. He made about a thousand other fabulous points, but one thing that really struck me was the under-representation of females in comedy audiences. If we look at the progression of any stand-up comedian, their career begins at open mic nights and bringer shows in small clubs. Women in clubs are swimming upstream from the very beginning. If a female comic can’t get the support she needs at the ground floor of her career, how is she ever supposed to move up at all? Women are so few and far between at the top of the comedy game because they’re trapped in the clubs, which are basically designed to keep them from succeeding. So what is the real problem here? I can’t say that clubs need to be less obsessed with money, because that would be insane. It won’t happen. The revolution needs to happen in the audience. We need more women in audiences, yes. Obviously. We also need more men responding to and supporting female comics the way they do with male comics. I feel that most men have a deep fear of seeming to relate to a woman. This could be why many men don’t (openly) listen to female musicians, and why I have heard a number of men say that they have no interest in watching The Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt, even though it’s pure genius from start to finish. Women need to realize that stand-up comedy is for them, too, and men need to realize that laughing at a woman’s joke is not the same as actually wearing a tampon. The more support exists for female comics in the audiences of comedy clubs, the more room will be made for them on stage.