Some years ago, when I was in a show at the Limerick House,
lots of women attended who had been in a play with me. Also a woman who was having a crush on me
came to the show and sat beside me. Some
young guy was on stage doing his set. I
was sitting in the unlit section of the room, and I assumed the privacy that
came with that. I had no idea that the
guy on stage could see my face. I wasn’t
making faces or anything, but I probably looked like someone looks when their
entire gender gets spoken of as if stupid and put here for men’s use. I felt badly that my guests who came to
support me were getting this crap that isn’t funny if you don’t share the values
and just plain bad for female morale. I felt
self-conscious that the gay woman was seeing the misogynistic milieu called
comedy. So my face must have showed that
without me realizing or thinking it mattered.
“Could you stop looking at me all judgmental like my mother?!”
he said pointing to me. I was so off
guard. I went hysterical laughing. That may have been the funniest moment of his
set. I was absolutely hysterical. I had to give him credit. He was in the moment, he reacted to what he
saw, and it made us laugh.
Last Friday night, I was supposed
to be judgmental. I was judging a
comedy competition. I’d never done that
before (except privately in my head, at least I thought it was private). I didn’t know if I was going to be the only
judge. That thought made me
nervous. I didn’t want everyone’s fate
in my hands. Once there, I was told to
sit at the table where the judges sit.
Plural. Whew. Then I wondered if I’d be the only female
judge. I imagined each comic who
wouldn’t win blaming it on “the cunt.”
To my surprise, there were five judges, and we all were female.
The judges: the woman
in the purple top, me (in the black and looking judgmental), the woman with the
white blouse, the one in the red pants, and the one in the gold top. Without any conferring, we each were to hold
up a card from a stack that was numbered one through ten. The highest and lowest were dropped. The three middle scores were added. There were many contestants; each had three
minutes.
The place was Le Poisson Rouge on Bleeker Street in the
Village. In the photo above, you can see the large
drawings on the walls. Those are from
Leah Yerpe’s show. If you remember my
blog of 2/19/2013 called “Body Art,” it talked about my experience posing for
her.
However, I posed after she put her pieces together for this
show. I liked that I knew the artist
whose work hung in the space. It helped
me feel at home in a way. When she
creates her work of me from the photo session, I will share.
They put a comic on first who was not competing. It was for us to set the bar in terms of
scoring. I found that as I drank, the
jokes were not necessarily funnier. I
also discovered that I was one of the tougher scorers. The judges all seemed to take their role
seriously and responsibly. They were
artists of different sorts – poets, singers, actresses, etc. Before the show, some comics looked at us
nervously. I had hoped it wasn’t because
their set was based on us being bitches, sluts, and cunts. That would be something to go up there with
and face a panel of five women judges. I
am pleased to say that I don’t remember feeling repulsed at any time during the
show. I understand being at different
levels of development as a comic, but I can’t stand listening to one’s hatred
and prejudice portrayed as a given, as a premise with which we all begin our
day. I was glad this show offered true
attempts at comedy, some more successful than others, of course. I enjoy watching people develop their
art. There was a man who did his
stand-up upside down. He stood on his
hands and delivered his set. Most
contestants made us laugh.
The host, Advocate of Wordz (that’s his name), was a funny man from the
Bronx. I liked his style. I guess we both speak Bronx in a way. When we met at the bar before the show, I
told him I was so excited to finally be asked
to be judgmental. He laughed and
used it on stage.
The winner of the night’s competition was… Sarah Hartshorne.
You can find Sarah on Facebook.
I definitely would do it again. I had fun.
And a bonus – one of the other judges, K Fhox, gave me her CD, Light Shines Through Me. You can find her on Facebook and at
youtube.com/kfhox.
When I got home and was hanging out with myself, answering
email, and thinking about being a contestant in the next competition, it hit me
how late it was getting and that I had agreed to attend an all-day teacher
conference starting at 8:30 Saturday morning.
It all sounded good when I registered.
The job was picking up the fee.
There were many choices of interesting sounding workshops to take. I enjoy learning and expanding my teacher
repertoire. But late on Friday night, I
looked at the time and said, “Why did I think this was a good idea?”
