Stand-up comedy demands exposure: a joke lives or dies in the seconds before a laugh, and the comedian lives or dies with it. High-stakes vulnerability, a performer laid bare — there’s nowhere to hide in a cast of one.
Comedic convention exists as a makeshift safety net. For a long time, comedian Brittany Meyer said, it was common practice for every stand-up comic to make a joke about their appearance when they first walked onstage — a performance of vulnerability. “Now, I know what I look like.” Cue laughter.
“It was almost like an easy way to get your audience to connect with you, because you could see what they see, and you guys were both almost on the same plane,” Meyer said.
This construct, well-known among Chicago comedians, became one of the winking backbones of Strip Joker, a body-positive stand-up show founded by Meyer in 2016. Meyer, tired of attending stand-up that always included “something that was racist or sexist or homophobic,” wanted to start a show for individuals who weren’t well-represented in Chicago comedy, including queer individuals, to have a space of their own. Like swapping jokes with friends, comedians’ sets could be both raucous and specific, riffing to a community that was eager to listen.
Now an established outfit hosted monthly in Mary’s Attic (its next show is Saturday), Strip Joker is known for its well-tested comedy and variety performers, one-off variety shows, donations to local organizations and its central hook: that during their sets, comedians are at liberty to take off their clothes. Nakedness made literal, vulnerability made tangible — it’s easier to accept your body, Meyer said, when you can laugh at it. The difference between Strip Joker and tired convention is the absence of mortification.
“A lot of women and a lot of queer people and a lot of anything that’s outside the norm of a cis white dude, they feel like they have to make the room comfortable with them being there by shaming themselves,” said Le Aboav, one of Strip Joker’s five producers, all of whom have performed in the show. Strip Joker is shame-free — what Meyer described as not a safe space, necessarily, but a brave one.
“The appeal to the audience is that they are going to see performers at their most vulnerable,” said producer Spencer D Blair. “They’re going to be telling jokes, which is already pretty vulnerable, but they’re also going to be taking their clothes off if they choose to.”
The concept is rooted in what it means to perform for others — the convention of picturing an audience naked, flipped on its head and made kinder. Still, Blair admitted that when he first heard the idea, he was worried that the audience wouldn’t want to see comedians’ bodies. He had “to take a step back,” to remind himself that the show is “so much about body positivity that the things we’ve been trained to not find attractive become more beautiful.”
This mental rewiring is intentional: nudity means intimacy, and intimacy is its own kind of humor. Though material doesn’t always center around bodies in a one-to-one relationship, performers’ sets are often ready-made for the occasion.
“Naked bodies are hilarious, have you seen them?” said comedian Kaitlyn Grissom, another producer. “They’re absolutely absurd structures that we’re walking around in. A lot of comedians are like, I already have this routine about how absurd my body is, now I get to actually show you that in graphic detail.”
The execution, Grissom said, can vary; some performers are excited to take off their clothes, some are nervous, some unwilling — which, all the producers were quick to specify, is respected — and some have no idea how to fit it into their set. The fumble, hesitant and unsure, sometimes involving just a removed shoe, can be the best part.
“There are some people who do their jokes and they’re like, ‘Uh, that was a joke, I’m going to take off my shirt now,’” Grissom said. “And the audience always goes nuts and you can see the comedian be really tickled about that. That’s not a thing you get to see that often, comedians blushing onstage.”
That audience, according to Meyer, skews queer and femme. Regular audience member and self-described “groupie” Britt Shearin often brings friends to the show, who will remark that Strip Joker is one of the first times they felt seen at a stand-up show, part of the joke as well as the punchline.
“Where else are you going to go where there are jokes about strap-ons?” Shearin said.
While the show has grown in scale since its inception — it’s partnered with You Are Beautiful, a Chicago-based movement — it is, if anything, at its most intimate now. After moving in January from Uptown Underground, audience members now sit closer to the stage, able to ball up loose dollars and chuck them at performers, money collected later for Strip Joker’s partnered organization of the month (this month, it’s Black & Pink). After-parties are hosted frequently, though the space, according to the producers, always feels like a party — full of friends who understand each other. Saturday’s show will be no exception.
Chicago Tribune Sports
“A lot of other shows can be really self-deprecating: oh, I’m sad, I don’t ever have sex, I’m a loser, blah blah,” said Grissom. “This show is the complete opposite. This show is: this is my body, I live in it, I have sex whenever I want, and these are my jokes.”
No need to cue laughter. It just comes.
nblackwood@chicagotribune.com
Twitter @ncblackwood
When: 10:00 p.m. Saturday
Where: Mary’s Attic, 5400 N Clark Street
Tickets: $18; stripjokercomedy.com
[ MORE COVERAGE Chicago Tap’s ambitious ‘Saving the World’ is a sassy step into politics ]