When it comes to the culture of stand-up comedy, many people in the trans community are sadly more accustomed to being the butt of the joke rather than the one telling it. When comedian Ren Q Dawe watched popular comics take low stabs at people like themself, they knew they deserved better, and so did their peers.
“The irony was that my daily life felt absolutely absurd, and truly joke-worthy — not because I was worthy of being eradicated, but because society had such a warped view of binary constructs,” they say. “We all have been brainwashed into wildly outdated and truly hilarious gender schemes our entire lives.”
Finding the funny in this struggle for self-identity is the mission behind the Colorado Queer Comedy Festival, presented by local nonprofit Out Boulder County Oct. 27 and 28 at the Junkyard Social Club. Billed as Boulder’s first all-queer comedy festival, the event is designed to provide a safe space for the LGBTQ community often excluded, tokenized or misrepresented at larger comedy events.
Lead organizer Dawe says an all-queer festival allows queer narratives to flourish in front of audiences of all sexual orientations and gender identities. The two-day event is designed to be lighthearted and illuminating, while also functioning as a back-door form of activism for the embattled community.
Dawe kicked off their comedy career in a smoky Atlanta venue filled with a dozen other comics and a small crowd. The comedians who took the stage before them boasted sexist and transphobic jokes, not realizing Dawe’s identity as a cis-passing trans person. Fearful of what might follow their performance, they opened with a simple line: “Hi y’all, my name is Ren, and I’m trans. Which means I was born a woman, and now people ask me if I have a dick all the time.”
The crowd roared with laughter, and a sense of control and pride overcame Dawe. Suddenly the audience seemed interested in the reality of trans life and understood there was what Dawe calls “good humor” in it all along.
“How could it be that five minutes ago all these people were verified transphobes, and now they were entreating me to be a friend and ally,” Dawe says. “It’s because laughter creates a sense of alliance, because humor is a social lubricant, and because we all want to be in on the joke.”
‘Laughter creates a sense of alliance … we all want to be in on the joke,’ says Colorado Queer Comedy Festival lead organizer Ren Q. Dawe. Photo by Dude, IDK Studios.
Spreading queer joy
Out Boulder County was inspired by other LGBTQ comedy festivals across the country in putting together the historic all-queer lineup, but the organization built its Front Range festival from scratch.
Featuring dozens of queer comedic standouts, with half identifying as trans, the performers at the Colorado Queer Comedy Festival come to the stage with a variety of perspectives and strategies. For headliner Cara Leoni, the hope is to inspire happiness, joy and laughter in her community through comedy.
Denver-based comic Shanel Hughes will also headline, accompanied by Israel Avila, who centers his stand-up around his experience as an immigrant and day-to-day struggles of his community on the Front Range. The rest of the lineup includes Armaan Singh, Liv Carter, Julia Foodman and more.
“At a typical comedy show, you would be lucky to have one queer comedian. Here you know that you are going to hear jokes about your life that relate to you and everyone around you in the crowd,” Leoni says. “It’s an incredible privilege to get to be a part of an event whose only goals are to spark laughter and spread queer joy.”
But it’s not just the LGBTQ community who stands to benefit from the upcoming festival. Leoni says queer comedy can be a vessel for educating straight people while making them laugh at the same time.
“My straight friends refer to my queer comedy bits as ‘gay education,’ because they are both laughing and learning about a niche community,” she says. “I don’t think people are afraid to laugh; I think it is possible that sometimes queer comedy involves deep cuts that the straight community isn’t keeping up with, and therefore may miss the best part of the joke.”
ON THE BILL: Colorado Queer Comedy Festival. 7:30 p.m. Oct. 27-28, Junkyard Social Club, 2525 Frontier Ave., Suite A, Boulder. Tickets here.
