Comedian Rosie Wilby

Comedian Rosie Wilby has been making audiences laugh around the world for years. Wilby is based in London, but she has performed in NYC, Australia, the Edinburgh Fringe Show and various other venues in her career. She also has a popular podcast. An out lesbian, Wilby pulls no punches when it comes to calling out sexism and homophobia in the entertainment industry. I sat down with Wilby to chat about the competitive world of comedy, coming out to audiences night after night and the crazy things that happen during a live show.

How did you get into comedy? 

I was a singer songwriter fronting my own band in my twenties and used to always chat between the songs in a fairly self deprecating way. Audiences often said I should have a go at comedy. When the band broke up, I entered a few competitions and found myself getting through to finals and semi finals. There was quite a protracted period where I was doing a bit of both and couldn’t decide between music and comedy. I didn’t really want to do comedy songs and mix them. They’re separate in my head as music is something I feel quite serious about.

The world of stand up comedy is super competitive. How do you stay in the game without losing your sense of humor? 

I think I’ve handled the competition factor by carving out my own niche. My solo shows have tended towards very personal narratives that blend genres (theatre, storytelling, multimedia, comedy). I mean, if I’m telling my own life story, surely people can’t say they’ve heard that somewhere else. Whether they want to hear it is another matter.

As a lesbian comedian, you must be coming out to audiences continually. Does it get exhausting? 

When I started stand up, I would sometimes try and de-gay my set for straight audiences. However, I was getting chatted up by men afterwards. So I thought well maybe I should be honest and gay it up again and hopefully I will get asked out by women. I’ve tried to make my stuff about relationships dwell on the universal aspects and, in general, audiences are cool about queer stuff. I think agents looking for comedians for TV, radio etc often assume that gay acts who talk about their sexuality will be too niche. It’s frustrating because it’s not really the truth. If gay people can listen to straight love stories, then straights can enjoy gay stuff. We are all humans.

You’ve been pretty vocal about the underlying homophobia in comedy. Personally, I love stand up comedy but I’ve been to shows where the comedian takes cheap shots at gay people and it’s definitely led to me going less. Do you think any progress is being made?

When I started, there were a few good comedy nights catering specifically for a gay audience. If Comedy Camp in London hadn’t existed then I probably would have never started comedy. But it was a wonderful event where gay acts and straight female ones would often steal the show. It was frustrating then to find the dynamic reversed at the more ‘mainstream’ events. A lot of these gay comedy nights have now stopped running. There’s an argument for saying that’s a real shame and a valuable space has been lost and one for saying it’s a sign of progress and that gay audiences now feel more comfortable going to mainstream nights. It’s the same uneasy paradox of progress that sees all our historic gay venues here in London closing down. In one way, it’s good that we don’t need them any more. But in another way, profoundly tragic to lose that sense of community. The really interesting thing alongside all this is that women’s comedy nights right across the UK have really grown over the last few years and there are some very good events putting on female acts for (largely) female audiences. Men are welcome in the audience but few come. The events are largely populated by lesbians who clearly feel that mainstream nights still don’t really cater for them. But it’s odd to think that female comedy needs to be a sort of specialist niche that only women will enjoy. Perhaps sexism is more of a persistent problem than homophobia now.

Most stand-up is at least loosely based on the life of the comedian. Has this affected your dating life? Are your exes ready to murder you? 

Maybe you should interview some of my exes! I don’t name them and make things too specific. In fact, my ex-partners have all sort of merged into one generic mass of eccentricity and neuroses. So nobody really knows which one I’m talking about… And sometimes, neither do I.

What is the craziest thing that has ever happened at one of your shows? 

Animal invasions often cause mayhem. I once had a dog run onstage and start eating my props then its owner ran onstage to grab it. Another time, a huge scary looking insect landed on me and I batted it away but it flew towards a bunch of girls on the front row who went absolutely nuts screaming, running around, standing on the chairs. Fire alarms have gone off during crucial moments and everyone has to be evacuated. Lots of disruptions like that.

Do you have any shows coming up? 

I have my Edinburgh Fringe run coming up. I will be on at Sneaky Pete’s on Cowgate from 8-15 August at 5pm.

(Fan of Rosie’s? You can buy tickets for her Edinburgh show here!) 

Any advice for queer lady comedians?

Queer lady comedians – be yourself, enjoy it, talk to and support each other.

Need more Rosie? Find her at www.rosiewilby.com , Facebook.com/rosiewilby and on twitter @rosiewilby

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BY SARA PALMER

Inspired by the suggestion of “ocean.”

As mentioned in my previous story, I was part of a giant slumber party that took place due to an extreme weather situation. During this slumber party, I met a group of people who I would be taking my next spring break trip with. This is the story of that trip.

We were somewhere in New Mexico on our way to Tucson. It was our second day of driving. I could say at least the scenery was getting better from that of Nebraska and the darkness, which was most of Colorado.

We were excitedly listening to one of several Phish CDs that had played throughout the trip. This was the jam band period of my life; my musical intake consisted of a mixture of Dave Matthews Band, Phish, Grateful Dead and Widespread Panic. Pretty much any car I hopped into or dorm room I entered was guaranteed to have one of these bands playing at any given time. And, yes, my roommate did make her own clothing consisting of a lot of corduroy and colorful patch work. It was beautiful and certainly created a comfortable reason for Birkenstocks to exist.

Our friend Kyle had moved to Tucson from Nebraska the year before. We had planned this trip around seeing him. His proximity to Mexico added a certain allure. The idea was to scoop him up in Tucson and head to Rocky Point, Mexico. The ultimate lap of luxury for a handful of broke, nutritionally deprived, college twenty-somethings.

Once in Mexico, we had our first four nights planned out as far as hotels went, with the fifth night heading back to Kyle’s house where we’d stay for a day before making the two-day trek back to gorgeous Nebraska and the opulence that was our little white house on the corner near campus — a house free of a necessary air conditioning unit that during peak humidity created a sort of spa-like appeal. Yes, of course, we considered ourselves lucky to have snatched up such an ideal arrangement.

Not surprisingly, considering our age and moral maturity, our schedule did not go as planned and due to an excited afternoon of drinking on our fourth day — the day we were to head back to Tucson — we realized there would be no driving and we’d need to find a hotel. After a mediocre try at finding a hotel, we came to the conclusion as a mildly intoxicated group that we could totally just sleep on the beach that night. In fact, how cool would that be? Falling asleep to the ocean, maybe even starting a bonfire with the imaginary wood we did not have. I think you can see why this sounded like a perfect plan and so it went. The day passed along, we continued to drink, play sand volleyball and explore our little area until the sun went down and it was time to find our perfect little spot on the beach.

We laid down some blankets and each grabbed a sweatshirt from the cars. It had been a hot day and after being in the sun all day, most of us, especially our fair-skinned friend, Kyle were pretty burnt. I remember thinking how great a pillow my blue pullover hoodie was going to be. As the night grew on, none of us anticipated how cool or should I say freezing cold it was going to get. I know that we had all taken science as a prerequisite, but for some reason, Newton’s Laws of heating and cooling had managed to escape us all. I blame the excitement of spring break and slushy, fruity, pink and yellow drinks. Also, the little lady that owned the small restaurant with the sand volleyball court and the all day two-for-one drink special. How she turned a profit, I’ll never know.

At any rate, the night grew extremely cold and the eight of us who were once stretched out along three blankets were now packed together like sardines on one blanket with a very passive aggressive game of tug-of-war between the two remaining blankets going strong most of the night.

Eventually, we all grew tired from shivering and passed out. I’d like to say that the warm sun gently woke us, but it was mostly its sheer brightness. We woke slowly, peeling ourselves from each other’s backsides after some intense spooning, when suddenly Kyle expressed some confusion as to where his shoes had gone. Gradually, we all started to notice that our shoes had disappeared. How could this be? I hadn’t even taken mine off. My Midwestern naivety stepped forward as I thought: what kind of animal would take off with our shoes? Where mid-thought someone else in the group stated a more realistic scenario that they were probably being sold somewhere down the beach. My mind quickly agreed that theft was more likely possibility here. Tired from lack of sleep and the long day prior, we gave less than a college try at finding our shoes on the beach before calling it a loss and heading back to the cars.

Within a few of hours we arrived back at Kyle’s house in Tucson. Tired, dirty and each down a pair of shoes, we crowded into his living room and reminisced about the last few days. There was a silence that fell over the room as everyone mentally traveled someplace elsewhere. Suddenly Matt spoke: “Man, those where my favorite shoes!” We all laughed and talked into the night agreeing that we’d have to just chalk it up as a story we might tell down the road sometime.

Sara Palmer is a an improviser-writer-storyteller based in the Phoenix, Arizona, area. Share your ideas for her next blog in the comments below.

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