Tag Archives: Maria Bamford

FUNNY FEMINISM #5: Being Seen – An Interview with Heather Jewett

A monthly column, Funny Feminism features conversations with feminist-identifying artists who use humor in their creative work.

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I don’t actually remember how Heather Jewett and I met. Our introduction to each other could have been related to the riot grrrl movement, our many mutual friends or through simply living in Los Angeles at the same time. As a member of the now infamous queer electro-punk-pop band from the Bay Area, Gravy Train!!!!, Heather went by the name, ‘Chunx’ for eight years. Always a fan of Heather’s trailblazing honesty and fiercely feminist sense of humor, I clamored at the chance to interview her. Influenced by the campy and raw aesthetic of early John Waters films as much as she is by 80s and 90s blue-collar sitcom humor and by absurdist comedy, Heather Jewett is a force whose work cracks me up as much as it does inspire me to share my own voice with the world.

Photo credit: Tom Stratton

Photo credit: Tom Stratton

Equal pay shmequal shmay, I just wanna be able to eat bananas in public.

–Heather Jewett via Twitter

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FUNNY FEMINISM #4: Missed Connections – An Interview with Aparna Nancherla

A monthly column, Funny Feminism features conversations with feminist-identifying artists who use humor in their creative work.

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Last month, I had the pleasure of interviewing one of my favorite comics, Aparna Nancherla on what happened to be the coldest day in New York history since 1950. We were mistaken for NYU students “doing their homework on a Friday night” while carrying out the below interview at Oro Bakery. The included quotes are taken from Aparna’s Twitter account.

aparna_performing4

Photo by Doug Ault

 

“There needs to be an affirmative action program to get more white men in jail.”

ON COMEDIC BEGINNINGS

Cathy de la Cruz: I know you’ve mentioned this in your stand-up, the “I know you’re surprised I’m here, I’m surprised too.”

Aparna Nancherla: I started performing stand-up regularly 9-years ago. I got to stand-up a little bit in a more random way than a lot of other comics in that my friend was like, “Oh there’s this open mic near where we live that we should go check out,” just as like a free entertainment thing, not even to perform, but just to watch. We went one night during the summer and people were funny, but then there were people who weren’t as good, so we were like “This is something we could try” because we were both interested in humor. And I think that was my first access point to stand-up comedy. I didn’t grow up watching a lot of stand-up. I had seen it maybe once or twice on TV and I definitely didn’t think it was something that anyone could do. I came to stand-up from a direction of not knowing a lot about that world.

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Filed under Everything Else, Funny Feminism