A monthly column, Funny Feminism features conversations with feminist-identifying artists who use humor in their creative work.
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“I’m a very busy lady. This lifetime I plan to do the work of 600 lifetimes. I don’t have a linear scope. It’s all mashed up in there together. I do everything at once. This is just the business of being Sarah Adams. And that is the work of high comedy. Mostly because I’m just a dork. Just accidentally funny because I’m falling down. And even though I look like a stylish babe, I’m really just an overgrown child fumbling around. So I have to primarily focus on that. Just feeding and bathing myself. Wiping my nose and making sure I have lunch money. With what little time is left over, I give people psychic readings, I sew clothes, I write a horoscope column, I emcee events, I’m active in city government, I’m a nearly professional coffee drinker, I give people tattoos, I make movies, I’m an activist, I run a fashion label with a retail location, I’m a really bitching DJ AND I do stand-up.”– Sarah Adams
33-year old Olympia, WA comedian Sarah Adams remembers her first stand-up performance very clearly. She performed with a PowerPoint presentation, which provided visual gags such as an image of a brick wall behind her. While Adams admits she’s “seen enough stand-up to know that there’s some weird shit out there—it’s a very generous art form,” the ubiquitous brick wall background helped mark what some might see as performance art as stand-up comedy.
At her first performance, Adams remembers hearing her name announced as she walked out to the stage and purposely falling down, using the struggle to literally stand up again as the icebreaker for her first stand-up routine. This part of the performance wasn’t planned, but occurred to Adams in the moment, like so much of her material still does. Continue reading
