Free Your Mind

On Tuesday, I went to The Comedy Bar for Gender Outlaws. This monthly showcase spotlighting trans, fluid, and non-binary performers started about 9 months ago. For the new year, they've expanded their scope to welcome other comics as well.

Hosts Bee Bertrand and Alice Rose were affable hosts between sets. Their love of reality shows from Extreme Cheapskates to Doomsday Preppers gave them fodder for their banter. Near the end of the show, in the spirit of Marie Kondo, they gave away old, personal mementos to trivia participants ranging from a high-school trophy to a half-full bottle of 25-year-old perfume.

Ashley Cooper came out 3 years ago. So her set was about the reactions from her family, friends, and strangers ranging from bafflement to pseudo-scientific talking points. She pointed out that some people are more accepting of dogs ("Is it a boy?", "No, it's a girl", "Who's a good girl?!") than transgender folks. Bobby Summers was a cynical gay man stuck working in a Starbucks kiosk and despairing about modern romance. The gender fluid Kelly Sanchez did impressions of their small-town parents that were Maria Bamford-worthy. They also chronicled their disastrous foray into dating men after a lifetime of dating women.

Head-liner Melanie Dahling started her set imitating the New-Age chatter of a Kombucha brewer, though she did later admit that she did actually make Kombucha at home. As a 35-year-old with precarious jobs from working retail in malls to being a nanny, she had plenty of existential angst. This also included her lapsed veganism and SAD. She often switched to a Mid-Atlantic accent to emphasize a point or punchline.

All the performers had their moments but I thought Sanchez and Dahling were consistently funny. The former had a manic quality like a friend bursting with thoughts. Her mortifying visit to the gynecologist went over like gang-busters with the women in the crowd. The latter nicely played up the contrast between fast-talking dame and modern ennui. The Kombucha maker bit was perhaps a little too low-hanging fruit to go on that long.