Last night, I hosted our monthly comedy open mic at the Encinitas Legion. It’s a bar that is usually limited to military veterans, however, the Encinitas bar welcomes all. This legion favors surf videos over football games. It’s a Legion and it’s a product of its environment in this artsy surf town.
The usual Legion crew and a few others sat at the bar or in the audience and took in our open mic comedians. The comedians ranged from light-hearted and good natured to inappropriate and in need of some elevated standards. Not censorship, but a good chat about what is really the point of these stories with the person taking the stage time. Maybe a therapist would be a better audience for talking graphically about “gay chicken” or transvestites experienced while on deployment, stories without a punchline. We had local comedians talk about the tension between true natives to the San Diego land and what it’s like to not be able to afford a home. One comedian mostly bombed in his take on the Israel/Hamas, the perspective just not quite hitting well even with a fairly neutral audience. It was a lot.
Afterwards, one older veteran who was upfront in the audience with his girlfriend came up to me and remarked at how all of this was needed — no matter how diverse the perspectives, how much the jokes hit, or how close to ugly some of the content was. He was really reflective of how all of this needed to be heard and let out, speaking to his own lack of attention on some of the local issues.
Another audience member had a different take. He was not a veteran and was activated by the toxicity in some of the sets. He had a really hard time with the content that incorporated violence, like serial killer metaphors, even if the intent was humor. He felt the ugliness in some of the perspectives and although he understood that comedy is helpful in processing, he didn’t feel like some of the content was processed enough to be shared in the venue. The reflection from this person reminded me how high of tolerance for discomfort the military experience can give people.
I sit somewhere in between. Comedy can be a release of really hard internal “stuff,” like difficult experiences and hard feelings towards others. Ideally, it’s a transformation of the hard stuff into humor. However, from the one audience member’s perspective, the it was clearly amateur night and some people needed a therapist before they could really move their “stuff” into being funny. That being said, it’s known that men tend to have a hard time getting themselves into therapy and perhaps comedy serves to help them communicate and connect with others about what has gone on with them.
I think my role at the next mic is to support the elevation, even if this is an open mic and not a comedy class. I can’t police content, but standards aren’t censorship. Even if a message to “be appropriate,” is challenging when the community has different standards throughout. I also need to pay more attention to what is happening on stage, since often I’m distracted with timing sets, letting people know who is next on, etc.
Most of the audience was unphased by last night’s performances. Some were unaware, unbothered, others were able to dismiss the heaviness or accept it. Still others patiently waited for the next comic to get on stage. It wasn’t grossly problematic or worthy of being “cancelled” at all, yet still, the two perspectives on the opposite ends of the spectrum were really insightful.
