Sharing the Laughter

By Ian A. Lutz

The Women of Eugene’s Local Comedy Scene

EUGENE, Ore. — For decades, standup comedy has been an industry dominated by male performers. However, that’s slowly changing — not just on the national stage but also in cities big and small, including Eugene, Oregon.

Anne Libera is the Director of Comedy Studies at The Second City comedy training center in Chicago, Illinois, which has produced comics and actors such as Bill Murray, John Belushi, Amy Poehler and Tina Fey. Libera said, now more than ever, female comics “are seeing a variety of opportunities show themselves” for their voices to be heard in comedy scenes across the U.S.

Three female comics who have begun making a name for themselves within Eugene’s local comedy scene are Angie Bloomfield, Emilee Jackson and Barbara Torina.

Bloomfield works in sales full-time on top of being a wife and mother. Jackson is a student, currently in her second year of studies in the Media Studies Ph.D. program at the University of Oregon. Torina works as a nurse. Though these three women are not professional comics, that doesn’t mean they take their comedic development lightly.

Torina began doing standup four years ago when, on a whim, she signed up to partake in a comedy workshop in San Francisco, California.

Torina, 61, performed at an open mic night at Luckey’s Club in Downtown Eugene on Feb. 11. At the time, she had just had hip replacement surgery. She required the help of open mic host Chaz Logan Hyde in climbing the few steps onto the bar’s elevated, neon-lit stage. She then leaned on a cane for support as she performed a seven-minute set.

“I don’t let anything stop me,” said Torina after her set, referencing the cane.

Torina’s tenacity that evening reflected her willingness to persist through hardship in order to be onstage. Her hunger to perform is mirrored by Bloomfield’s and Jackson’s, who have also broken through potential barriers to performing in order to hone their craft.

“I’m missing bedtime sometimes with the kids and it can be pretty hard,” said Bloomfield, who tries to perform at late night open mics in Eugene at least three times a week to keep her skills sharp. “My husband is pretty much as supportive as you could be in that situation…It’s very tricky but it’s kind of working.”

Bloomfield, 38, started doing standup after she and her family moved to Eugene from California almost two years ago. She said her first winter in Oregon was difficult and that she needed something to get her excited about living in the area. The abundance of open mic nights at different bars in Eugene offered her the opportunity to try standup.

“My whole life I’ve loved comedy always, really just been obsessed with it,” Bloomfield said. “As soon as I finally tried it, I was like, ‘Oh, ok. Yep…I’ve been trying to figure out what’s missing and it was definitely that.’ And now I can’t seem to stop doing it.”

Jackson, 26, has been performing standup for a little under one year. She has come to love both being onstage as well as the writing process that prepares her for performances.

Jackson writes jokes by jotting down daily happenings she finds funny as well as things she says that make people laugh. However, she has experienced some dissatisfaction with the limited frequency that she can write and get onstage due to her academic obligations.

“I would love to write even more but when I spend all day writing academic things it becomes less fun to sit and write more,” said Jackson.

Despite impediments to her writing and getting onstage consistently, Jackson said comedy is not something she wants to give up on.

“I would love to keep doing it,” she said. “The job market is tough in academia so it feels a little bit silly to say, ‘Oh, I want to do comedy.’ But I suppose you never know.”

Torina and Bloomfield also noted that they will continue to do standup regardless of their respective impediments or amateur status. However, Torina said that, despite getting into comedy later than most comics, her goal is to eventually be a full-time, professional comic.

Bloomfield said the idea of pursuing comedy professionally is intriguing, though for now she is enjoying using performing as a creative outlet that helps maintain her mental health.

“I’m really happy I started doing it even though it does complicate my life a little bit,” Bloomfield said. “It’s definitely worth it.”

National, Regional, Local: A Comedy Boom with Women at the Forefront

Bloomfield, Jackson and Torina’s involvement in Eugene’s comedy scene is a microcosm of a national trend — one that has not just put comedy on the map for entertainment consumers, but that has also elevated the representation of women within the comedy industry.

Libera believes that the increasing number of women interested in trying standup correlates with professional female comics who are having more success on big stages.

“You’ve got the ability to say, ‘Oh, there’s this large number of possibilities for me to be a comedian,’ in a way that it didn’t seem like there was,” said Libera.

One way that comedy is now reaching more women than it has previously is through streaming services that produce comedy specials. Currently, the preeminent outlet for producing professional comedy specials is Netflix.

Netflix released its first original comedy special in 2012 — Bill Burr’s You People Are All the Same. From 2012–2016, just nine of the specials Netflix released were performed by female comics. Since 2017, however, there have been 36 specials performed by female comics released by Netflix.

Though those numbers are somewhat reflective of an increase in demand for comedy specials amongst Netflix’s viewership, there is no doubt that female comics are getting more opportunities to take the stage and succeed.

One comic who has witnessed this increase in female participation in comedy in recent years is Tony Sparks. Sparks is a seasoned San Francisco-based comic who has come to be known as “The Godfather of San Francisco Comedy.”

In the several decades that he has been involved in San Francisco’s comedy scene — which has some of the nation’s richest standup history — he has helped numerous female comics hone their craft on their way to greater success at the national level. Among those comics is Amy Miller, who since 2015 has performed on NBC’s Last Comic Standing and Comedy Central’s “Up Next” series.

Sparks said that female comics have a “unique perspective” that, largely, “hasn’t really been heard or understood” until now. He noted that women who were successful comics in previous decades, such as Joan Rivers, often had to resort to self-deprecation to get laughs. According to Sparks, however, that’s changed in recent years against the backdrop of societal movements calling for women to support each other and build themselves up.

“Now those voices are being heard and now we’re opening this door for women of all shapes and sizes, colors, which makes it really great,” said Sparks.

Libera echoed Sparks’ view that the styles of older female comics like Rivers and Jean Carroll may have, at one time, dissuaded other women from becoming comics.

Libera said, “If you didn’t see yourself in that, you didn’t see where you could fit” as a woman interested in trying standup.

However, like Sparks, she also noted that women in comedy today are becoming more daring, more introspective and speaking more freely.

“Now there’s such a wealth of different perspectives, different possibilities, different ways of doing this,” Libera said.

Also important to the increased involvement of women in comedy has been the advent of all-women comedy festivals.

Some festivals — like the Women in Comedy Festival, held annually in Boston since 2009 — are focused on the promotion of established professional comics. Past headliners include Nikki Glaser, Phoebe Robinson and Wanda Sykes. However, smaller all-women comedy festivals across the U.S. promote both professional and amateur local comics.

There are two nearby festivals that offer the women of Eugene’s comedy scene a chance to perform on a bigger stage. The All Jane Comedy Festival is hosted annually in Portland, Oregon at the Curious Comedy Theater, while the Northwest Women’s Comedy Festival is hosted in Springfield, Oregon by Eugene-based comic, writer and comedy coach Leigh Anne Jasheway.

Jasheway has been one of the faces of Eugene’s comedy scene for over 25 years. She teaches standup and improvisational comedy courses at Lane Community College and hosts one of Eugene’s more popular open mics at Sam Bond’s Garage. Jasheway is also a senior editor of The Syndrome Mag, an online magazine dedicated to gender equality and comedy.

“I’m really attempting to…help other women express their authentic truth by using comedy skills,” Jasheway said. “It’s been a goal of mine to encourage women because we’re underrepresented in the field.”

Jasheway is one of several comics and open mic hosts in Eugene who have helped to create an environment in which local female comics can not only feel accepted, but excel. One local comic that Jasheway has encouraged to keep working at her craft is Jackson.

Jackson said she appreciates the feel of the open mic Jasheway hosts at Sam Bond’s Garage.

“I think that open mic specifically at Sam Bond’s is sort of trying to be very welcoming,” Jackson said, noting that those shows consistently have diverse lineups that heavily feature female comics, as well as improvisational comedy groups.

Jackson has noticed a difference between Sam Bond’s Garage open mics versus those at other venues in Eugene.

“I’ve been to a few other open mics around town and I feel like I’ve noticed that at Sam Bond’s specifically there are just more women performing in general,” she said. “That was my first experience with standup so I didn’t really know that it’s not quite like that everywhere else until I started going to other places.”

Torina’s own thoughts about the overall number of women in comedy echoed Jackson’s observations of other open mics in Eugene.

“We’re definitely outnumbered,” Torina said.

Though participation in comedy amongst women is increasing, Torina said she thinks there are “socially oppressive” behavioral expectations that keep many women from getting onstage.

“You’re supposed to ‘be a lady’ and all these other things,” Torina said. “You’re not supposed to be the class clown and act up.”

Torina believed that for women who do try standup, pushing past these behavioral expectations can still cause many women to be more insecure than men onstage.

Though Bloomfield herself admitted that she is used to many aspects of society being male-dominant, she disagreed with the idea that female comics are more prone to being insecure onstage because of their gender than men.

“As far as me getting up and doing an open mic, I was just so nervous the very first time that that wouldn’t have even crossed my mind,” Bloomfield said.

Bloomfield and Torina often perform at open mics held at locations such as Luckey’s Club and Cornucopia. These shows tend to feature a greater ratio of male performers. Bloomfield indicated that the presence of other female performers is encouraging for both her as a performer and for the current state of the industry.

She also spoke highly of Torina’s presence in the local scene.

“She’s evolving as a comic,” Bloomfield said of Torina. “The difference between the first time I ever saw her do comedy and then when I saw her recently, I was like, ‘Oh, wow, she’s getting funnier.’ It’s pretty cool.”

In turn, Torina praised Bloomfield.

“Angie’s kind of new on the scene but she’s got a lot going for her,” Torina said. “She really understands a lot about the mechanics of it. She’s got a good grasp of it. She’s funny. She’s a nice person. We just kind of hit it off real well as far as being supportive to one another.”

A Community of Support

A common thread amongst comics and open mic hosts in Eugene is their insistence on inclusivity. However, to get to that point, some female comics had to assert their presence in Eugene’s comedy universe in order to open up more opportunities for other women to perform standup.

Cienna Simmons was one of the first local female comics to produce shows and host open mics in the area. Simmons, who performs under the name Cienna Jade, has been a constant presence in the local comedy scene for five years.

Simmons has seen the involvement of women in the scene increase thanks to the efforts of herself and other local female comics like Gabby Jesús, Jane Malone and Leigh Anne Jasheway, all of whom made it a point to start booking more female comics for various open mics and shows.

“There is solid community support here,” said Simmons. “There isn’t really that nasty sexist in-fighting here.”

Simmons said the absence of sexism within the local scene is particularly unique compared to other cities with a comedy culture.

Comedy is an industry with a number of stigmas attached to it, including the links between comics and substance abuse and mental health issues. Another is sexual assault, which has been spotlighted in the wake of accusations of sexual misconduct against acclaimed comic Louis CK.

Simmons has experienced first-hand the darker side of the comedy world — she said that several years ago she was raped by another comic, whom she hadn’t met before, after a show.

One of the first people Simmons went to after the incident was Chaz Logan Hyde, a local comic who performs in and around Eugene and hosts the weekly Tuesday Amusedays open mic at Luckey’s Club. Hyde believed that Simmons’ rape would have gone overlooked in many other comedy scenes.

“We called some serious attention to it,” said Hyde, who also said Simmons’ attacker hasn’t been seen by anyone involved in the scene since.

Simmons said she was especially grateful to Hyde and another local comic, Seth Millstein, for the care they showed her after the incident. She also agreed with Hyde, saying that her rape might not have been taken as seriously if she were part of a different comedy scene.

“Eugene is an outlier in that,” Simmons said regarding the monitoring of sexual assault amongst Eugene’s comics, hosts and producers.

Libera said that, unfortunately, the comedy club environment that many women perform in when beginning their careers tends to feature behavior from male comics, club managers and club owners similar to that which Simmons experienced.

“If you talk about traditional club comedy…it is traditionally highly misogynistic,” Libera said. “Part of the deal is that club comedy was a dangerous place for women, quite literally.”

Eugene’s comics don’t just look out for each other in extreme situations such as the one Simmons faced. For comics like Bloomfield, Jackson and Torina, they find support by encouraging and learning from one another’s performances.

Jackson spoke about how other female comics in Eugene have encouraged her to not give up as she continues to get used to being onstage.

“They’re just really nice and welcoming and I think it’s been less about what they say to me directly and more about watching them be onstage,” Jackson said.

Tylor Jones, a local comic who has been performing in Eugene for more than three years, said that in the time he has been performing in the area that the scene has noticeably expanded its number of open mics, shows and showcases. That expansion has in turn allowed more people to try comedy and develop their skills, such as Jackson.

“Seeing the new people that are developing right now and seeing the opportunities they have, it’s way beyond what I had when I first started,” said Jones. “It’s cool to see where the scene has come.”

Up Next? Comics Navigate Not Performing Amid COVID-19 Crisis

Though there is now more opportunity than ever for women to participate in comedy in Eugene, in recent months, comedy — like every other form of in-person social entertainment — has been put on hold due to the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic.

For Bloomfield, Jackson and Torina, the time away from the stage has been difficult.

“I knew that it was good for my mental health but I don’t know if I realized how good it was for me,” Bloomfield said. “I’m definitely missing it for sure.”

Bloomfield said it has been difficult for her to find other ways to be creative in the absence of performing, making the mandatory quarantine even harder for her. However, she has been finding time to still write jokes when she’s not working her day job remotely or taking care of her two children.

Unlike Bloomfield, Jackson has found it difficult to write because she doesn’t want to end up writing jokes about COVID-19.

“It’s been definitely a bit of a struggle to even attempt to write a set because I feel like everything is just about Coronavirus and so it’s really difficult to not think and talk about that,” she said. “I’m sure that when standup open mic nights happen again, I think everything is probably going to be about Coronavirus and I don’t really want my jokes to be about Coronavirus.”

Jackson is also worried about being rusty when she returns to the stage and that the confidence she’d begun to build up won’t be there.

“Just before all of this started I was finally starting to get into the groove of things and go to more open mics,” Jackson said. “It kind of felt like I was getting a lot of momentum and then all the sudden nothing. It’s been a whiplash it feels like.”

Bloomfield, on the other hand, is eager to get back to doing what she loves.

“It’ll be amazing,” Bloomfield said of the prospect of eventually performing again. “There’ll probably be so much energy behind it because we’ll all be so excited.”

Bloomfield also noted how much she misses the social aspect of standup. She said she and several of the scene’s other comics have conducted weekly video chats to keep up with each other and share laughs during this time.

“I can’t wait, I’m really looking forward to it. Even if I bomb I’ll be so happy just to be doing it,” Bloomfield said with a laugh.

Torina, meanwhile, has been keeping herself engaged with comedy through a unique writing process. Not only is she continuing to write jokes, she has also begun scripting character developments for a play she is working on.

The play, Torina said, is based on experiences she had traveling abroad in Spain several years ago. She hopes to find a way to include short standup interludes between sets within the play.

For Torina, working on the play has been a welcome distraction from the upheaval of everyday life brought on by COVID-19, especially given she works as a nurse at a local hospital.

“I’m on a floor where we are the, quote, ‘dirty floor,’ in the trenches,” Torina said. “Anybody that has COVID, or suspected, is on our floor…I’m doing my best to not let it stress me out.”

The possibility of contracting COVID-19 is very real for health workers like Torina, as opposed to the majority of the population adhering to quarantine orders.

Torina has found that, through it all, comedy has been there to help her through the fear and uncertainty. Amongst other Eugene-based comics, Torina is known for her blunt, sarcastic style. In a brief moment of levity, she managed to crack a self-deprecating joke regarding herself and COVID-19.

“I’m so mean the germs don’t even want me,” Torina said, laughing.

However, Torina did say that, like Jackson, she wants to try to avoid joking about COVID-19 when she gets back onstage.

“I’ve heard a lot of the dark, negative comedy about COVID itself,” she said. “I don’t want to go there myself because it’s not really funny.”

Also like Jackson, Torina is worried that comedy overall will be dominated by bits about COVID-19 once people are able to start performing again.

“This is obviously going to go down in history, ‘when the world stood still,’ kind of thing,” Torina said. “Let’s move on, let’s not just use this as a platform…Let’s let this shit go. I don’t want to talk about it. I just want to get back to…a sense of normalcy.”

Right now, normalcy might seem impossible, unfathomable, given the rapidity of change in such a short time. But whenever normalcy does return, Bloomfield, Jackson and Torina will return as well. And they hope they will be returning to crowds hungry for laughter.

“I do hope that by the end of all of this that people will appreciate artistic endeavors, including comedy, even amateur standup open mic nights, a little bit more,” Jackson said. “Even if people weren’t super into open mic nights before, maybe they’re going to be more inclined to go because they’ve been cooped up for months.”

Several Eugene comics have hosted open mics through Zoom and other video chat platforms since social distancing measures were first instituted. Bloomfield and Jackson both said they are hesitant to participate in an online comedy format. Torina participated in one online show and said she was disappointed with the results, especially noting the absence of the comic-crowd interaction.

“It simply doesn’t feel like comedy without the full human connection,” Torina said.

On March 8, Torina performed one of her final standup sets before mandatory quarantine orders were implemented by Governor Kate Brown, at Cornucopia in Eugene.

“Thanks for sharing your smiles with me,” she said that evening as she placed the microphone back on the stand after her set, smiling back at a small but lively crowd.

Given everything that has happened since that night with COVID-19, Torina indicated that she can’t wait to recapture that feeling of camaraderie between the comic and the crowd.

Torina said that it will be a relief to “just see people having fun again.”

For questions about the story or the author, please contact Ian A. Lutz at ilutz@uoregon.edu or (858) 735–3954.