The first time Janae Burris was asked by a comedy club to leave politics out of her set, she was angry.
“I was like, ‘how dare you?’ A Black woman is running for office and I can't talk about it?” Burris, who is Black, recalled recently.
Burris has been a part of the Denver comedy scene for the past 10 years and travels nationally with her comedy group, “Moms Unhinged.” Last fall, after a show in Nebraska, the venue reached out to tell her they’d had to return a couple tickets after a few people in the audience were offended by a positive reference Burris made to Kamala Harris.
But at that same show, she also had a few women come up and thank her for talking about her in their deep conservative state.
“They were whispering to me, ‘thank you for mentioning Kamala.’ And that’s all I did, was mention her, I didn't really go into it. But a member of that audience was like, ‘we feel like we can't speak up.’ She said it made her feel safe,” Burris said. “But on the flip side, that's the show where we got emails from the conservative people who were like, ‘don't even mention it.’”
Burris says comedy can be inherently political, especially depending on who’s performing.
“I feel like when I'm on stage as a Black woman, that is a political statement already. I walk out, I'm a woman, I'm Black, everybody's got some thoughts about it, so I feel very comfortable talking about whatever I want to talk about,” she said.
But since then, she’s heard from more venues, reaching out ahead of shows to ask that she leave the politics out of her sets, and she’s started to see the business logic in that position.
“The more I thought through it from a professional standpoint, it was like, yeah, alright, we want to book that room again. We want to sell tickets in that town again, let's just keep it on the light side,” Burris said. “We don't want to pick fights. We're just trying to earn a living.”
She’s not the only comedian rethinking whether to include their politics on stage in this divisive era.
Bryon Graham, a comedian and former comedy beat writer for Westword, has avoided politics post-2016. That year, Graham hosted a New Talent Night at Comedy Works on election night and tried his hand at a “fairly benign anti-Trump quip” that sent the already anxious crowd into a booing frenzy.
The initial boo came from a member in the crowd who didn’t appreciate the joke, he said, then others in the crowd started heckling the initial booer.
“Everyone eventually settled down, but the rancor was both impossible to ignore and anathema to the sense of goodwill required for a good show. Following that night, many comedians --myself included-- steered away from Trump jokes,” Graham wrote to CPR in an email. “Not so much because they were divisive, but because they were so commonplace and because their topicality had such a short shelf life.”
It’s not surprising comedy audiences are often seeking laughs without a side of politics. Political fatigue in general is running rampant throughout the country. According to the Pew Research Center, 65 percent of people say they either always or often feel exhausted when thinking about politics, and 78 percent hardly or never feel excited about politics.
“They don't want to talk about it. I'm guessing it is tension in their real lives, tension at work, dividing families,” Burris said. “But in this tense political climate, we're just sidestepping it all together. We're in a different world, we're in a bubble. Politics don't exist while we're on stage. Our audience, they don't want to hear it. They really don't want to hear it.”
CPR reached out to several local comedy venues for their perspective on the issue but did not receive any responses.
Local shift doesn’t match national trend
But the same market forces that are driving politics away from local comedy stages make it a lucrative topic for comedians who find their audiences in other places.
In the worlds of online and podcast comedy, political identity can help a comedian find a built in audience.
“The first thing I'll say is economic incentives in doing comedy today push (comedians) to declare politics,” said Nick Marx, an associate professor of film and media studies in the Department of Communication Studies at Colorado State University. “It's very rare that you come across a comedian with a huge amount of success who you can't identify their politics.”
Marx is the co-author of the book, “That's Not Funny, How the Right Makes Comedy Work for Them,” which explores the rise in conservative comedy during the first presidency of Donald Trump and how those comedians began to find more space in mainstream media.
“There was a real coming together of what were previously kind of disparate independent strains of right-wing comedy,” Marx said. “And it's mainly that these comedians found an economic incentive to announce themselves as politically conservative, to network with one another across conservative media spaces, and they found an audience for it.”
In his book Marx and his co-author studied Greg Gutfeld from Fox News and the podcasters Joe Rogan, Steven Crowder and Gavin McInnis, all of whom have successfully cultivated large audiences online, and many who got their start in stand-up comedy.
“I do think the way to have a successful, sustainable career as a performer is likely to lean into one political identity and create that loyal audience,” said Marx. “Even if it means it's half the amount of people, they'll stick with you for that much longer, versus trying to play to people from all political persuasions.”
Graham, the former Westword writer, says it’s all part of a shift in how fans are consuming comedy; they aren’t just going to a club and paying to see someone do their full set any more. They’re getting it everywhere from short clips on TikTok to longform comedy podcasts.
“Frankly, I've fallen completely out of love with comedy because it seems like for a huge percentage of the audience, solid joke-writing and stagecraft are incidental,” Graham wrote to CPR. “What they actually want is proximity to a podcaster with whom they've developed a parasocial relationship.”
For his part, Marx also notes that at the same time many comedians have an incentive to declare their politics, some politicians are using some of the tools of comedy to build on their own brand.
He points to Colorado GOP Rep. Lauren Boebert’s success, in part because of the way she uses humor and a larger-than-life public persona to engage with supporters.
“She's not a comedian, but she is kind of out there,” Marx said. “Her sort of identity aligns with a broader sense of boundary-pushing and taboo-breaking that Trump kind of represents.”
When Boebert spoke as a warm up act at a Trump rally in Aurora this past fall, she made sure to crack a few jokes.
Talking about the southern border, she quipped, “These radical leftists think that they could tell you not to believe your eyes, they’re gaslighting you harder than a toxic ex during a break up.”
“They’re like ‘oh there’s no crisis at the border,’” She went on to laughter from the crowd. “Right, and my AR-15 is a squirt gun.”
But while comedy can provide a useful assist for politicians working a crowd, the increasingly divisive nature of politics means more up-and-coming comedians are resigning themselves to leaving it out of their sets.
Those who, like the Denver comedian Burris, make their entire livelihood off of comedy can't afford not to listen to what the venues — and their audiences — are saying.
“Those are the rules. Don't offend the people with the money,” she said. “It's annoying and it's not as fun as when I was working at a restaurant and just doing bar shows and saying whatever I wanted to say, but I’m living the dream, earning the paycheck as a performer.”
Even if that means avoiding certain topics that once felt natural.
