It is 12:30 in the afternoon on a Wednesday and I am crying. Tiny drops of saltwater keep falling from my eyes no matter how much I wipe them away. I am gasping for air because I cannot breathe. But itâs not that weird, especially since Gaby has always made me laugh this way.
When I first met Gaby Dunn five years ago, she was excessively quoting Anchorman and The Daily Show with Jon Stewart. She had a dry, sarcastic sense of humor and talked like a standup comedian. Not much has changed. Except now she actually is a standup comedian.
Gaby, a senior Multimedia Journalism major at Emerson College in Boston, MA did her first standup show in May 2009 as part of a requirement for a school class, Writing for Standup Comedy, taught by part-time faculty member and comedian Michael Bent. Bent had students develop and perfect four to five minutes of material throughout the entire semester. Outside of class, students had the opportunity to have their performances critiqued by Eddie Brill, the comedy booker for David Letterman. The final project was to perform in Bostonâs best comedy venue, The Comedy Studio. âI finished, and I was just like, âI love this. I love this,ââ Gaby says.
I wonât lieâwatching a friend do standup scares me. Iâm always hoping their jokes wonât bomb, that there wonât be the awful silence of joke failure that can come with a new standup career. But that never happens when I watch Gaby. Watching a recent show of hers at Yale (on Vimeo), she approaches the light wooden stage, standing close to the audience, and begins her set. She is wearing a black and red plaid shirt, which is her first joke of the evening:
âWhen I told my mom that I was going to do standup comedy, she was like âOh, wow, thatâs great, thatâs great,â and then right before I was coming here, I opened up mail from her, and it was this shirt. Which had a note attached to it that said, âDear Gaby: Saw this shirt, reminded me of your new life pathâŠâ She pauses. A wave of healthy laughter rises from the audience.
ââWear it at your next show.â So Iâm wearing it, and sheâs being supportive. Iâm glad sheâs being supportive. I think, though, that she heard âlesbianâ and not âcomedianâ.â She is greeted with another wave of laughter. She offers a small smile and raises her eyebrows as if to say, âThatâs mom for ya,â but I canât help but think that the smile is really because sheâs happy with the way her joke was received.
âItâs an out-of-body experience,â she says to me later. âIf something doesnât go well, my hands shake. If itâs going well, it feels great. Youâve got to act like itâs a conversation even though youâre performing for [the audience].â The lights shine in her eyes and she canât see the audience but Gaby, who jokes that she looks like Velma from Scooby-Doo, takes it all in stride.
Gaby has been interested in comedy for a long time. âWhen people ask me how I got into it, I always just say âno friends,ââ she laughs. While her middle school peers paraded themselves around the local mall on Friday nights, Gaby stayed in, taking in the jokes of comics on Comedy Central Presents and Friday Night Standup.
Gaby actually started performing via sketch comedy, though, during her freshman year at Emerson. A former boyfriend wanted to audition for one of Emersonâs sketch comedy troupes, Chocolate Cake City, but got sick the day before he could. He urged Gaby, who had wanted to audition but was too scared, to take his audition slot. âI knew I wanted to be a writer,â she says, âbut I wasnât really an actor.â Nevertheless, she set out to audition the next day.
That night, Gaby paced up and down the halls of her dorm, sharing the material she had written with anyone who walked by. âDo you think this is funny? What about this? Or this?â But sleep beckoned and there was nothing else she could do. At the audition, reading almost directly from her page of material with hands shaking, Gaby delivered her audition piece. Though the experience hadnât killed her, she was certain she wouldnât get into the troupe.
But she did. âPeople always laughed when I told jokes and stuff, but I never had any real validation that I was funny before then.â Gaby began working right away with Chocolate Cake City (CCC), whose members write and perform their own sketch comedy. âI had to crank stuff out. It was trial by fire. I had never done anything like that,â she says. It turns out that CCC was a good choiceâfounded in 2002 by Emerson alum and comedian Rob Asaro, the troupe is known state- and nationwide for its clever, intelligent approach to comedy.
Emerson itself, Gaby says, is actually a great âcomedy school.â Modern comic greats like Jay Leno, Denis Leary, and David Cross all attended Emerson, and itâs one of the few universities in the country where one can actually study the art. Emerson also gives out a comedy scholarship annually, funded by alum comics, and is home to the American Comedy Archives, dedicated to preserving comedic material.
In a college with a comedy background like this, Gaby definitely found her niche. Sheâs even picked up a Comedy Writing minor in the process, having taken classes like Sketch Comedy Writing, the aforementioned Standup Writing, and Sitcom Writing.
Though Gaby only started doing standup in May, she hit as many open mic nights as possible when she was working in New York this summer (as a media intern for Comedy Central and The Daily Show during the day, incidentally), sometimes doing three or four a week. That sounds like quite a lot for someone whoâs just starting out, but Gaby forced herself to learn. âNew York is hard, and it can be frustrating. There are so many comedians, not as many audience members. But on some nights I would be hanging out with people who were talking heads on [VH1âs] Best Week Ever. It was really inspiring.â
So inspiring that Gaby and some of her friends decided to start weekly standup shows at Emerson. âWe wanted to make a show where you could come for the first time and youâre comfortable, and youâre treated the same as someone whoâs been there before,â she says. Gaby is also part of a standup community outside of Emerson called We Do Stand-Up, a kind of standup collective founded by friend and Emerson alum Evan Fleischer in 2008. âStandup is so individual, everyone is really kind of all about themselves,â Gaby says. âBut this is like a standup troupe, a way to create community.â We Do Stand-Up recently performed for a packed house at Tufts University in Boston. âIt was me and six dudes,â Gaby laughs.
This isnât an uncommon occurrence, though. Men tend to dominate the comedy world. In fact, the recent New York Comedy Festival actually had no female comics to speak of and between the five late-night comedy shows nominated for Emmys this season, there are a total of 12 female writersâthe rest are men. âItâs definitely a boysâ club,â Gaby says. âBut my perspective becomes special because there are so few women trying to do what Iâm doing.â Itâs even more pressure than one might think. âThereâs so many young white guys trying to do comedy. If one of them gets up on stage and fails, itâs like âOh, that guy sucks.â But if youâre a lady and you get up there and youâre not funny, suddenly all women are not funny. And you only get one shot because there arenât many women comics in the first place.â
So Gaby mostly keeps her gender out of her act. âIf I could go up there and not say Iâm a girl, I would,â she says. âThey see what I am, I donât need to tell them.â She stays away from âtypical female comedyâ like men/boyfriends/husbands, cramps, etc. âMy goal is to be able to write jokes that could work for anyone, that a man or a woman could go up there and perform.â
When writing jokes, Gaby found a new way to make use of her writing skills. âJournalism is storytelling,â she says, âso itâs similar to standup. Itâs all writing, all talking in a story format.â As much as she loves standup, itâs the writing that keeps her interested. âDoing this helps you with writing. I have a notebook with me all the time, Iâm writing jokes all the time. Ultimately I would like to just write, use the art form in a different way.â The big goal, Gaby says, is to find a television show she could write for like her beloved Daily Show, or a slew of other late night or primetime comedy shows like Late Night with Conan OâBrien, Parks and Recreation, or The Office.
For now, though, Gaby will continue with standup while looking for a âreal jobâ when she graduates in December 2009. Worse comes to worst, she says, sheâll be able to tell her children about her comedy career, once upon a time. âIâll be like âlook, Mommy used to do standup!â and theyâd be like âUh, we donât speak English. Weâre adopted.ââ
How to Be Funny: Advice from Gaby Dunn on Writing Your Own Material
Think about whether you want to be a comedian who tells funny stories (like Bill Cosby) or someone with a distinct set-up and punch line (like George Carlin). Also think about the kinds of jokes you find funny. You don’t want to play up to an audience if it’s not you – it sounds corny but you’ll never be comfortable on stage if you’re not being true to what you find funny. Audiences can tell when you’re trying too hard.
There are I think two types of comics, there are commercially viable comics and there are comicsâ comics. That is to say, there are comedians who play to the average audience (Dane Cook for example) but probably are intellectually the lowest common denominator and then there are comedians that are more respected by fellow comics for being original and quirky and smart (David Cross, Patton Oswalt). One isn’t better than the other necessarily and obviously both can get good amounts of work but really it comes down to figuring out who you are on stage and what you’re about. – Gaby Dunn
Gaby Dunn
Quick Facts:
Age: 21
Favorite Comedians: Sarah Silverman, Steve Martin, Maria Bamford, Aziz Ansari, Paula Poundstone
Areas of Study: Multimedia Journalism major, Comedy Writing minor
Sources: Gabrielle Dunn, Senior, Emerson College
Emerson College
We Do Standup
MySpace.com/chocolatecakecity