‘A direct response’: Queer mics provide a welcoming alternative to traditional comedy

Religious trauma, neurodivergence, disability, asexuality, incredible sweaters. At Openly Mic, all this and more are fodder for jokes, with a tone that is laughing with, not at.

Openly Mic is a queer open mic that takes place on the first, third and rare fifth Wednesday evening of each month at Q Lounge. Sign-ups start at 7:30 p.m. and are open to everyone.

“There’s room for first-timers,” Openly Mic producer and comedian Jared Lyons-Wolf said. “As far as it being a queer open mic, there are certainly straight-identifying allies to the community who are regular performers. We trust that people are coming in with the intention of performing for a queer audience and respecting that it’s our space and respecting the safety of that space.”

A rotation of veterans hosts the mic. Though Openly Mic started April 3, its previous iteration, Queer Comedy Open Mic, took place next door at nYne Bistro and Bar, which started in summer 2022 and was run by Lyons-Wolf’s close friend, Camrynne Sullivan.

“That mic was kind of the start of a true queer comedy scene here in Spokane,” Lyons-Wolf said.

Lyons-Wolf started in comedy while attending Ithaca College in New York. After school, he moved to New York City, continuing standup there.

“I think sometimes when I tell people I did stand up in New York, they’re picturing something either more glamorous or more intense than what I did,” Lyons-Wolf said. “I think I kind of treated it as a hobby during my time there.”

Sullivan, who is originally from Spokane, also was doing standup in New York and studying with the Upright Citizens Brigade, a sketch comedy school started by comedian and actress Amy Poehler. Sullivan’s friend from high school, Joseph Lyons, was dating a guy named Jared Wolf, who was also doing standup. They started attending gigs together, and when the pandemic happened, everyone moved to Spokane.

Once mics started opening in Spokane, Sullivan and Lyons-Wolf started attending together.

“We kind of realized that the scenes we were used to in New York had queer audiences and people who understood queer comedy and just alternate comedy,” Sullivan said.

Sullivan didn’t buy that there weren’t queer comics – and audiences that would appreciate queer comedy – in Spokane. She approached nYne owner Kitty Kane about creating an open mic, and Kane backed the idea.

“Even though I was kind of the wrangler and the creator of the first queer comedy mic, none of it would have happened if it wasn’t Jared also being right there,” Sullivan said.

Finding the mic happened at the right time for Wyatt Colombo – when he and his friend group were really struggling. They all were meeting at a mental health group across the street, and ended up at nYne because Satellite Diner was too busy.

“It was so nice to go from these really hard topics and trying to support each other with our mental health journeys to being able to sit in that queer joy,” Colombo said. “Instead of focusing on the hurt, it was focusing on the love.”

Since then, Colombo’s comedy has grown. In fact, Colombo will be hosting two comedy shows at Pride on Saturday: an all-ages show at the fountain stage at 5 p.m., and a 21-plus show in the beer garden at 3 p.m.

Colombo wasn’t the only person who found the nYne mic serendipitously. Hannah Wells and a group of her friends were hanging out at nYne on a Tuesday when Sullivan started the mic. Wells’ friends suggested she try it, and the rest is history.

“I do believe laughter is a wonderful medicine, and just being able to give that to other people was incredible,” Wells said.

Neva White discovered the nYne mic while on a date; a member of their polyamorous group was performing that night. The relationship didn’t last, so much so that White swore off dating comedians. That’s something they laugh about now, as they are currently in a relationship with Colombo.

Many of the comedians are connected in one way or another. Kaley Alness got started because her roommate, Adam Swensen, was doing it.

“At one point, he invited me and I went and accidentally promised Camrynne that I would perform the following week, so I did,” Alness said.

Swensen, who is friends with Sullivan, got started in a similar way, performing at the first Queer Open Mic.

As the Queer open mic grew, Sullivan decided to start a new show: Space Queers. Originally Sullivan thought that it might be a podcast, but instead made it a live show. The show previously has been hosted in what was the Lucky You Lounge space, but is now the Chameleon. Spokane Arts awarded the comedy show a 2024 SAGA grant.

At the beginning of Space Queers, Sullivan comes out in a spacesuit and makes the audience repeat after her:

I am a space queer. I am powerful. I am luminous. I am infinite. And so on.

“It doesn’t matter who you are or what you identify as at the beginning of the show, we establish that everyone in the audience is a space queer,” Sullivan said. “So, it’s a very warm community thing. … Comedy is all about your audience: who has come to listen, support, see themselves reflected.”

Lyons-Wolf said performing for Space Queers was an aha moment for him, because of the audience.

“I realized that it was possible to be in an audience full of people for whom I could be myself and still be successful as a comedian,” Lyons-Wolf said.

In the background, Sullivan was struggling. She has long COVID, and managing both shows became too much. The opportunity came to switch the mic to the Q Lounge, and Sullivan passed the baton to Lyons-Wolf.

The Queer Open Mic used to be hosted in nYne Bistro and Bar on Tuesdays, but the crowd wasn’t there for comedy.

“We were kind of ruining people’s Taco Tuesday,” Lyons-Wolf said. “There were people who were there for a pre-existing promotion or event and didn’t necessarily know they were signing up to see open mic comedy when they came to nYne that night, and it just sort of became not an ideal circumstance for the performers or for the audience.”

Q Lounge opened in December 2023, next to nYne in the spot formerly occupied by the Bartlett.

“It’s really amazing how different things feel,” Swensen said. “It’s a smaller room. It was a space that was formally a venue, so it kind of has that feeling already of like being good for performance art.”

Kane said she told the Bartlett owners she wanted their space long before they left.

“NYne was super busy, line down the block on the weekends,” Kane said. “We had people that were getting a little older, and they didn’t like how noisy it was. So, I told the folks at the Bartlett I wanted more of a lounge space, quieter where folks can go hang out or they can bounce back and forth.”

Kane signed the lease in December 2019, and held onto the lease for four years, refusing to let go of her vision.

“We needed to see it to fruition, and here we are, and it’s working the way we thought it would,” Kane said.

Jenni Watson, who has been doing comedy for about two years, started at the open mic at Spokane Comedy Club – her friend had convinced her to do it – and did that for about four months until she found the queer mic, then at nYne. She’s loved performing since she was little.

“A lot of the people that are going to the Comedy Club and going to that scene are trying to get on shows or trying to tour, trying to do this professionally,” Watson said. “And not saying that people at Openly Mic aren’t doing that, but the Openly Mic is more of an empowerment culture.”

Watson still performs at the Comedy Club and other mics around town.

“I try to pull stories from my life, from my job, from different relationships,” Watson said. “A lot of my jokes do involve me being transgender, just because it’s hard to forget.”

Wilma Anita Donut Dargen has been performing comedy since she was 14, starting with improv. She said comedy has “always served the same purpose, which is just kind of like a safe place for me to do something that feels like the most extreme expression of how I really think.”

As the queer comedy scene has grown, so has safe spaces for comedy. White created Giggles in the Garden as an in-between space. The comedy show is held at the Garden Party – a botanical-themed cocktail bar – on the third Thursday of every month.

“I feel like Spokane needs so much more when it comes to the queer community, especially in safe spaces, and Garden Party is the perfect place for that,” White said. “I wanted to have a show that was queer-open but not like the only guidance to this project. I think that there’s this huge misunderstanding and especially in the Spokane comedy community that there’s like the queer comics and the regular comics when it’s like, no, we’re all just trying to do our best.”

White said they feel supported by Sullivan and Lyons-Wolf.

“There are already doors in the comedy community that are just harder to open and being queer as well, it just makes it a lot harder,” White said. “So, it’s nice to have people not only pushing me but pushing me out of my comfort zone: to go to mics that are not necessarily like the most LGBT-friendly, to start my own show, and reach out to people and help me grow as a comedian.”

Like many of the comedians who regularly perform at Openly Mic, Wells performs at other open mics in the city. She noted that there can be a disconnect with the audience when this happens.

“The thing about the queer environment is having some shared life experience makes it more relatable,” Wells said. “In a nonqueer environment, sometimes you need a lot of background information that’s missing. I could tell some jokes in a queer environment that will hit and just in a nonqueer environment – because they don’t have the shared history; they don’t know why it’s funny.”

But the experience can go far beyond an audience simply not understanding jokes. Colombo, whose act talks about his experience being raised Jehovah’s Witness, coming out and transitioning, recalls a time he went to an open mic in Airway Heights. The comic before Colombo was riling up the crowd with false information about transgender people.

“The person did not know me who was introducing me and went, ‘OK, now we’re going to have a real man. You know he’s a real man because he goes by Wyatt Colombo,’ ” Colombo said.

He did the only thing he could do – got up on stage and performed. Ultimately, he won the audience over.

White expresses having had many troubling encounters at the more “traditional mics” around town, from fellow comedians.

“I feel like queer comedy is a direct response to that saying … We are not putting up with ableism,” White said. “We’re not putting up with transphobia. We’re not putting up with racism. If you want to do that, go somewhere else, because we’re not here for that.”

Alness found she prefers queer mic shows.

“I feel so much more relaxed and feel immediately like, yeah, I don’t need to put up a wall and be waiting for something bad to happen,” Alness said.

Swenson feels like his comedy is better received at a queer mic.

“Openly Mic feels like a place that anyone can come up and try anything, and I don’t always get that vibe in other places that I do comedy,” he said.

Dargen said the queer audience is similar to an improv audience.

“People are looking at these little things that you do and these, like very small bits of expression, like your mannerisms,” she said. “It feels like they’re paying attention to more of you and have like a deeper interest in what’s going on.”

Why does she think queer audiences have this quality? Because this audience is “that much more likely to have a room full of people who have had to pay a lot of attention to themselves and to other people.”

For Justice Forall, who works as the director of operations for Spokane Community Against Racism, their comedy and activism go hand-in-hand. Their first open mic experience was at Skipper’s, after hearing other comedians trash talk so-called cancel culture.

“I was saying, ‘We’re at Skipper’s, you know, like you’re already there, like that’s too late,’ ” Forall said. “So, that’s actually how I started because there was a lot of people just telling jokes that were offensive to be offensive.”

Despite their ribbing, Forral clarified that Anthony Singleton, who had been running the mic at Skipper’s, was a positive force in the Spokane comedy scene.

For many of the comedians, talking about their lived experience plays a central role in their comedy.

“I’ve always been more of a storyteller as far as my comedy goes,” Colombo said. “I have experienced a lot of funny things – or at least one of those things where it’s tragedy plus time equals comedy.”

Alness also draws on life experiences.

“I definitely talk a lot about religious trauma, because I grew up very religious, and that’s kind of how I process things,” Alness said.

The comedians all had their own idea of what role a queer mic plays. At the May 29 Openly Mic, Wells pointed at her fellow performers seated near the front of the stage and said “family.”

“A lot of times you find yourself without a traditional family,” Wells said later in a phone interview. “A lot of family leaves you and sometimes you have to leave parts of your family behind to thrive. Building a – not even a substitute family, but like a replacement family – I feel like it’s good for the soul.”

One of the things Forall praises about Openly Mic is its accessibility. There is no cover charge or minimum drink to attend, making it a safe “third space” for the community.

For Dargen, who transitioned in 2018, the difference between the mics is palpable.

“We talk about the queer mics and the straight mics, but honestly, I think how it’s categorized in my heart of hearts is there’s the mics where you can be a woman and the ones where you kind of can’t, either in the audience or on the stage,” she said.

Comedy is more than comedy at the queer mic.

“I don’t want to overstate its importance because at the end of the day it’s entertainment,” Lyons-Wolf said. “But I think it’s one small piece of a larger vision for queer liberation.”