The stand-up comedian talks about the challenges of being a Black woman in comedy
BY KATE CHEKA, IMAGE BY @BENNYJJOHNSON
A year after starting comedy I took my best friend to see London Hughes’ Edinburgh Award-nominated show To Catch A D*ck at the Bloomsbury Theatre in London. There Hughes announced she was leaving for the United States – “this comedy show changed my life” she said – I remember being so happy for her. Then afterwards, in a bar round the corner, bursting into tears because I knew instinctively, exactly why she was leaving.
I began comedy fairly late – a classic Saturn return awakening – having spent most of my twenties a bit adrift. I’d run away to Berlin to get away from the eternal question of what exactly I wanted to do with my life. With stand-up I thought I’d found that thing. Then I realised my career (at least in the UK) was limited before I’d even barely begun. Among other comedians of colour, specifically with other Black women, there is an often repeated saying “Oh well we have to be the ones to change things.” I wonder a lot about how much that costs us on top of all the other costs of working in an industry rife with misogyny and sexism.
It can be the small things like a venue – my Fringe one for instance – advertising that they prioritise LGBTQIA and PoC comedians but only responding to my emails once my white man friend offers to put in a word. Or it is the big things, like a comedian performing straight after my set and saying to the audience “Nah we don’t want to hear a woman with dreadlocks talking about her sex life”.
Hughes said she earned more in one year in Los Angeles than in the entire decade-long career she had over here. The British have racism down to a fine art. Subtle, as Gina Yashere once called it. Well go to America and get shot then, people in the UK often retort, as though the standards for a good life are being shot or not. As comedian Gina Yashere also surmised, that kind of racism is often the least of our problems because you know just to avoid the ones carrying the tiki torches and wearing the white hoods. But the subtle racism is ensuring that you can never really get anywhere, that the same hard work doesn’t pay off.
You only have to look at last year’s Edinburgh Fringe Awards all-white Best Show nominations to see it. Which has spawned a hundred all-white lineups in the months succeeding them.
Three years after seeing Hughes I won the Funny Women Awards on that very same Bloomsbury Theatre stage. Afterwards, someone said to me “Your life is about to change” – so I sat and waited for the offers to roll in. But for me, they didn’t. Later when someone at the competition asked how are you getting on finding an agent and I told her “nothing yet” she responded “yes it always takes the women of colour longer to find their agents.”
In the meantime ,without an agent or any industry backing I sold-out my entire Edinburgh Fringe debut. I’m literally crying out for someone to come and make money off of me. But the most interest I got was from industry stateside so now I am having to wonder if it will take me going there to really make it in comedy.
Kate Cheka is performing her debut hour A Messiah Come at London’s Soho Theatre from 16-18 January. For tickets, please visit: sohotheatre.com/events/kate-cheka-a-messiah-comes/
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