Story by: Jenni Ciesielski
On-stage, no topic is off-limits for Noni Shemenski.
Her experiences with dating, mental health and being biracial at a predominantly white school are all regular parts of the darkly irreverent stand-up routines she performs regularly at open mics, bars and comedy clubs across the Triangle.
So when she makes a joke about dating guys who are older, she thinks nothing of it. The joke goes over well with the Raleigh audience. But as she steps offstage a few minutes later, satisfied with her routine, the emcee changes the tone.
His job at open mic nights is to lead the transition from comic to comic. In areas with tight-knit comedy scenes like Raleigh, the emcees tend to know many of the comics and make light jokes about the performers and their sets.
That night, the emcee — a man in his mid-40s who’s more than twice the age of UNC senior Shemenski— leads her exit offstage by repeating her joke about older men and how it means he finally has his shot with her.
It’s not the first time he’s made that joke.
Shemenski walks away, irritated but silent. But when the emcee leads off the next comedian — a woman new to the Triangle comedy scene — by using her stand-up material to make derogatory comments about her body in a room of 60 people, Noni can’t stay quiet.
“I called him out in front of everybody,” she said. “And he tried to laugh it off but everyone was sort of like you could cut the tension in the room with a knife.”
She posted about the incident on a North Carolina women’s Facebook page.
Responses quickly poured in — several women had similar experiences with the same emcee. Others who didn’t know the guy personally empathized, having the same uncomfortable incidents with other men.
Incidents like Shemenski’s led to women in the Triangle forming their own comedy showcase group, Eyes Up Here Comedy.
Kathleen McDonald, one of the “founding sisters” of Eyes Up Here, saw similar experiences when she started performing in comedy open mic nights in Raleigh four years ago.
“It’s because people see comedy as this ‘anything goes’ space,” she said. “Some men will throw responsibility away, even when it’s clearly harassment. And in Noni’s situation, he had the support of another male comic backing him up.”
The gender imbalance that allowed that ‘anything goes space’ was something McDonald felt immediately.
She would go to shows and be the only woman in a 20-person lineup, something that disappointed, but didn’t surprise her.
“There are differences in gender that are socialized that make comedy more in-tune with men,” she said. “Men are encouraged to be funny, outgoing, confident and risk-taking. Women are taught to be more hesitant.”
The goal of putting on the first Eyes Up Here showcases was to create an environment where women didn’t have to worry about being put down, tokenized or harassed during a show and could be more natural performers because of it.
Now, it produces sold-out showcases composed of female-identifying comedians across North Carolina.
In her experiences in stand-up after finding a community of women through Eyes Up Here, McDonald has noticed how more gender equity in comedy — at any showcase — can change the environment.
In her early experiences, inappropriate flirting from emcees or other comics was an uncomfortable moment that never got addressed. But now, having the support of other female comics in the room made people confident enough to call out harassment, oftentimes through their stand-up.
“Not all women should have to do this, but I’ve seen some who have used their entire sets to just rip apart the guy who introduced her in an inappropriate way — and they get way more laughs than the guy who made a pass at her,” she said. “But that’s only effective if you have support, there’s a strength in numbers that gives us the ability to change the environment”
To make sure that support system continues to grow in the Triangle, the women behind Eyes Up Here launched showcases called Shiny and New to promote young comedians getting started in comedy.
Shemenski, who headlined the latest Shiny and New showcase, said the biggest encouragement to keep pursuing new open mics and showcase opportunities has come from having another comic as a mentor and support system.
And her biggest support system as a woman of color in a white, male-dominated space is Shari Díaz.
When Diaz began doing comedy in the Triangle shortly after moving from the Bronx four years ago, she was the only performing Latina comedian in North Carolina (and still is).
While she felt she connected with the audiences at her first shows, she struggled with appealing to the other comedians in the line-ups, most of whom were white men.
“I was the only minority sprinkled onto shows,” Diaz said. “And I can’t even blame producers because there’s not a lot of us. But I realized that, off the bat, my humor in that location didn’t appease the comics. They didn’t like how open I was. But then the other comics would go up, and their comedian friends would be the ones laughing loudest.”
Changing her humor to appease those comics never crossed her mind.
Instead, she created Boogie Down South Productions, a Raleigh-based comedy showcase series, in 2016 and is planning North Carolina’s first multi-day comedy festival, Oak City Comedy Festival, that will open in 2019.
Although she still gets insulting comments from other comics — saying she’s “gotta tone it down” and remember that “this isn’t a hip-hop club, it’s a comedy show. — those remarks just push Diaz to do more, not only for herself but for others like her.
She knows her work means more than just making people laugh.
“I’m always trying to open doors for people who look, sound and act like me because there aren’t enough of us in the entertainment industry,” she said. “I love helping out and being someone who cares because no one was there for me when I got into this.”
For Shemenski, Diaz’ role as a mentor not only helped her as a comedian but as someone who can spread that support to others as well.
In Summer 2017, Shemenski sent a message to a group of friends at UNC about creating a new outlet for their art.
“I don’t feel like I can tell and share my stories that I want to tell as a queer woman of color in these spaces that have always been made for cisgender white people,” she said.
In her film classes and clubs, she often felt she was sharing her with only with people who couldn’t relate to the stories and jokes in her scripts.
Shortly after she sent the message, she formed “Creatives of Color” — an organization in which people of color on campus to share the media they’re writing, producing or performing and collaborate with each other to create new films, stand-up routines and more.
Now, the group has subgroups for people specifically interested in comedy, theater or film.
Shemenski brings performers and writers such as Diaz to campus to conduct free workshops.
With “Creatives of Color,” Shemenski hopes to not only create a community for people to feel comfortable making art that’s reflective of their own experiences but to also help the comedy scene in Chapel Hill more accessible for people who have always been underrepresented.
“Whenever you make an organization at a (primarily white institution), it’s by default going to be white,” she said. “And I’ve always said in order for POC to join your organization, they need to see themselves in it and they need to see that it’s possible for them to do and they’re going to be comfortable in those environments.”
Although her role in “Creatives of Color” will pass on to someone else when she graduates next December, Shemenski doesn’t see her role as an advocate for more representation in entertainment — whether it be live comedy or film — going away any time soon.
To her, it’s a way of paying it forward and thanking the role models who came before her like Díaz, Shonda Rhimes, comedians Trevor Noah and Aparna Nancherla and HBO’s Issa Rae — the ones who made her feel represented.
“I feel capable of doing all of this because of them.”
