Dallas Voice (Dallas, Tex.), Vol. 26, No. 39, Ed. 1 Friday, February 12, 2010 Page: 32 of 56
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comedy
Funny
Valentine
After 25 years, lesbicomic Karen
Williams keeps working for laughs
RICH LOPEZ I Staff Writer
lopez@dallasvoice.corn
Not all the single ladies are putting a ring on it
— certainly not Karen Williams. Even with Valen-
tine's Day on the horizon, she's just fine with being
single. Then again, maybe she's just mining date
nights for her standup material. Real life is the best
place to start when coming up with punch lines.
"I'm an opportunist. I just think there is always
a comic sensibility to things, and I put a spin on it
and put it back out there," Williams says.
Williams brings her spin to Fort Worth on
Valentine's Eve. And anyone with an achy-breaky
heart or major relationship tension might find her
comedy the ticket out of that funk. That's because
Williams sees her comedy as more than a joke; it
has healing power.
"I want to share laughter with as many humans
as possible," she says. "Even cats like me. Ibelieve
appropriate humor that empowers rather than
denigrates is healing."
So much so, she's even created her own Interna-
tional Institute of Humor and Healing Arts — the
HaHa Institute for short. Finding early in her ca-
reer that comedy brought forth a break from pain
and suffering, Williams took it upon herself to
head back to school to earn a master's in adult
learning and development at Cleveland State Uni-
versity. She then created humor workshops and
laugh education sessions which nonprofits, col-
leges and private corporations hire out. Not your
typical comedian.
"The highest cause that we can make in life is to
be of service. I first started in San Francisco when
AIDS was still called G.R.I.D.," she says. "We were
raising money for people who were sick when this
gorgeous blonde guy came up to me and told me
he thought he'd never laugh again. His partner
had died three days earlier. That aroused my ac-
tivism."
At the time, Williams, Marga Gomez and Kate
Clinton weie at the forefront of gay standup. Now,
the gay comedy landscape looks a bit different,
with a new crop of LGBT comics in a fairly pro-
gressive society.
"I hate a tremendous love and respect for queer
culture because we are funnier than the rest right
out of the box," Williams says. "You pretty much
have to Mve what you're doing. Your act can fail
but if you're living it, it's you. Comedy is the one
venue where you can say what you believe in as
long as it's funny,"
After all these years, Williams is
still on the comedy circuit and plans
on branching out into acting. Like a
smart performer, she's working on
keeping herself relevant. And if that
doesn't work out, she still has her
children and grandchildren, who all
think she's funny
"My grandson called to tell me
that he and the family were gonna
watch my show on Logo TV, I Need a
Smck. I've never really
come out to him. He
called me later and was
cracking up on the
phone, 'G-Ma, you were
hilarious!' I was crying
because it really doesn't
get any better than
that," she says.
The comic gene seems to run in her family. One
of her three sons is a comedic actor who worked
with Second City in Chicago for five years as part
of the Defiant Thomas Brothers sketch duo and,
like his mother, teaches comedy and acting, but in
a performance-only capacity. He's become good
enough that when Williams performed in his
venue, the Town Hall Pub, she was nervous to live
up to his reputation.
"That was so tough for me because I had to
blow the audience out of the water. My son was
there producing the event! But I did it and he was
PUNCH THIS LINE
Karen Williams mines the
healing power in comedy
— even (or especially?) on
Valentine's Day.
-
LAUGH IT UP
Karen Williams at
Youth Orchestra Hall
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Fort Worth. Feb. 13.
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proud of me," she says.
Now she has a Texas audience to work on
ut it's old hat. She's a long way from her snowy
Ohio home in Cleveland but she's played Texas
before and the lack of snow (perhaps?) is probably
a welcome reprieve. Or maybe the fact that she's
headlining this show solo is enough.
"I had to compete with fierce drag queens for
my laughs in my early days of performing," she
says. "And I do mean fierce! Even today, when I
perform and I'm sharing a dressing room with the
drag queens, I give them my utmost respect. After
all, they take hours to put on their makeup; this
lesbian takes 15 minutes." ■
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32 dallasvoice.com
02.12.10
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Nash, Tammye. Dallas Voice (Dallas, Tex.), Vol. 26, No. 39, Ed. 1 Friday, February 12, 2010, newspaper, February 12, 2010; Dallas, Texas. (https://texashistory.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metapth239103/m1/32/: accessed April 30, 2024), University of North Texas Libraries, The Portal to Texas History, https://texashistory.unt.edu; crediting UNT Libraries Special Collections.