Laughs but no love
written by Michelle Peterson
Theme-oriented comedy showcases are nothing new. Some are connected by race, others by sex, nationality, age, even addiction. They can be wildly popular and effective at getting fans of a common sort to come out to hear material geared at their experiences. Other times, they aren’t nearly as successful as one would hope.
The “We Love Obama Comedy Tour,” won’t be making a whistle-stop in your area any time soon. Aaron Foster, a Chicago-based comedy club deejay turned comedian, with the gnawing stage hunger that feeds some to take the greatest leaps, still wants to take his hero-inspired showcase on the road, but after a miserable turnout for the inaugural show he’s lost a lot of that hope.
“Based on the spirit behind the President,” said Foster (see photo above), “the spirit of inclusion for everybody and service of your community; that’s how the tour was built. The idea was that each comedian I put in the show should have material that relates to their interest, or their love for, or maybe their disdain for President Barack Obama. They were obligated to at least do five minutes of material based on Obama. But if they didn’t, that was fine too. They really just need to entertain the audience.”
It should have worked. Chicago is Obama Country. The Lakeshore Theater, where the show took place, is a great hall to experience comedy (the best in the city, if you ask Chicago Magazine).
Headliner Dwayne Kennedy has a solid resume of comedy clubs, Conans, Lettermans and a jury award from Aspen’s Comedy Arts Festival. The rest of the show’s acts — host Leon Rogers, Ricky Carmona, C.J. Sullivan, Shawn Flannery, drag character Sister Quintella and Foster himself — all have decent local followings and tell smart, accessible jokes. Collectively, and intentionally, the group paints a pretty good portrait of the city: Hispanic, Irish, deep-dished, black and surly.
Despite radio ads, SeeStandUp.com networking and word-of-mouth, the show drew about 30 people — a blow to anyone who expected to make a buck for a theatre that holds 330, not to mention take the tour on the road. “Unless I get a sponsor that’s willing to help us pay to take this tour somewhere, I won’t be taking it national,” said Foster. “I thought just based on the spirit of the show and the title that people would be interested to come and see what it was. They weren’t.”
Even the most hardcore Obama fans who showed up seemed confused by the loosely engineered concept. In some pretty toothsome irony, Foster linked the low turnout to segregation and ignorance. Chicago’s 3 million come in black, white and brown, but the neighborhoods stay monochrome. Black people stick to the South and West Sides, white people cluster north and Hispanics are scattered in between, sort of northwest and southwest.
“As far as black folks, the Lakeshore is a little bit removed from the core of the black community,” Foster said.
At the same time, the theater butts up against Boystown, the nation’s first officially recognized gay village. Obama hasn’t done much for same-sex rights, says Foster, “Politically right now, the gay community is not even at all happy with Obama and the way he’s been dealing with issues that relate to gay people.”
Let’s be clear that Foster is the only one who knows his true effort-to-excuses ratio, and people will leave home base to see a quality show, but segregation is a legitimate issue in Chicago, and it doesn’t exclude the comedy scene. Stand-ups hustle to any neighborhood where they can get up, but the way a crowd relates to a performer is unique to whatever territory the venue’s in. Chicago’s so segregated that to break down the walls and truly integrate, 84 percent of the black or white population would need to change neighborhoods, according to a Chicago Tribune study that came out earlier this year.
That’s not likely, because plenty of folks are content to melt into their communities and stay there, Foster said. “You’d be surprised, but you have hundreds of thousands of people that live by that, just totally segregated from other groups of people. I’ve known people from the West Side that had never been to downtown Chicago — 30- and 40-year-olds. There are clusters of Chinese and Korean communities, too, that live wholly detached from the rest of the city. I just want to be one of a few people who actively tries to welcome other ethnic groups into his or her life without being afraid, because I think that’s the core of everybody’s issue. That’s why I put together most of my shows. I try not to be pigeonholed into one group.”
Foster’s real mistake, other than scheduling it during the summer when stand-up is slow, may be that he’s still fired up for Obama when the nation’s fever broke around January. “I do love the concept of Barack Obama. I’m glad that I was alive to see this moment in the history of the United States where we would have our first black president. I think it’s a big deal and mainly it shows a lot of progress,” he said.
“If I had put on a show and advertised, ‘Naked Women’ there would have been a line out the door,” he said. “Or, if I had been trying to display some other form of ignorance, like Lil Wayne, we couldn’t even keep the ceiling on the place it would have been so stacked up with people. I guess people don’t want to be around anything with a positive vibe, and that’s what I was trying to build on with this tour. America and people in general are just not attracted to that. They like stupidity and ignorance.”
Until it’s revamped as the “We Love Sarah Palin Tour,” the idea’s on hold or defunct, Foster’s not sure. Either way, don’t hold your breath — at least not until 2012.
Michelle Peterson is a writer and editor based in Chicago.
For more on Aaron Foster, visit www.aaronfoster.net.