This week I spoke with comedian, Maddy Kelly about the road to find her comedic voice, her monthly show, All You Can Eat Laundry, and the state of women in comedy.

Experimentation & Reinvention in Comedy

Maddy began her performing career as an actor when she was seventeen years old and started stand-up comedy two years later. For some of her earliest sets, Maddy took poems she had written in university, rewrote them into songs, and sang them while she played the ukelele. Maddy said that while these sets were well-received, she soon found herself pigeonholed into the archetype of the “cute girl with the ukelele”. That’s far more notoriety than this blog has ever received, but I digress. After six months of performing these songs, she abandoned her foray into musical comedy in search of other styles. She notes that this wasn’t due to a lack of appreciation for the genre, but rather due to the fact that “I was never going to be that good of a musician. And I got sick of carrying the ukelele on the bus”.

Faced with the task of reinventing herself as a comedian, Maddy experimented with self-deprecating humour for a year. While again initially successful, performing this material resulted in an ironic division within herself. She explains that due to being the punchline of her own jokes, audiences would respond in a manner that she felt belittled the time and effort she had put into writing them. This high personal cost for a laugh resulted in Maddy growing to hate audiences laughing at her jokes, which she paints as “a terrible cognitive dissonance” for a comedian to experience.

Maddy shifted once again and challenged herself to only perform clean material for the following year. While she admits that “I definitely talked about drugs and drinking,” she eliminated much of her old material from her sets. One of the reasons she challenged herself to do this was when she realized that there were no contemporary female comics that had sustained success with only clean material. Also, while watching touring comedians come to Vancouver to perform in the JFL Northwest comedy festival, she was inspired that while most comedians had some dirty material, very few relied exclusively on dirty material to fill their hour-long sets. Finally, on a more personal note, she wanted to stand against the hypocrisy often presented towards female comedians, and thought “why is the only time that I get agency to talk [is] if I’m talking about my body?”. She said that while this was a great exercise to test her writing, the resulting sets didn’t necessarily feel natural, and therefore weren’t a perfect fit either. This year, Maddy decided to put no restrictions on herself, which resulted in writing what she considers “probably the dirtiest joke ever”. I selfishly didn’t ask her what this joke was; I thought I’d save it for you to watch live.

All You Can Eat Laundry

In 2017 Maddy began running her own monthly show, All You Can Eat Laundry alongside Sophia Lapres and Jake Pascoe. Let it be known that this show is not called Dirty Laundry, Eating Laundry, or even Eating My Pants, all of which are incorrect iterations Maddy has been asked about. In its inception, they wanted to create a space to host comedians with non-conventional material who didn’t have a platform to perform in Vancouver. The name of the show simply came from when Maddy passed an all-you-can-eat sushi restaurant that was next to a laundromat, which when you think about it, seems like a natural pairing. To keep the show fresh over the last three years they have introduced several new features including readings of sitcom scripts with Maddy’s mom as a featured performer, drinking games to kickstart the second half, and dress codes defining each edition of the show. All You Can Eat Laundry has been featured by JFL Northwest, hosted drop-ins from comics including Guy Branum and Fortune Feimster, and showcased an immense roster of local talent. Maddy said that she has also seen herself evolve greatly since their first installation, citing that she considered herself the least alternative of the three founders when they started. But with each month, she grew more comfortable experimenting with her comedic stylings, eventually performing a bit that at its core was, “putting the mic up to my Spanx and slapping a lot”. If that’s not the sound of self-growth then I don’t know what it is.

Women in Comedy

Starting out in comedy as a nineteen-year-old girl, Maddy says that she faced significant obstacles breaking into this industry. She says that while making fun of one another is a huge part of the comic culture, she regularly suffered from imposter syndrome due to both her age as well as the male-dominated lineups she has been on. Expanding on this notion, when she is offered a spot on a new show, “there’s part of you that thinks that you got it because they needed a woman,” and not due to her talent. This can consequently diminish her confidence in her material and undermine the work she has put in to get where she is today.

When Maddy spent a summer in New York to work on her comedy, she faced an unusually binary experience. Performing at open mics from four in the afternoon to two in the morning, it was the first time in three years that she was the only female performer at most shows. But conversely, she also had the opportunity to perform at all-female open mics which are not currently present in Vancouver. To speak more about the community in Vancouver, Maddy said that “things have changed massively from when I started,” with more women on the lineups, more women in the audience, and even changes in the language used by other comedians to introduce her to the crowd. However, she is also frustrated that the general landscape of comedy continues to be plagued with cases of sexism, discrimination and sexual assault, forcing everyone regardless of gender “to do this whole thing again”.

Comedy After COVID-19

Prior to obvious changes brought on by COVID-19, this year has been busy for Maddy. In the span of two weeks, she performed at The Vogue opening for Ronny Chieng, then made an appearance on CBC’s The Debaters, a show that she credits as a major influence on her comedy. Her debate topic was “Should everyone start a band?” which I think is somewhat appropriate in retrospect due to Maddy’s roots in musical comedy. Arriving two-and-a-half hours early to the set, she said that this experience was “definitely the most nervous I’ve ever been in my life”. In addition to these pre-show nerves, the set-up of a stationary podium and mic eliminated the ability to walk out the jitters like she could at a stand-up set. But once she got her first laugh, she was able to relax into her material and enjoy herself; she cites this experience as a highlight of her career in comedy.

When I asked her about an unexpected aspect of being a comedian, Maddy talked about how life touring on the road is devoid of much of the glamour presented by celebrity performers. Between driving through late-night snowstorms, having no financial security, and going “two weeks without eating a vegetable,” she said it can be tough to keep your spirits up and ready to perform. Expanding on the hidden eating habits of a comedian, she spoke about how audiences may not realize that comics have to eat dinner twice; once around 4 before a show, and again approaching midnight once the show is over. Something as simple as scheduling meals around shows let alone other commitments is “what makes [comedy] a lifestyle” for her.

While she has some natural apprehension to get back on stage, Maddy is excited to embark on the next evolution in her career. She says that “I’ve changed as a person in the last three months. I really wonder [what] my jokes and delivery will be like when I get back out there”. I’m definitely excited to see her back on stage and you damn well should be too. To keep up to date with her shows and other comedic moments, make sure to follow Maddy and All You Can Eat Laundry.

Follow A Musing on Facebook and Instagram for more content on Maddy and the other creatives in this series.

And check out last week’s article where I chat with Producer, Brent Mosher about the release of his debut EP.

-BF