Stand-up comedian Suzanne Westenhoefer’s website describes her in one word: candid. Her honesty onstage and off has endeared her to fans and critics for over twenty years. O&AN talked to the openly lesbian comedian. Westenhoefer, who was recently voted one of America’s Funniest Lesbians in Curve Magazine, talks about coming of age in NYC, her activist roots, straight club promoters, gay marriage, and her hopes for the future.
Westenhoefer’s story began during the heights of the HIV crisis. “I’ve always been an activist. An opinionated girl [laughs]. When I understood I was gay I was 20, and at college in Northwestern Pennsylvania. There were only a few [LGBT people] on campus and we were being hassled by this huge Christian cult. They believed that HIV/AIDS was ‘gay cancer’. So my friends and I would meet up and talk about it. One thing led to another. We were on the local news. That’s how I became an activist; I wanted this group to start.”
By the end of 1990, Westenhoefer was in her late twenties and working as bartender. The HIV/AIDS epidemic, she recalls, “was crushing down on all of us. Marches and rallies came very naturally. Activism was just a reaction to this plague.”
In the midst of this upheaval, people close to Westenhoefer were telling her that she should try standup, but the environment in comedy was very different then. “I knew if I was going to do it I wasn’t going to be closeted. Nobody was out then. Ellen [Degeneres] and Rosie [O’Donnell] weren’t out. There were a handful of openly gay comics in the city, but they only played gay clubs and that wasn’t what I wanted either. I entered a contest in West Manhattan and talked about being a lesbian Barbie. I won twenty bucks or something, and I thought ‘Well, I’m going to be an openly gay comic as long as they let me.’”
The world of standup has come a long way since. In fact, she says, “Nowadays, most of what I hear from straight club promoters is ‘So what?’ They love to minimize [my sexuality].” While that speaks to a great deal of change in the cultural climate and positive change in public perception, Westenhoefer’s activist roots show in her response: “I never want the gay community, which is a huge part of the arts community in general, to become complacent and let people minimize us. There are already a ton of regular people, regular comics out there. They’re doing great. They’re not us. We’re gay people! It makes us different! That’s important. The fight against inequality isn’t over because some LGBT people can getting married. When did our focus become marriage? Isn’t that an old straight thing? Not everyone wants to get married! It’s important, but, like, the fight isn’t over. [Straight club promoters] saying ‘No one cares anymore,’ that’s just another way to put us down.”
Westenhoefer loves her career. “In a perfect world,” she says, “I would have a show every day and I could walk to it. But there would still be 300 people there [she laughs]. I love what I do.” Comedy, she says, offers her a platform to make people think, on the one hand, and escape from reality, on the other. “I love getting in front of straight audiences, gay audiences, mixed audiences and making them laugh about something they might not have thought about. The day to day world can be quite a challenge. Whatever people bring in that’s bumming them out, I want them to be able to let that go for an hour. Would I love a TV show? Probably [laughs]. But I love what I do. I could do it forever.”
Westenhoefer performed at Zanies on August 6th.
photo courtesy Adam Bouska