Kemah Bob
(Picture: PHOTOGRAPHY NATASHA PSZENICKI)It wasn’t so long ago that Kemah Bob’s main claim to fame was that her college was based in a town notorious for the 1993 siege of a ranch that housed the headquarters of a religious cult.
The Texan comedian, now based in London, was only a year old at the time, so by the time she got to her “private Christian University full of conservatives in the middle of Texas”, Waco was a town where “nothing happened. Nothing. There wasn’t a comedy club in the place,” even if, she admits, there was certainly a wealth of material.
Now she’s increasingly the toast of the London comedy scene, making appearances on ITV2’s Stand Up Sketch Show and Sorry, I Didn’t Know, and touring with the likes of Hannah Gadsby, Nish Kumar, Desiree Burch and Jess Fostekew. Now, after a successful stint co-hosting the behemoth that is The Guilty Feminist podcast, she’s branching out with her own.
FOC IT UP! with Kemah Bob, produced by The Guilty Feminist team, is based on Bob’s live show The Femmes of Color Comedy Club - FOC stands for Femmes of Color, but the podcast, a riot of positivity and inclusivity, celebrates and centres on the perspectives of women, non-binary, gender non-conforming and trans-masculine comedians of colour (or, any comedian who isn’t a cis man).
It’s been going a matter of weeks, but guests have already included big-hitters like Athena Kugblenu, Sikisa, Janine Harouni, Taskmaster’s Desiree Burch and Sophie Duker, Japanese comedian Yuriko Kotani, Ninia Benjamin from 3 Non-Blondes and Shazia Mirza.
Bob was inspired to set it up after being struck, as a newcomer, by what she describes as “blatant tokenism” and a general lack of non-white acts and audience members at mainstream gigs in London - which she found “surprising in Europe’s most multicultural city”. The mixed audience she serves with both the podcast and the comedy night is “not really being taken care of by the rest of the industry,” she tells me when we meet.
“And I was like, hold on a second,” she continues. “There have got to be people out there who want to hear from people like me - and people not like me - and don’t know where to find us. Because we are often the only person [of colour, or LGBTQ+] on the show.”
The podcast, which is recorded live, is a sort of extension of the increasingly successful FOC night - Bob comperes, and each of the featured comics gets their turn to do a short set, but then they all come together for a lively, unscripted conversation. Topics covered vary from “industry bullsh**” to “flirtationships” and divorce, football and “old Scottish men” to endometriosis. One particularly memorable chat went down a rabbit hole trying to work out whether it’s OK to want a superyacht.
She and the podcast are all about exploring the joy of life, but also it’s important to her to look at “the challenges of this industry, where sometimes it’s set up to be competitive and not collaborative,” she says.
“Shazia Mirza and Ria Lina, they’ve both been doing comedy for a while, and they were talking about back in the day, how they never really saw each other because [as women of colour] they were never booked together. They weren’t even allowed to be in the same lineup. One of them said, ‘I was threatened when I saw another woman in comedy, because I was like, What am I going to talk about?’ So I’m glad to facilitate a space that encourages collaboration and togetherness.”
It’s also about creating a space to develop, for a more diverse group of performers. London comedy audiences are still predominantly white and middle-class, which creates particular hurdles for performers of colour. One is the question of whether the audience will even connect with their material.
“Everyone has to worry about, like, do I know my stuff? Is my stuff good? But one of the barriers I think you can face, especially as a performer of colour, or woman in front of a mainstream comedy audience, is - will they get me?” she explains.
This means that when some comedians first come to FOC IT UP!, which has a much more diverse audience, “people who perform for like, middle-class white audiences all the time, when they come, it’s actually a bit awkward for them,” she says.
“When you perform to white people, as a performer of colour, you need to get them on your side; you need to get them comfortable. And you might do that by making jokes about your culture; doing something self-deprecating.”
When the comic then appears “in front of people who are also from that culture, and you try it, that sh** doesn’t fly,” she says. “You can hear it in the recordings - someone might tell a joke, and it might land [oddly] and they’ll go, ohhhh yeah, you understand stereotyping don’t you, because you also experience it.”
It’s a little awkward, sure, but it’s also rather beautiful to watch, she says. “I think that’s a valuable experience for people to have, to go, hold on a second. Am I alienating people like me? And how does it feel? You can see people stretching. I always think, oh, this is so juicy. It’s so fun.” She does her best to amplify the goodwill in the room in advance, by greeting people as they arrive and offering hugs, which if nothing else must be pretty disarming.
She doesn’t come from a particularly theatrical background, but there is at least a whiff of performance in her family history - her paternal grandfather “was a swamp-pop legend”, swamp-pop being a genre which “I’m pretty sure only exists in like Louisiana, or Mississippi, and probably only during, like the Fifties and Sixties, something like that. He had a band called Lil Bob and the Lollipops.”
Her mother was a chemist and is now training to be a counsellor; her father installs internet and cable. “I’m not from a rich family or a showbizzy family,” she says. “I had a feeling towards the end of high school that I was interested in performance, but I was always really afraid of it.” Eventually she tried out for a play. “The summer before my senior year of high school, and the theatre kids were all like, ‘Oh my God, where have you been?’”
She decided to study acting in college, and it was one of her professors who put her onto comedy. “Steven, who’s a hilarious man, pulled me aside after his class one day and was like, ‘Kemah, you’re talking a lot in my class. And I don’t appreciate it. It’s a little distracting. But I will say that I think your comments are pretty hilarious. And I think good use of that energy would be to try out for the improv team.’”
One slightly late, rather hungover audition later and she was on the team. “And I was like, this feels fun. This feels very free. But when you are improvising with people, the narrative is always your narrative together. And at the time I was improvising with a lot of white people, especially in LA, and eventually I was like, I’m tired of doing scenes with Zacs. So many 29 year olds called Zac. I’m tired of ‘going camping’! I need to do some other sh**.”
An abortive attempt to work in the TV industry here in London followed college (“I tried. I did work experience. I’m so bad at it”) but on her list of things to do before having to move back to the States was to try stand up. “And it was lovely and so much fun. So I’m grateful that that professor was like, ‘please shut up, but also try this’.”
Her comedy is still developing. She has said rather obliquely in the past that her childhood was “not great” but when I ask her what that means, she is uncharacteristically evasive.
“I feel like this is a weird statement. But at the moment, my focus is on personal development, understanding myself and self-love. I’m trying to figure out how to talk about things like childhood trauma, and self-acceptance on stage in a way that is comedy.
“I think a lot of us are walking around with these wounds that are in different stages of healing, some that we haven’t even begun to interrogate,” she continues. “And I think I want to say something about that. When you stand in front of a roomful of people, and you open yourself up, and you say, I accept this about me, this is who I am, this is what I’ve gone through, I think it provides a little pathway for other people also, if it resonates with them, to go, OK if that person is OK with themselves, then maybe there’s hope for me.”
She’s not there yet. “I’m just trying to navigate the way, because there’s also the fear of people going, who are you to talk about this? Who are you to try to talk about this to me and call it comedy? And I have quite a bit of anxiety about that moment right now.”
For now she just wants to try to help others to have the path that she’s had - held up and championed by other women of colour and others. The Guilty Feminist’s Deborah Frances-White has been a big supporter, and performers Bisha K Ali and Amy Annette saw her do improv and started recommending her for things. “I feel like I’ve had a really friendly path. And I really appreciate that for myself. I’m glad I haven’t had to suffer! I don’t want that for anyone.” As she leaves, she gives me a hug.
