Boulder Comedy Festival cans the cliché, opts for diverse humor and ‘shared humanity’ (2024)

Though fair-skinned and freckly, Zoe Rogers has no problem exposing herself to prolonged amounts of sunlight when it comes to promoting the Boulder Comedy Festival.

In the weeks leading up to the festival, which takes over Boulder County June 19 – 23, one can spot Rogers passing out flyers at the Boulder Farmers Market or around Downtown Longmont — all the while under the late-spring Colorado sun, where the UV index can reach up to 12 during peak hours.

Despite the imminent dangers of melanoma, Rogers said that handing out flyers and talking to potential festival-goers in person is essential to conveying the unique mission of the Boulder Comedy Festival.

“Every year my husband tells me to just do targeted online ads and not get sunburned while walking around and talking to people,” Rogers said. “He may have a point. But what I’ve found is that people will often be hesitant to attend the festival — until I tell them what it’s all about.”

Boulder Comedy Festival, created and organized by Rogers in 2021, is about more than just making people laugh — it centers around amplifying underrepresented voices by featuring a cast of talent who is predominantly female, BIPOC (Black, Indigenous and other people of color) and those who identify under the LGBTQ+ umbrella.

“When I hand out flyers, most people I speak to say that they don’t enjoy comedy when the jokes revolve around punching down and perpetuating stereotypes,” Rogers said. “And to them, I say, ‘I don’t either.’ That’s why I started this festival.”

Rogers, who has been in the comedy industry for more than 10 years, set out to challenge the notion that only one type of person can be funny. Reflecting on her own early experiences in the industry, she recalls being told she didn’t look like a comedian, to which she responded, “OK, so what does a comedian look like?”

According to Rogers, most comedy festivals in the nation feature lineups consisting heavily of white dudes, with a token minority comic tossed into the mix. While many jokes at those festivals revolve around tired themes and platitudinal perspectives, Boulder Comedy Festival aims to move beyond clichéd humor and offer up some new points of view for audiences to discover.

“Boulder Comedy Festival isn’t just for one type of specific person,” Rogers said. “Nobody owns funny, funny is for everybody. Everybody leaves feeling like they saw a comic who represented them, and they leave with the knowledge and perspective from a comic who taught them something completely new.”

This year’s festival is no different, spotlighting nationally touring comedians from New York, Los Angeles, Boston, Atlanta, Portland, Detroit, Minneapolis and Albuquerque — some featured on platforms like Comedy Central, Netflix and Amazon. Audiences will hear jokes from comics who are first-generation immigrants, single parents, queer and non-binary comedians.

There will also be a sprinkling of white dudes in there, too, but ones with fresh perspectives, Rogers said. The lineup also includes appearances and headlining acts from comedians living in our own backyard.

Making her debut at BCF this year, Jennifer Yee is an up-and-coming comedian who lives in said backyard. Yee, a writer, artist, educator, businesswoman and mother who lives in unincorporated Boulder County, recently added “comedian” to her impressive list of titles less than two years ago after reaching a poignant milestone in her life.

“Last year I turned 42, which is the same age that my father was when he passed away,” Yee said. “I felt motivated to make a list of things that I had never had the courage or resources to do before. At the top of the list was to try stand-up comedy. So I ended up taking a class in Denver in January of 2023. It changed my life.”

Though Yee is fairly early into her comedy career, she already has curated her signature comedic style — a blend of autobiographical storytelling and insightful humor that pokes fun at the unique challenges of being a minority in Boulder. Yee doesn’t rely on quick one-liners; instead, she weaves detailed narratives about her experiences growing up as a first-generation Chinese American and the pressures that came with it, while also exploring the impossibilities and humorous realities of parenthood.

“Someone like me — a mother, a woman, and a minority — is rare in stand-up comedy,” Yee said. “While there are so many art forms that have already been opened up to people with a diverse set of identities, comedy is one that remains kind of closed.”

Yee added: “But Boulder Comedy Festival creates a space where being a bit different is a good thing. I think sometimes when you find yourself in a place where your lived experience is different than that of the the people around you, it’s a really great way to share stories and relate to people, even if they don’t have that same shared experience. It’s a way to create a shared humanity.”

Exceedingly sharp, insightful and charming, Yee is quickly building a reputation in Boulder, Denver and beyond as a comic to be reckoned with.

At Boulder Comedy Festival, Audiences can look forward to listening to her wax poetic about the lack of good Chinese food in Boulder and what it’s like to give birth to two Colorado natives as an East Coast transplant during her set at Boco Cider, 501 Lee Hill Drive, Boulder, on June 23.

Gabby Gutierrez-Reed — a Denver-based comedian who has been around the Boulder Comedy Festival block a few times — will help kick off the festival fun at the opening show on Wednesday at Junkyard Social, 2525 Frontier Ave., Boulder.

One summer in college, while simultaneously interning on a farm, Gutierrez-Reed took an improv class and fell in love with performing.

“It was the summer of goats and comedy,” she said, reminiscing fondly. “And the rest was kind of history.”

Since that fateful summer, Gutierrez-Reed has opened for famed comedians like Sofia Niño De Rivera (aka the first woman to have a Spanish-language Netflix comedy special), is the co-host of roving Colorado comedy club Firecracker Comedy, has been on Adult Swim and Funny or Die, and has been featured in festivals like High Plains Comedy and 10,000 Laughs.

Gutierrez-Reed performed at Boulder Comedy Festival in 2022 and 2023. What makes Boulder Comedy Festival so unique, she said, is the sense of support and camaraderie found among the performing comics.

“I always feel very comfortable with the comedians that are on the lineups,” Gutierrez-Reed said. “I mean, it’s totally cool to be on a lineup with all straight white dudes, I guess, but it also means a lot that this festival is trying to feature people who have different experiences.”

She said it’s important for all comedians to feel comfortable while performing comedy — that means having a safe space to build confidence so comics can experiment with new material.

“It helps us be creative and get out of our comfort zone and just get even funnier,” Gutierrez-Reed said.

With an eclectic style that can be described as highly physical and dynamic, Gutierrez-Reed’s comedy incorporates character voices and act-outs that leave her sore after a performance. Her humor is deeply autobiographical, drawing inspiration from her personal experiences with her family, her identity as a queer woman and bad sandwich-tasting experiences.

From reminiscing on the “soft-launch” of her bisexuality — which entailed wearing overalls and sweater vests with increasing frequency — to delivering punchlines while lying down on the stage floor, Gutierrez-Reed uses a mixture of physical comedy and playful confessionalism to make crowds giggle.

When she isn’t delivering jokes from a supine position on stage, Guttierez-Reed creates sketches alongside her pals in the group Bedtime Worldwide. In July, the group will film a pilot for their new series, “Paranormall,” which follows an unlikely team of misfits who come together to banish evil in their local shopping mall. For the shoot, the group will rent out an entire mall (who knew you could do that?) at an undisclosed Colorado location.

“We’re featuring local comedians, specifically trying to get together Latinx and queer comedians to be background actors,” Gutierrez-Reed said. “Some of us in the group are ourselves Latinx and/or queer, so we’re excited to create something that we can all share in and be proud of together.”

The Boulder Comedy Festival will host shows at BoCo Cider, Junkyard Social, the Dairy Arts Center, 2590 Walnut St., Boulder, and Finkel and Garf Brewing, 5455 Spine Road, Boulder. Each day features a long list of comedians, so keep an eye on the schedule at bouldercomedyfestival.com to see who is on deck to perform.

Looking ahead, Rogers said that she hopes the festival will continue to grow as it has over the past four years — perhaps even grow a bit more northward if readers catch her drift.

“I’d like us to keep growing,” Rogers said. “I have a friend who runs a show in Longmont, who keeps asking me when we’re going to come up there. We’d like to host the festival at locations all over the place in Boulder County, so if somebody wants to host us, we’re open to it.”

Rogers added: “I love that the number of shows, comics and sponsors that we have had each year keeps getting bigger. And when you have comics that say, ‘Hey, can I come back next year?’ I don’t think you can get a much better review than that.”

Boulder Comedy Festival

• 7 p.m. June 19, set featuring 11 comedians at Junkyard Social, $25.

• 7 p.m. June 20, set featuring 10 comedians at Dairy Arts Center, $30.

• 7 p.m. June 21, set featuring nine comedians at Dairy Arts Center, $30.

• 2 p.m. June 22, Boozy Brunch Show featuring 10 comedians at Finkel & Garf Brewing Co., $25

• 7 p.m. June 22, Boulder Comedy Show benefiting Rocky Mountain Equality featuring 11 comedians at Dairy Arts Center, $30.

• 2 p.m. June 23, Boozy Brunch Show featuring 12 comedians at Boco Cider, $25.

• 7 p.m. June 23, set featuring nine comedians at Dairy Arts Center, $20.