_Although not typically considered an incubator for stand-up, the South has inarguably shaped contemporary comedy, fostering the rise of historic legends such as Redd Foxx in the 1950s and ’60s—who influenced major comics like Richard Pryor and Chris Rock—and cultivating the humor characteristic of Jeff Foxworthy and Bill Engval’s Blue-Collar Comedy Tour in the 2000s. Since the early aughts, a number of more diverse voices have broken through what once was considered an alternative comedy scene, bringing to the forefront personal, political, and racial discourse, and making space for a broader range of presences on stage with the slower, more relaxed delivery characteristic of household names like Fortune Feimster, Nate Bargatze, and Tig Notaro, as well as the more energized approach taken by Jay Jurden, Solomon Georgio, and Shane Torres, who project their voices and prowl the stage more often. 

If there can be a quality associated with what makes a comic quintessentially Southern, it’s the need to be bullet-proof on stage, to command a room. Tough and dedicated joke writers, comics from the region have often had to rise above an absence of community, a segregated scene, and cultural stereotypes in order to stand out and make a mark. Unlike comics from New York, Chicago, or Los Angeles, those from the South have to be especially adept at code switching, dialing up or down certain aspects of their sets and adjusting jokes to suit different audiences, since Southern audiences can be more skeptical and more vocal about sharing how they feel about a stand-up’s set. I spoke with Daily Show correspondents Dulcé Sloan and Roy Wood Jr., rising stand-up Shalewa Sharpe, and Natasha Vaynblat, the brain behind the Comedy Central digital series, Your Worst Fears Confirmed. I was able to speak with them about their early days on stage and how their formative years in the South influence and connect to their current work.

The following has been edited for length and clarity.

On finding their voices early on and honing their styles:

Dulcé Sloan: I never wanted to be a stand-up comic. My goal was to be an actor. I was singing, dancing, and acting, and was in musicals. I gave it a try because [my mentor], Big Kenny, put me in his class. He was saying to me, “You could be good at stand up. I think you should just come to class and see how you like it. You know what a joke is. You know how to tell a story. You know what a punchline is. You just have to learn the other elements of it.”

Roy Wood Jr.: Comedy is music. I hate to say jazz, but there is an element of jazz to it, in that you are given this freedom to do a joke a million different ways. You know what the words are, and you know what you’re trying to get to, but how you get there can change night to night. There are also parts where I know if I come low, and I speak quietly, that you are forced to be drawn into what I’m saying. Then I can explode out of that faster. That to me is fun. It’s manipulation. It’s creating a more clear-cut intention of what you want someone to feel.

Shalewa Sharpe: I’ve not always been a ratatat, set-up/punch-line kind of comedian, although I do love that, and that is a skill that I wish I had. Mine is a little more conversational because I started later in life. It’s really honed by conversations that I’ve had with friends, or coworkers, or things like that.

We never really hear about what happens to a carefree woman who doesn’t end up in a serious relationship, or who ends up childless. So that’s kind of how I’m looking at things. It’s a weird feeling that I have, that I sometimes feel a little just outside of the line of what I was supposed to be doing at this time. If we want to talk about doing those things while still getting older, being the Aging Carefree Black Woman, and how that looks different as you get older, then that’s what I want to speak on.

Natasha Vaynblat: I think I have found out who I was as a performer by filling the spaces that didn’t already exist or trying to complement them. I didn’t see a lot of Russian comedies when I was a kid, but the few I did see, the women weren’t the funny ones and certainly not the weirdos. And at Comedy Sportz there were tons of women who were bold, loud, and confident. So I tried to complement that while still being true to my more quiet, weird only-child, immigrant self. I don’t think I necessarily perform as a Southerner. But I’m certainly informed by it.

On segregation of the scene:

Roy Wood Jr.: Comedy at a base level...there’s Black rooms and then there’s white rooms, but then certain bookers only book certain people. Because to do this for a living, sustainably, the one thing I did realize at an early age was that I would have to perform in both quadrants. You cannot solely be a Black comedian in the South and make money. It’s impossible. The economics of it don’t exist. So, I started figuring out okay, how can I put together jokes? What are the things that everybody cares about? And figuring out a way to tell that joke in a Black room and a white room with the same ideology, and the same approach to it, which I think is where some of the way around it came from.

On a Monday night I could be in a casino performing for all white people, and then Tuesday night is an urban night. Wednesday night, I’m at Fort Walton Beach for a bunch of screaming, twenty-year-olds, at a dueling piano bar at Howl at the Moon. That was not an uncommon run. That’s three different demographics in three days. But I made three checks.

For me, I had to find things that were connectors. Early on, it’s food and all of that, but the comedy formulaically just boils down to what everyone thinks the problem is. There’s a problem in this world, and there’s usually two perspectives on that problem. My job as a comedian is to present the third perspective, or explain to you why I have this perspective. That’s it. That’s all I’m really trying to do with most of my material. And you just be crafty in how you paint and present the issue to people.

Shalewa Sharpe: There’s definite segregation in Atlanta. You did have white shows, and the white shows themselves, because of the nature of venues, were the mainstream shows. There were maybe two comedy clubs, and then there was Uptown Comedy Corner, and that was the Black comedy club. And then it slowly popped off in other locations. So, for the Black shows, there was Uptown Comedy, and then just various bars that would have comedy nights in particular areas. For all intents and purposes, the white shows were at the two clubs that were not close to the city; they were kind of suburban. 

However, you do yourself a disservice to think that it is only in certain areas. Most cities are wildly segregated. New York is definitely segregated. Chicago absolutely. L.A. for sure. You know, lots of places that people think, “Well, I mean, they’re big cities and they’re not the South.” It’s like, yeah, but still segregated. It’s really up to the comedian to make those decisions to work, but I prefer to just kind of do what I do in front of who’s in front of me and hope it works. It can make it tough, unless you call it out and do things to try and work against just straight up segregation. Hopefully we can all get along, but just know what you’re going into, and don’t necessarily think that your way is the only way. Just know that there are other options out there and to try different rooms. All I can do is be myself, and audiences will respond however they want to respond. 

On the unique context of performing in the South:

Dulcé Sloan: The South is the only place that’s been really forced to talk about race relations, as in, the rest of America gets to act like it wasn’t racist. That’s why in the first couple of jokes that I have in my half hour, we’re talking about, like, you can’t tell me that the North isn’t more racist than the South, because in the North you split up white people. Like how more racist can you get?

White comics tell me from all around the country that when they go down to the South—or just comics in general, you know, white and Black comics or Latino comics or whatever—when they go to the South and they have jokes about race, Southerners don’t tighten up the way that people in L.A. and New York do. They’re more receptive to these jokes because this is something that was such a big part of the lifestyle there and then the reconciliation of that. I think a lot of times with Southern comics, we’re able to talk about things that comics from other places don’t talk about because of where we started, we can be more open about that. When I hear white comics talk about race, most of the white comics are from the South. I don’t really hear white comics from other places talk about race unless, you know, they’re trying to skirt around it or trying to be cheeky or something.

Natasha Vaynblat: We as performers can get stuck in the spaces where we perform. Even in New York, pre-pandemic, if you were a Brooklyn comedian, that was so different than even a Manhattan comedian, especially if you think about somebody who’s performing in clubs versus Brooklyn bar shows. And I love Brooklyn bar shows. But I always want to know how my material is working outside of NYC. The last time I went back home it was one of the best sets I’ve ever had. I wrongfully assumed the audience would be more conservative than a Brooklyn bar audience. But that was not the case. They were so in it, just ready for jokes.

Roy Wood Jr.: When I used to be a road guy, I could always tell the guys who only performed in New York. And then they’d come to Louisville and eat shit for four shows, and it was because they lacked perspective on how the rest of the country felt, or how to convey that point in a way where people who aren’t necessarily on board from the jump would think or feel about it. Sometimes it’s something as simple as the speed with which you tell the joke. Sometimes when I perform in the South, I sequence my set differently. I might start with something a little more friendly up front, then ease into the edgier stuff. Then there’s nights when I deliberately want to start edgy and dive right in. In Father Figure, the first joke, the first line, is “If we get rid of the Confederate flag.” Starting the special that way, I had to try it in the clubs first. And what I finally figured out was my facial expression—instead of coming on stage straight-faced going, “If we get rid of it”—that’s too militant. If I came on with a quizzical look on my face, as if I’m posing a silly question for all of us to ponder, then it got the laugh. If it’s a question as if we’re all in this together, then it’s something much more communicative. I’m posing a question that we can all ponder together.

Shalewa Sharpe: I think if you are in the city of Atlanta, and you were doing business in the city of Atlanta, and you’re a white person doing business in the city of Atlanta, you’re going to encounter Black people. It’s impossible to not. Like, how will you feel if you are one of two white people in a Starbucks, and everyone else is Black. How would you feel about that? I think that is something that people in the South probably experience more than people in the North. When you do mention it, people up in the North get very tight, whereas in the South, you’re able to say those things. That’s more understood because you’re familiar with each other, you work with each other, you’re shopping with each other, you live next to each other. There’s still segregation, but you understand it.

Atlanta now just looks to the rest of the country, to the rest of the world, like a Black mecca, you know, a Chocolate City of the South of sorts. If you’re unaware that that’s the case, that that’s what Atlanta has evolved to look like to everyone else, and you’re still just kind of like, “Well, you know, I’m still going to book young white dudes, because I was a young white dude once, and that’s what I get them and that’s what I wanted,” it’s going to look a little wild. But as a comic, you do get a chance to just work all of those rooms. And I think comedians who are there, have worked harder at cross pollination.

It’s a chance for you to work all of those rooms and just kind of hone what you do. And when I say hone what you do, I don’t mean change your material based on the room. But there are slight differences, maybe in delivery and how you have to grab a crowd, and it gives you that training. How do I switch out my delivery based on the audience that I have? And you’re able to do that within the same night at times. You can just go and try it out in the various rooms and like, “OK, great. This is how I can use this to get this group of people. This group of people is going to take a little longer. This group I need to get straight out of the gate. Maybe I need to rearrange these jokes for this to make that work.” Like, a lot of comedy math. You have to do a lot of comedy math, which I definitely enjoy.