LGBTQ sketch-comedy group GayCo put on its first revue, Whitney Houston, We Have a Problem, at the Second City in 1996. The Reader‘s Mary Shen Barnridge wrote that it kept its “focus tight and its humor accessible to audiences straight and gay, in the know or out of touch.” The performance was born out of a comedy workshop created after Second City administrative director Ed Garza discovered the word “fag” scrawled across the wall in one of the training-center classrooms. According to Andy Eninger, one of GayCo’s founding members and current resident director, the bigoted graffiti was a wake-up call that there needed to be a support system for LGBTQ performers. In “most of the shows we’d seen on Second City stages . . . being gay was the punch line,” Eninger says.
“GayCo really informed a lot of my strategy on how to reach hearts and minds,” Bennet says. “In comedy, people’s defenses are down—it’s a way to reach people. It was great to be able to take my experience having to meet with the opposition or meeting with people who wanted to be able to adopt and find that comic sweet spot.”
Sat 10/15, 7:30 PM Up Comedy Club 230 W. North gayco.com $20
