Three divas diffuse the stereotypical comedian myth

I’d never laughed so hard for so long before Friday. And it was all for work – sort of.           

Seizing on what promised to be a great photo op, I squeezed my way in through the crowd of some 375 people who came to see Shirley's BRAdway Show. Knowing the subject matter, I figured there’d be very little, if any, testosterone floating around the room. Surprisingly, a sprinkling of guys – maybe as much as 10 percent of the crowd – was there. Most, if not all, were either with a woman also attending or helping with the event.           

So that means estrogen dominated the room, and it was girls’ night out for a few hundred ladies ranging from 21 to 91. Oh, what a night it was.           

The name “BRAdway” was not as much of a play on words as you’d think. The whole show essentially revolved around bras and cup sizes, with hilarious jokes about “40 long” and losing elasticity interspersed throughout the evening. At first, I was a bit taken aback at how, um, “open” and “candid” – OK, raunchy – the speakers were. While I'm no prude, I can be a bit on the reserved side. But I realized that hey, this is an adult show. I know funny when I see it, and this show was really, really funny.           

As emcee, Reneé Wall Rongen already had me practically rolling on the floor before the real comedians even hit the stage. While donning a colorful array of bras as a scarf to her elegant black attire, she showed what a funny gal she is by just casually chatting it up with the audience. She has a definite stage presence. I don’t know where she got that King Kong-sized bra she held up, but that’s what set my giggling mood off for the night.           

She no doubt rehearsed her part some, but she's also very good at ad-libbing, which makes her a great speaker. It's a gift I surely wasn't blessed with.          

Even the guy, Kim Boger, who talked about his experience with breast cancer – yes, men get it too, though it's rare – had us in stitches. If we hadn't had a break to regain our composure for the next round, I seriously don't know how many of us older gals would have made it through the night without sustaining a hernia.             

Then came the big divas, Jodie Maruska, Rox Tarrant and Brenda Elsagher. It's easy to see why these ladies are successful in the stand-up comedy circuit in the Twin Cities. Judging from the roaring laughter that filled the room, everyone else could, too. I could really relate to about 95 percent of what these divas were saying, given that I'm also middle-aged and plus size. Although only one of them is married with children, what the others said about singledom, dating and men quickly brought up memories that made it seem as though it was far less than 19 years since I'd been there.           

They didn't pull any punches when talking about “female” things, which surely brought on a few red faces – mostly on males – in the thankfully dimmed room. They frequently joked about their size, a refreshing concept I can really empathize with. One line I remember clearly, one of the few that can be printed on these pages, came from Maruska, who is coincidentally the same age as me: “I said to myself, 'I really have to get back in shape.' Then I realized, I've never been in shape.”           

Elsagher pulled off her tales of life with an Egyptian husband, who happened to also serve as their tech guy for the night, as well as being a colon cancer survivor with finesse and unique wit that only she could. And Tarrant, as the first diva onstage, was just so darn funny with her animated antics that coincided with her jokes.          

When it came to their families, the divas all had different stories to share, different situations they're in and different angles to take. The funny thing is, I could see parts of my family in all of them. Elsagher has two children, one a high school senior and one in college, and when she referred to teen speak – as in speaking or writing in three syllables – boy, did I know what she was talking about. Maruska ranted about her spoiled youngest brother, who seemed very much like me growing up in my family of older brothers. And even though she carried off glimpses of her now deceased mother in a humorous way, sometimes I didn't know whether to laugh or cry when they reminded me of my own mother.          

While I don't have a stereotype of a stand-up comedian in mind, a lot of people tend to  associate them with being young and carefree. Roseanne Barr Arnold and whatever it is now managed to somewhat diffuse this myth in the 1980s, being an overweight housewife in her 30s. These three divas do even more to shed the stereotype, proving that older, plus-size women can indeed be just as, if not more, funny as their younger, skinnier counterparts.           

I, for one, hope to catch these ladies again real soon.