Richmond comedian Linda Dee is getting ready to rock Women’s History Month with her brand-new comedy series, “Diverse Divas of Comedy,” kicking off on March 21st at Crescent Collective. With a killer lineup of funny ladies, Linda Dee wants you to come along for a night of laughs and empowerment. In a chat with us, she spills the beans on what to expect at the show, looks back on her comedy journey this year, and dishes on why she’s a big fan of Sinbad.
Gabriel Santamaria: Linda, how long have you been doing comedy for?
Linda Dee: I’ve been doing comedy just shy of a year. I started at the beginning of last April.
GS: Do you remember your first open mic?
Linda Dee: My first open mic was probably Isley Brewing Company back when they were having the mic there?
GS: How’d it go?
LD: It went better than expected.
GS: Everybody has their own story, you know?
Linda Dee: I was lucky because I got into comedy by taking a class. So a few of my classmates went. So we had a lot of moral support that night.
GS: Well, that’s cool. Where did you take classes?
LD: Coalition Theater!
GS: Oh, what’s up Coalition Theater! Shout out to Matt Newman. He’s great. That’s awesome. So how would you say the comedy community is like in Richmond?
LD: Overall, the community is pretty supportive. Like I said, coming out of a class and knowing people made it a lot easier for me. It’s not like I just showed up by myself. So even now a lot of the comics that I lean on for support or help writing jokes came out of that class.
GS: And you’re a year in now with some stuff that you picked up along the way and you’re doing stuff by yourself now? A bit more independent.
LD: Absolutely. Yes, I’ve been doing shows in Richmond and I did a show in DC last month. That was, that was a fun adventure. My first time up there and now I’m producing a show, so I’m producing a show this month for March. It’s called Diverse Divas of Comedy. And it’s actually gonna be an all female lineup and we’re gonna kind of use Women’s History Month as a way to celebrate the creative woman voices that we have in comedy in Richmond and Central Virginia.
GS: Awesome! Who do you have on the show?
LD: Our headliner is gonna be Patrice DeVeaux, who is hilarious. Yeah, she’s fantastic. And we’re so happy to have her on our show and then we have Kim Villamera. She’s a Filipino comic who works a lot out in Northern Virginia and she’s absolutely hilarious too. And then we have, Kimberly Nario, Erica D and Mariea and I’ll be hosting.
GS: How do you like hosting as opposed to just doing a spot? I know you have to be on your toes all night.
LD: You have to be on your toes all night. Yeah, you’re right! It’s good exercise and you have to be focused on what’s going on, not only on stage but with the crowd because you have to keep that crowd warm and going and excited to see the other comics on the line. You have to be way more focused on, like, everything that’s going on instead of just your set that you’re going to perform.
GS: What did you like growing up? What made you laugh like when you were a kid?
LD: I watched a lot of Sinbad and when I was growing up, Def Comedy Jam was the thing everybody watched. Yeah. But I have a soft spot for very silly movies like the old Chris Farley movies or the Adam Sandler stuff like Happy Gilmore. I love those.
GS: The Different World cast is like doing some sort of tour or something.
LD: Yeah, it’s like their 35 year anniversary? I think I saw that. They’re definitely doing a media tour because I’ve seen some interviews with them.
GS: Oh my God. I think Sinbad is gonna be on it too.
Linda Dee: I hope so. I know he’s had some health issues, but to me, I could still watch a Sinbad clip and think he’s hilarious. And the awesome thing about Sinbad is that he worked clean his entire career. At one time, he was the highest-paid comedian, but it was because he could do family shows on Saturday afternoon.
GS: That clean stuff goes a long way. I believe that he was in First Kid, remember that movie? Like, it was filmed at Byrd Middle School (ed. note: Quioccasion Middle School) in Richmond.
LD: Oh, no kidding?
GS: At the gym. I went to that middle school. My brother and a couple of his friends were extras. So yeah, a little Richmond connection there.
LD: Oh, you totally reminded me of that.
GS: The nineties had some of the funniest things between stand ups and sitcoms. That was really the goal for stand ups was like, I’m gonna get a sitcom.
LD: Always. They were doing stand up until they got their sitcom.
GS: Yeah, it’s crazy. I mean, I don’t think anybody wants to take that on anymore.
LD: Yeah, if you can get it, that’d be nice. But I guess there’s other ways also to get your name out there.
GS: I guess it’s easier and tough at the same time because you get your name out with the internet. But also there’s like millions of other people trying to do the same thing.
LD: Right. Yeah a lot of competition for sure.
GS: And you have to just constantly be posting and coming up with stuff, content or whatever. Do you think the clips are, are good or bad for comedy?
LD: Oh, that’s a good question. You have to put something out there to promote yourself, right? So it’s a really thin line because, of course, you don’t wanna give away all of your material, but you have to attract new fans – you have to put some material out there. I’m a fan of a lot of the clips that I watch are actually crowd work. They’re not necessarily like a set joke that someone wrote and I guess that’s a way to kind of get the best of both worlds.
GS: They put out crowd work so they can keep the written stuff kind of safe away. You know, that makes sense though.
LD: It does. The one thing I’ve learned this last year, not that I have a ton of experience, but that it’s difficult to get a really good joke, like a joke that works all the time in front of all different audiences. So once you have that you can’t give that away.
GS: Is it when you get to that point where you’re like this one always worked, is it tough not to just come out the gate with it or just put it in the middle of the set? You gotta save it for the end of the set or something like that?
LD: Yeah, it’s tough. Like, you want to use it, and it kinda becomes like your go-to, especially if things aren’t going great.
I have one or two jokes that I know will always work. So, let me pull that out. And sometimes, I’ve been thrown off a little bit because I’ve had the intention of doing other material, like trying to work out something new, but I’m always like, “Well, it’s not working that great.” So I’ll fall back to this joke because I know it always works. So, yeah, it does become a little bit of a crutch. But, like you said, you have to have them.
GS: Yeah, first of all, you have to have good jokes. You know, I don’t think anybody should feel bad about a good joke.
Well, what would you tell people who are looking to get into comedy? I know more and more people are interested in it and what would you tell them about getting into the humbling world of stand up comedy?
LD: Yeah, I would say first of all, go for it. Once you get into it and if it is something you’ve always wanted to do, try it out because there’s a lot of avenues in Richmond to try it out. And then I would say go find your kind of people within the community and just lean on them for support and for help because it’s so much easier. Especially, being a female comic, it’s so much easier when you have that support. I don’t know that I would have been as successful as I was this last year without people behind me.
GS: That’s good. I mean, I hear about that so much too. I see, I hear it and I see it so much in the Richmond comedy scene is just how encouraging everybody else is to each other and have each other on each other’s shows. It’s very cool to see and there’s always new people popping up. I’m glad there’s an avenue and Richmond has a big enough scene where a comic can actually do a couple spots in a week.
LD: They do, like, I always joke that Richmond has a much better comedy scene that it deserves, and that’s not based on talent, that’s based on the size of the city because it does feel like we have a very large comedy scene for being such a small city.
GS: The music venues now that never had comedy before having comedy shows or having open mics now. So it’s out there to go see comedy.
LD: Yeah, if you love comedy in Richmond, you can find places every week to go see it.
Find more information on the Diverse Divas of Comedy HERE
