Dana Goldberg

She's one of the funniest lesbians in America (as voted by Curve magazine readers) and she's coming to Portland. Comedian Dana Goldberg has performed on the same stage as President Obama and Lady Gaga, has her own Logo TV special and is a regular on Olivia cruises. She's peformed all over the world, but this will be her first visit to Portland. I recently caught up with Dana Goldberg and got to know her a little better.

Kathy: How did you get your start in stand-up comedy? Is comedy your sole occupation right now or do you have a day job?

Dana Goldberg: Technically the first time I ever performed was when I was 17. I won my high school talent show. I didn’t touch a stage after that for eight years. When I was 26, I went and auditioned for a show called “Funny Lesbians for a Change.” It was an annual event which raised money for higher education scholarships for women. I had a seven minute set in front of 650 lesbians in a sold out theater. I could see my heart beat through my shirt. My hands were shaking. I didn’t dare touch the microphone for fear that I would turn it into an amplifying vibrator of sorts. After I told my first big joke, I heard the most deafening laughter I had ever heard and I went into a zone. It was incredible. I absolutely killed that night and the rest is history. I was a bartender for 11 years, but I’ve been doing comedy full time for about 2 1/2 years now and I couldn’t be more grateful. I get to do what I love and get paid for it. Life is good.

Tell me about sharing a stage with President Obama, Jane Lynch and the cast of Glee. What was that like? Were you nervous?

That was a historic night. It was at the National Human Rights Campaign Gala in Washington, DC. I was asked to do the live auction for the evening. I went on right after the President gave his speech and before Lady Gaga played and sang “Imagine.” It was one of those moments you will remember for ever, but during it, you’re like “Is this really happening?”

What’s been your toughest gig to date?

Oy! My toughest gig was at Caroline’s on Broadway in NYC for the Ms. Foundation for Women. Gloria Steinem was crotch level (so to speak) and I just didn’t have a good set. It was very early on in my career and I was performing with some powerhouses like Judy Gold and Joy Behar. Right before I went on stage, my brain went, “You don’t belong up here with these women yet,” and the universe answered. I learned a big lesson in manifesting that night, but I did grow a lot from the show. I of course think I bombed, my girlfriend at the time said it wasn’t as bad as I thought. It still hurt like hell.

Do you have a favorite place you like to perform?

I have performed in so many amazing cities. It’s really hard to just pick one. My favorite performances are in places that have some sort of gem to be discovered when I explore during my day off. I have seen places in this country I would have never seen if it wasn’t for my career. I feel truly blessed. I do enjoy my Olivia gigs though. Who can blame me? Five hundred women in an all inclusive resort in paradise --again, life is good.

In addition to performing for LGBT audiences, you also perform at straight comedy clubs, do you do the same act for gay and straight audiences?

I usually pepper all kinds of material into my act. I realize through the years that if I’m funny, the subject of the material becomes less important. When it all comes down to it, crazy is crazy, families are families, relationships are relationships. If I can get an audience on my side at the beginning, the fact that I’m a lesbian becomes very secondary. I have found that I haven’t had to change my material too much depending on the crowd because most of my material crosses over and reaches both demographics.

Have you always been out in your comedy routine?

I have always been out. People ask me sometimes if I feel like it has hurt my career. To be honest with you, I wouldn’t know the difference. I’m grateful for the success I’ve had thus far. I feel as though the audience connects with me because I’m authentic and real. I’m proud of my sexual orientation, so to not include it in my act would be a disservice to myself and the audience. My gay and lesbian material is some of my funniest! Plus, I can’t think of a better community to support me as I continue to live my dream.

Have you ever performed in Portland before?

This will be my first performance in Portland. I love the city. I’m so excited to christen my 2011 year with a performance there.

You do a lot of charity events. Do you have a favorite charity you like to support?

I work with a number of organizations across the country, but I’m a big supporter of the Human Rights Campaign. I’ve helped to raise over $200,000 for the organization through performances and live auctions and I’ll be adding to that in 2011. I’m finishing up the process of booking a 10 city comedy tour with partial proceeds benefiting the organization.
- Examiner.com

“As a lesbian I resent your laughter. And all laughter.”
That line, from The Sarah Silverman Program, sums up the staunch attitude of a lot of prototypical feminasties whose disdain for a good time must be rooted in a baseless hypothesis that joy causes yeast infections.
Dana Goldberg isn’t one of those stone-faced femmes, and she’ll prove it Saturday when she headlines the first installment of Off the Wall Comedy Night. It’s a new series that will bring nationally recognized LGBT comics to Wall Street Night Club’s stage alongside local standup comedians every other month.
Fans of the genre might recognize Goldberg from LOGO TV’s One Night Standup, NBC’s Last Comic Standing or her performances at comedy clubs across the country, including the Laugh Factory, the Comedy Store and the Comedy Cellar, among a slew of others.
Her act is well-worn territory for most comics. She said most of her material comes from personal experiences, observations and growing up, well, different. Goldberg was born in New York, but was raised in Albuquerque, N.M. by “A wild pack of Jews,” according to her bio.
“I was raised by a Jewish mother and two out of three kids were gay—so I think comedy was built into my DNA,” Goldberg said, speaking from her home is Los Angeles.
Her career in standup began in 2003 when she booked an audition for Funny Lesbians for Change, a comedy festival in Albuquerque. Despite her inexperience, she landed a seven-minute set in front of 650 people.
“When I hit my first big joke I heard the most deafening laughter. That’s when I decided that this is what I wanted to do,” she said.
At that point, comedy became her career. She began to perform frequently, produced Albuquerque’s Southwest Funnyfest, an all-female-headlined comedy festival, and advocated for New Mexico AIDS services.
She cited influences such as Elayne Boosler, Joan Rivers, Lily Tomlin and Wanda Sykes—comedians that aren’t unknown to LGBT folks. But the most authentic comedy comes from personal experience, and life as a lesbian Jewess provides a treasure trove of material.
“My act is definitely skewed toward the LGBT community,” she explained, though clarifying that it never gets “queeny.” “If I wasn’t being completely authentic onstage, the audience would know.”
“My comedy is edgy and smart without being offensive,” she said. “I actually pride myself on that. I’m definitely not an insult comic, I’m not a racial comic—I don’t play that card. It makes me really uncomfortable when comics do that onstage, and I’m not focused on heckling an audience member to get a laugh.”
Openers include Jason Dudey, who has opened extensively for Kathleen Madigan, and Columbus’s Brooke Cartus, one of the funniest standups in town (Seriously. Cartus kills.).
Off the Wall is a continuation of the types of shows Natalie Heflin (of NAT Productions) has booked in the past, including Sandra Bernhard, Wendy Ho and Chelsea Lately panelist Fortune Feimster. Even though Heflin books the talent, she said the bulk of the credit for the new series goes to Scot Hafler, owner/operator of Wall Street.
But how does a comedy series fit into the programming at a nightclub known for drag shows, dance parties and go-go-boys? It’s actually not as far off-base as it sounds.
Last weekend at Wall Street, I watched a fantasy-themed burlesque show called Once Upon a Pastie: A Night of Burlesque Princesses and Evil Queens.
At one point, Viva Valezz performed dressed as Queen Absynthia, the patron-deity of absinthe-riddled bon vivants at the turn of the 20th-century Paris. In green lamé wings and a rhinestone bustier, she gyrated like a Truckstop Tinkerbell weaned on tequila, Def Leppard and Merit Ultra Lights. The audience ate up Viva’s performance every bit as much as they appreciated the irony of Strip Pokeher’s transformation from pageant queen to drag king, set to the Tim Rice/Elton John anthem, “I Just Can’t Wait to Be King.”
Boom.
It’s that kind of attitude toward programming—a relaxed, open, queer-positive approach—that makes Wall Street different. Whether it’s drag queens and kings, comedy nights, burlesque shows or plain ol’ late-night crotch thrusting to “You Make Me Feel (Mighty Real),” Wall Street fosters a culture that’s sorely lacking at other clubs.
So, ladies (and ladyboys), take a cue from the club around the corner from the YMCA. Lighten up, maybe even crack a joke now and then. Enjoy your life as much as you delight in grilling Fake Bacon-wrapped Not-Dogs for your gluten-free urban microfarming bloc parties.
But stop wearing cargo shorts—that’s no laughing matter. - The Other Paper - Columbus, OH

Dana Goldberg is not only a female working in the straight-male dominated field of comedy—something she says she's creatively had to figure out ways which to maneuver within—she also happens to be an activist for LGBTQ rights.

Her work for the Human Rights Campaign is often paired with her unique talent for comedy, using her knack for the laugh to help support events such as the upcoming "What's So Funny?" comedy show that is in its second here in Long Beach.

But what makes Dana fascinating is her approach to comedy, one that is neither saturated in stereotypes nor afraid to admit that she'd rather cater to an audience with intelligence than one looking for toilet humor.

"What I’ve learned through the years is that if I’m going to be a working comic, sometimes I have to create my own opportunities as a woman that perhaps a man wouldn’t have to," she explained. "I think it can go two ways with female comics. They can either play into the gender stereotypes that the audience expects from them: crass, sometimes slutty, not at smart as the men, playing into what they think the audience wants to hear. They almost act like guys on stage sometimes. I chose to go the opposite way and write smart edgy comedy and try to gear my shows toward more intelligent well informed audiences."

This concept was sparked by her first major gig at 26-years-old in Albuquerque, New Mexico, in front of some 650 people. Hearing joke after joke regarding boyfriends, sex not working, and other various subjects common to female comedy, Dana felt immensely uncomfortable before heading onto stage looking like what she described as Paula Poundstone: jeans, a button-down, and a tie.

"I couldn’t have been more gay if I were wearing a softball glove and a visor," Dana said bluntly. "I was terrified to go on stage—hands were shaking and I could see my heart beat through my shirt. I didn’t dare touch the microphone for fear I would turn in into an amplifying vibrator of sorts. After my first big joke, I heard the most deafening laughter I had ever heard and I was hooked."

Her life's inspirations, ranging from Wanda Sykes to Erin Foley to Kathleeen Madigan, proved to have been the sources she need to make her way up in a world that is dominated by the now and quick to kill.

And while there are no current HRC shows on her roster, she is always willing to book shows to support local and national nonprofits which promote equality. - Long Beach Post

I sat down with comedian Dana Goldberg in a Seattle coffee shop the day after seeing her perform for an HRC benefit show. She was upbeat and in a great mood, happy about her show and the path her career is taking. And even though I was the one drinking coffee, she was the one talking fast. Here’s what we talked about.
Lesbian Life: You got your comedy start in high school…

Dana Goldberg: My first set was in high school. I don’t know what in the world a 17 year old was thinking. I’m going to do a ten minute stand up routine. When I was younger I used to listen to tapes of Steven Wright, Robin Williams and Billy Crystal and Whoopi Goldberg. I would listen to them all the time. I guess I didn’t realize I was kind of studying. I’ve always been funny. I was funny when I was a kid. Something just possessed me and I decided to enter my high school talent show. And I won.
Do you remember any of the jokes you told?

Absolutely, I do. I told a couple of teacher jokes. This cracks me up. When I got up there, I grabbed the mic and I yelled, “Give it up for the MC.” I don’t know where it came from. I told jokes about my Mom, about my parents being from Brooklyn. I told two jokes about my boyfriends and how that wasn’t working out so well. It’s hilarious. I wasn’t out yet, but in the tape I’m wearing a pair of jeans, a button-down and a tie. I looked like Paula Poundstone. 1994.
I wrote about clothes. My mom wanting to take me shopping but she wouldn’t let me get the cool stuff. It was bellbottoms and a butterfly collar. If there was a wind I would take flight. My bellbottoms were so big there were small children trapped in my jeans. Stuff like that. They went over really well. Everyone else was doing the whole Whitney Houston cover lip syncing, so it was something different. I didn’t touch a stage again for eight years after that.

Why not?

Stage fright. I was terrified of public speaking.
The first time, were you scared, or did you just step out there?

You can definitely tell that I was shaking, nervous inside. I think as we get older, those ideas inside of what’s acceptable, people are judging, those ideas start to sink in. In high school, it starts there because there is so much judgment and kids can be mean. I was a band geek. I was a drummer. I was kind of the coolest of the band kids, but I was friends with the cheerleaders. I was everyone’s buddy. So even though I was completely uncomfortable in high school, every body loved me. But when I graduated from high school, I came out of the closet, I was trying to figure myself out. I was suddenly afraid to speak in public. I had to take public speaking classes for university, it was a prerequisite for classes I wanted to take, and I just remember shaking. My voice would speed. I would talk so fast.
There was a show that came through Albuquerque each year called the Lesbians for Change show. It was a mixture of different acts to raise money for higher education scholarships.

So, when I was 26, I finally got the courage to audition. I walked in five minutes after auditions ended and they said I couldn’t audition. You have to wait until next year. That was in 2001.

In 2002, I was dating this woman. She was in a military exercise in Puerto Rico and her plane crashed and she got killed. We were broken up, but she was one of the most amazing women I’d ever known and she died young. It was one of those moments in your life, when you’re like “What am I doing?” She was chasing her dreams.

So I went and auditioned again. It was 2002, October. I did a really jagged seven-minute set that I practiced in front of my sister and her friends stoned out of their minds into a lint-roller. That was my microphone. Of course they were laughing their asses off because everyone is high as a kite.

Best audience ever, by the way, but then you have to feed them. (laughs)

I did the audition and they gave me a seven-minute set. So, I go on second in the line up. I’m 26 at this point. I didn’t touch the microphone. I could see my heart beating through my shirt. Kathy, I hit the first big joke…my first set was in front of 650 people in a sold out theater. So, when I hit the first joke, I heard the most deafening laughter I had ever heard in my entire life and I went into this zone. And nothing could have touched me. Everything I said was golden. I felt like I was floating for weeks after the show.

People would come up to me and ask me how long I’d been doing it and I would say, 45 minutes. It was crazy!

From that moment on, I was like, no matter what happens, I’m going to chase this. Hopefully something will happen before I turn 30 that will tell me, yes, this is something I need to do. I gave myself a four year mark. But during that time, I started to get write-ups in Curve.

It’s insane. Seven months into my career, and I don’t know where they heard me, it was the next up and coming 15 comics to look out for. A little paragraph. No picture, nothing. Somehow the Ms Foundation saw that and I got asked to do an appearance on Broadway for the Ms Foundation for Women.

I was doing open mics and a producer from New York happened to see me and invited me to the Fringe Festival in Scotland after seven months.

So, you definitely got the message early on that this was what you were supposed to be doing…

Very early on. Then I did a show in Phoenix about a year and a half into my career and I recorded it and sent it to Olivia and I didn’t hear back from them for two years and then I got this phone call. So during this time, all this stuff is going on. They hire me four years in off the tape in Phoenix that I killed. This was in 2006. During this time, Curve is starting to hear more about me in the community and I get the Top Ten Reasons we love Dana Goldberg. So that started to get more recognition for me in the lesbian community and so did Olivia, but I was also performing in competitions in the straight world. I was making the top five and finals in those in Vegas. I did the San Francisco International Comedy competition. So my resume just started building, building, building. Then I ended up moving to LA two years ago. January will be my ninth year I’ve been in comedy.
How long have you been making a living doing comedy?

Just comedy alone. Four years. I bartended for 11 years at an Applebee’s. Then I finally quit about four years ago. Sadly, I lost my dad. My dad ended up dying when I was 31 and gratefully, he left a small amount of money that made me feel a little safer to quit my job and to just go after my dreams.
But also, when you’re doing what you’re supposed to be doing in life, doors just open up.

Opportunities were there. It’s awesome. I get to do what I love.
So why did you move to LA? More opportunities there?

Absolutely. I was hitting a glass ceiling in Albuquerque. I was also living very complacently. I was doing exactly what I needed to do to get by and I don’t want to live that way. And I want to do sit-coms. I want to act. I want to do TV, movies if I can. It was either LA or New York. NY is much farther from my family, it’s absolutely freezing in the winter and horrid in the summer. Even though it’s a brilliant city, it’s just harder living than LA. And I had already made a community in LA. So, I wouldn’t have to go to the open mics. I could get booked at the Improv with the monthly gay comedy. - Ask.com

For comedian Dana Goldberg, the toughest act she’s ever had
to follow was President Obama.

Voted one of the top five lesbian comedians by Curve magazine, Goldberg is keeping her comedy dance card full these days. She performs regularly at Human Rights Campaign events and with Olivia Cruises and produces her own show, which brings some of the biggest names in female comedy to New Mexico every year.

She spoke with The Advocate about giving back to the LGBT community, why government should stay out of our bedrooms, and her brush with the president.


The Advocate:
What was it like being raised in a Jewish household where two out of the three
children were gay?

Dana Goldberg: It was insane. We kind of raised each other. We had moments of complete sibling abuse followed by tearing all of the cushions off of the couch, stripping down to our underwear, and dancing to Funky Town in the living room. My mom is a brilliant woman, someone who I would choose as a friend, who worked three jobs to raise us.

It sounds like it was an easy choice to be a comedian.

It was either that or years or psychotherapy! I thought I could make a little
money instead of paying someone else to sort out my bullshit. I think for a lot of comics, it’s a very public process. We have the ability to go and work out our own shit in front of an audience and let them laugh at us and for us to laugh at ourselves. My kindergarten teacher told my mother that I was the funniest 5-year-old that she had ever met. I don’t know how that translates but apparently this is how I’ve always been. When you mix in the lesbianism with the Judaism, I’ve worked out a lot of stuff on stage.

You work a lot of cruises. It’s the one comedy venue where your audience still surrounds you long after the show is over. Any good stories?

I’ve been with Olivia Cruises since 2006 and have had some amazing trips, but it’s true that you are with your audience all week, so you are always on. I actually enjoy talking to the guests. I want people to feel like they have
access to me. Some of my best friends now, I’ve met on these trips. I did have one bad experience once. In my act, I have a joke about vegetarians not having a lot of energy, which I know is not true. It’s a comedy show. I come back from work that night, and it is work. It’s my job. This guest who was a doctor felt the need to write me a letter about how I don’t support or don’t promote a healthy lifestyle. He just tore me apart. I was so upset that someone felt the need — and the right, after I had a long day — to write me a letter, not hand it to me but give it to the front desk and have them place it on my bed. I can’t imagine that doctor would’ve liked to have come home with a message from the medical board saying we want to talk to you about your work. There’s a patient who complained.

Let’s talk about the Southwest FunnyFest. You’re attracting some of
the best female comics (Erin Foley, Jessica Kirson, Fortune Feimster) to
Albuquerque. What got you interested in producing your own show?

I went to audition for this show that I had seen come through Albuquerque called Funny Lesbians For a Change, which raised higher education scholarships for women. When I was younger, Suzanne Westenhoefer headlined the show and I remember sitting there thinking, “I would love to do this.” She was so funny. The show later went defunct and I
wanted to start another show. I thought, what if I could bring four female
comics who don’t get the stage time together normally because women don’t get nationally booked on a bill together?
My colleagues have all come down to perform, at a fraction of what they
normally make, to help me raise money for the AIDS Foundation in New Mexico. Over the last five years, we’ve raised over $15,000 for the organization. Olivia Cruises came on as a sponsor and we raffle off free trips. This year, it’ll be Alaska. I’ve been very fortunate that it’s had a lot of success.

You do a lot of shows to benefit HRC and AIDS awareness.
Do you do it for the food?

The food is amazing. It’s better than Jewish food. I decided to come out at the beginning of my career so the community has always supported me. Why would I not want to give back to the community that supported my dream? When I got involved with HRC, it was kind of an accident. I had been asked to do an L Word premiere in Austin by a friend who was involved in HRC. I did a comedy set in front of a packed house
before the last episode of the last season. There was someone there from San Francisco and they asked me to do a black-tie event. They needed a live auctioneer. Any comic will tell you that a live auction is one of the worst
possible things you can do. No one is listening. You don’t get a chance to show your craft. But I did it pro bono. So I fly to San Francisco and I’m in a dress and I’m the Belle of the Ball and I walked on the stage and started channeling a live auctioneer. I ripped through five items in a matter of minutes telling jokes. I was in some crazy zone. There was a cruise from Olivia being given away and I was like, “Lesbians, if you’re on a first date, now’s a perfect time to plan a vacation together!” I get offstage and people are high-fiving me in the audience. At the end of the dinner, [HRC president] Joe Solmonese came up to me and said I want you in Washington, D.C. for the National Dinner.

The Obama, Lady Gaga National Dinner?

Yes! Obama spoke and of course you are
blown away. And then yeah, I get called up and step onstage afterwards and was
like umm…

The president is a tough act to follow.

My mother was like, “so Obama opened for you.” Um, I wouldn’t go that far. But ifyou want to say that I opened for Lady Gaga, that’s fine.

It’s been a huge month for marriage equality in several
states. What would you say to Chris Christie to change his mind about vetoing marriage equality in New Jersey?

I think it’s so strange that someone is taking so much time out of their lives
to intentionally keep two people who love each other from getting married. The energy being put into hate shocks me. These are people who want to fight for less government but who want the government to be in our bedrooms. On an economic note, all of these states that are broke, for them as a capitalistic society to not realize how powerful the gay dollar is and what it can actually do for the community blows my mind. It’s all about people’s fear driving their political decisions. It kills me too that, God rest her soul, but they are lowering flags at half-mast for Whitney Houston while fighting against civil rights for another group. It’s hypocritical and makes no sense. This is all happening the same week. In a state that is going to lower a flag for a citizen of that state and then tell another citizen that they can’t have equal rights, trips me out. - The Advocate