(Photo by John Cafaro)
Jessica Kirson celebrated 25 years of doing stand-up comedy in 2024. The out veteran comic has been filling seats for years thanks to her eclectic, high-energy brand of comedy, which she continues into 2025 with several stops this January in Florida.
“That’s what people love about my live stand-up, I put out a lot of energy, you’re never bored,” Kirson says. “There’s always surprises, every show is so different. It’s the kind of comedy that men relate to, women relate to, people of all ages, gay, straight. I’m different than most comics in that way and I’ve always focused on that, just being different and unique.”
Comedy as a career wasn’t on Kirson’s radar when she was younger. Growing up she thought she would follow in her mother’s footsteps and become a therapist, which is the plan that she initially started on.
“I was going to school for a master’s in social work and then my grandmother one day told me, she said ‘you should be a comedian,’” Kirson recalls. “‘You know every time you’re around people they’re laughing and you make people so happy’ and I said to her, ‘I could never do that.’”
Kirson, who says she was not a fan of stand-up comedy at the time although she enjoyed watching comical shows such as “Saturday Night Live,” decided to give it a shot.
“I wasn’t really happy studying social work and I just didn’t see myself being a therapist,” she says. “I didn’t think I’d be happy, so I took a [stand-up comedy] class and then I just started doing it.”
Her first time getting on stage she recalls being scary and nerve-wracking, but she quickly became quite comfortable. Not only at being on stage but also working the crowd and interacting with the audience.
“I’m very, very, very comfortable with crowd work because I’ve been doing it my whole career,” she says. “I used to host shows in the beginning every single night and you learn to talk to the crowd and it’s just something that I got really, really good at.”
That skill of working the crowd has earned Kirson quite a social media following, amassing 1.4 million followers on TikTok, more than a million combined on Instagram and Facebook, and 1.15 million on YouTube. While some of her act can be found on her socials, Kirson focuses mostly on posting up her crowd work.
“You don’t post your act online because you don’t get paid for it online. I learned that I could use the crowd work to get followers, get people to know who I am,” she says. “I only post my material after it’s been on television, so segments of my specials are on my YouTube and stuff. When people come to see me, they think it’s only going to be all crowd work, and then they see I have a whole act.”
Floridians will have a chance to see Kirson’s whole act at one of her stops later this month. After a show on Jan. 23 at The Parker in Fort Lauderdale, Kirson performs at the Tampa Theatre in Tampa Jan. 24 and at the Hard Rock Live in Orlando Jan. 25.
“I always do crowd work, I do it for like 20 minutes, usually in the beginning,” she says. “As for the rest of my show, when people say, ‘what kind of comic are you?’ I do all different kinds of stuff. I do a lot of characters; I talk a lot about my personal life — my mother, my grandmother, my father, my kids, my relationships. Observations of people in the world but it’s very high energy.”
The world of stand-up comedy has changed a lot in the 25 years since Kirson first took the stage, as have her reasons for doing it.
“At first it was just the art of it. It was something fun to do with my friends in New York and being out every night and just trying something that was challenging, and always making people laugh and trying to make people happy,” she says. “But it’s such a different career now. I am so connected to my fans and I feel like I’m really helping people. I get messages all day and night from all over the world, people just saying how much it’s helping them to laugh. I say now it’s like being a therapist except I don’t have to listen, I talk.”
Kirson explored the changing landscape of stand-up comedy from the perspective of female comics as an executive producer on the 2021 FX documentary “Hysterical,” which is currently available to stream on Hulu. Directed by Andrea Nevins, the film “is a backstage pass into a rarely seen world and an examination of ground-breaking female artists commanding the stage in a post-#MeToo era.”
It follows both queer and ally comics such as Kirson, Margaret Cho, Fortune Feimster, Judy Gold, Marina Franklin, Nikki Glaser, Kathy Griffin, Lisa Lampanelli and more — on and off stage — as they discuss how far sexism and homophobia have come in the world of stand-up comedy. While the state of comedy is far from perfect, Kirson says it has come a long way in the two and half decades that she has been doing it.
“I think that a lot of people want to act out and would act out if they could, but I think it’s definitely better than it was when I was starting out,” she says. “There were no limits, you could just say and do whatever you wanted. I mean there’s women who are inappropriate and crazy, there’s gay men, there’s gay women, but let’s be honest it’s mostly straight men. But there are no laws protecting comics. There’s no union, there’s no HR department, there’s nothing. So we’re all just kind of on our own but it’s definitely gotten better.”
While it has gotten better, the assumption that “women aren’t funny” still gets thrown around, particularly behind the anonymity of a keyboard. Social media is filled with profanity-laced rants about women’s ability to make people laugh and how they are not as good as male comics. But where does this idea come from?
“Men,” Kirson says. “I mean not gay men; gay men love female comics, thank god, but a funny woman is a powerful woman, she’s intimidating. I don’t think some men can handle it because they have issues with themselves. They’re insecure.”
Kirson says that the idea that women aren’t funny is something that she, and all female comedians, come up against when they first start off in the business.
“I experienced that for many, many years, when I wasn’t a name, and I would just come on stage and immediately I had to fight 10 times harder,” she says. “Because that’s what they’re thinking and now a lot of the comics say to me, ‘I don’t see you as a female comic, I just see you as a comic,’ and I’ve purposely done that. It’s very important as a female comic to not just talk about stuff relating to women. I focused on that my whole career. … It’s interesting because most straight men love my act. There are groups of straight men that come to my shows, that’s very rare for a female comic to be honest with you, and I’m really happy about that, I’m proud of that.”
The #MeToo movement forced a lot of industries to look at how the roles of men and women were being viewed, and the world of stand-up comedy — where just about 10% of the workforce are female — was no different. As changes started to take effect, some — usually the same keyboard ranters who say women aren’t funny — have complained that it has led to comics being done in by cancel culture, something Kirson pushes back on.
“Not a lot of comics have been canceled, that’s a myth,” she says. “I mean Matt Rife said stuff in a special in his first joke, people freaked out, and he’s sold out all over the world. I mean, [Dave] Chappelle is a perfect example. He got in trouble with the trans stuff, and he got like a six-special deal with Netflix after that whole thing happened.”
Kirson says in reality, it’s very hard to cancel comics, in fact many times when people try to cancel them they just end up getting more popular.
“Most people believe in free speech, whether they want to hear what someone says or not,” she says. “Some comic’s acts make me sick and I can’t even listen to them but it’s America. Do I think it’s okay? No, but it’s a hard situation because where do you draw the line?”
She continues, “I say things about myself, making fun of myself and people get offended. I’m like it’s me, it’s my life. It’s nothing to do with you. So there’s a fine line there. I do think that some people are definitely too sensitive now, and then I feel like there’s a lot of people who aren’t sensitive enough. It’s a tough situation because I’m disgusted by what some people talk about, but I don’t want people telling me what I can and can’t talk about.”
In September, Hulu announced that the streaming service would be partnering with Kirson to release her brand-new comedy special. Few details have been released other than it will be out sometime in 2025. Meanwhile, Kirson continues to tour North America with many dates booked throughout the first half of the year.
After so many years on so many stages, Kirson says that the crowds are what get her back up there night after night.
“I say this on stage after every show, this is not about me,” she says. “I don’t leave going I’m amazing. When people laughed a lot during the show, it just warms my heart and it’s why I’m doing it. I mean, it’s also therapeutic for me. Even if I don’t want to go on stage, I end up feeling better when I do. I struggle from depression and anxiety like most people now, so it’s really to help people, to make a difference in the world.”
Jessica Kirson will be at the Tampa Theatre in Tampa Jan. 24, starting at 8 p.m. Tickets start at $38.50 and are available at TampaTheatre.org. She will be at the Hard Rock Live at Universal’s CityWalk in Orlando Jan. 25, starting at 8 p.m. Tickets start at $26 and are available through Ticketmaster.com.
“Hysterical” is available to stream now on Hulu.
