by Desmond Slowe
It’s a bird…it’s a plane…it’s the super hero to the gays – Shawn Pelofsky!
The amazingly funny and talented Shawn Pelofsky graced Boise Pride with four performances at Liquid Laughs.
Shawn’s first trip to Boise to perform comedy was in 2010. She was invited by Boise’s own premier, gay comedian, Matt Bragg. The two have been friends for close to a decade and Bragg told Shawn she would love it out here.
And what was Shawn’s response?
“Boise sounds like its Oklahoma City, I didn’t think I’ll like it but I loved Boise immediately. I love the food. I love the people I love the culture. Everyone is the nightlife. People are great here. They really love life here. I feel that people are very nice here. Plus you have Pie Hole! My ass doesn’t like it, but I do!”
That first trip is when I met Shawn. A group of us met for breakfast at the old Owyhee Hotel restaurant and I offered to show Shawn and her friend, Chris, around town afterwards. We hit it off immediately and have been good friends ever since. For the last five years, Shawn has scheduled performances during Boise Pride Week.
She flew in Thursday, June 18th and was one of the judges at that night’s Voice Xtravaganza. She had two shows on both Friday and Saturday night. I am a huge fan so I went to both shows on Friday and after the second show we sat on the patio of Liquid Laughs for a little interview. (I want to thank her again for granting me an interview and being interviewed at 1am – she had to be exhausted.)
How did you decide to go into comedy?
“First of all I grew up Jewish in Oklahoma so I had no choice but to be funny. My family, you, my parents are New Yorkers. My whole family, everybody in my family, brothers and sisters, aunts and uncles, extended family, everybody in my family has a really good sense of humor so I kind of picked up on that but I think when I really decided to focus on comedy I was in second grade and I was playing the wicked witch of the west on The Wizard of Oz – how gay is that? – and then I melted before Dorothy threw the water on me and the audience laughed and that’s how I knew I liked the sound of it. That’s when I knew I wanted to be strictly comedy.”
“As a kid, I was always in the school plays playing the comedic character. I always envisioned I wanted to be in the cast of Saturday Night Live so I did a lot of impressions and a lot of characters. I geared myself and went to the USC School of Theater (Go Trojans!) and while I was studying at USC I did an intern at a production company and someone told me about The Groundlings where a lot of SNL cast members come from. So I started training in sketch and improv with The Groundlings and I changed gears after I graduated college. I took a stand-up class and didn’t do anything with it and then joined Acme Comedy Theater, which is The Groundlings rival in Los Angeles. “
“I was a member of their company for a couple of years and then I realized I wasn’t making any headway being in a group with people that were all really talented. Many went on to be major successes so I decided I needed a better showcase for myself. I started stand-up again and then immediately someone recommended me to The Comedy Store, Mitzi Shore who owns The Comedy Store, Paulie Shore’s mom, was looking for female comics and I got a chance to showcase for her and the rest is history. It was just kind of a domino effect – the more I got up, the more people saw me, then I got representation. I decided I wanted to do comedy professionally about seven years ago and I wanted to quit my desk job and travel.”
“I seemed to have a lot of gay friends around me, the equation seems to be that if you want to really be a star, it starts with the gay community. So I immersed myself in performing for gay men and that is when Atlantis cruises picked me up. It’s been really great. Today, with the LGBT following, who are super loyal, it has helped me get to the place of mediocrity that I am (snickers).”
Have you always been gay-friendly?
“Yeah. In sixth-grade, I dated Heath Riddles the only gay guy to ever come out of Oklahoma. Every Sunday my family would load up our station wagon and go have Chinese food, because that’s what Jews do. We’d go eat pork ribs at Hunan’s every Sunday night and there was a ‘gaysian’ named Shawn, who was the manager. He would just come out floating and when he would see my dad he would just light up. He was all, ‘oh, doctor Pelofsky…’ He amused me and fascinated me. I am still fascinated by the gay community. In a good way. “
Why do you think your comedy works?
“The longer I have done comedy the more I like to improvise, talk to people, work off my feet, see what information I can get out of them and stretch my brain. There aren’t a lot of women comics who do this. I am hoping to entertain people. I want to be edgy but entertaining. That’s what’s important. “
Currently, Shawn has pulled back her stand-up dates, which used to consume about 200+ days to focus on creating projects for tv and film. She is working on a book as well. She is ready to move to the next level. She stated, “Sometimes you can’t wait around for the opportunities to come to you, you have to create them.”
Can you talk about the book?
“Yeah.”
What does that look like?
“Well, the book is called The Death of Dating. It is a tell-all, non-fiction memoir about all the men I dated and my search for “the one” and how technology has changed the face of dating. It is kind of the experience of all the ways I tried to meet the right person. I actually finished the book two years ago and two months later I met my husband. So we had to go in and rework some things to give it an even happier ending. It is very raw. It’s a little Chelsea-Handler-tales-of-my-whoring-life meets Sex and the City meets Bridget Jones’ Diary.”
When do you anticipate that being out?
“Well I am hoping next year. We have been shopping it around. I have a book agent and just trying to find the right publisher. Hopefully, someone will bite. It is a lot of work. I thought it would be easy to write a book. ‘I’ll just write a book and become a best-seller.’ It is like stand-up comedy, it’s just as hard.”
Can you talk about the other projects?
I am trying to push a screen play that I’ve written with another comedian. I also have a webisode called Stop It! with Jill-Michele Meleán, from MadTV. Once a week we put out rants about topics that people are talking about, dislike, just to be funny, or relevant.
Any parting words for the gay audience of Boise?
Yeah. Wear a condom! Why can’t you be versatile? I am a bottom and a top! Oh, no, you mean something inspirational? Boise has one of the best LGBT communities I’ve ever encountered and it’s an honor to perform in front of them and be their friend. The loyalty here is bar none and I’ll keep coming back year after year.
If you missed Shawn while she was in town, please go to her website http://www.hahachick.com. You will find videos, photos and a calendar of upcoming events (in case you are travelling where she is performing). You will also find a link to her Lady HaHa comedy album in iTunes and her web series at www.Stopitshow.com.
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