When it comes to the comedy offerings of Brieana Woodward, chances are you either love what she’s doing, or you hate it. She’s not here to help you decide, but you will have another chance to pick a side when she takes the stage at one of the most prestigious spots in comedy lore to kick off the weekend.
With one show at Nick’s Comedy Stop tonight (August 25), Woodward is excited and dialed in with her no-holds-barred brand of comedy, but she is quick to admit that she is feeling a bit of unfamiliar pressure. Aside from the usual nerves that come from something like having family make their way to the show (to whom she would like to apologize in advance), she also can’t fully shake the half-joking feeling that “if this sucks, it means I suck and it’s a direct reflection of me,” but she’s excited to bask in the moment and bring it for anyone who may or may not know what she’s all about.
“I just kind of go up there with my jokey jokes, and talk about what I know,” Woodward tells Vanyaland. “Recently, I’ve been getting the same compliment, and it really doesn’t make sense to me when people will tell me ‘you’re so smart,’ and I’m like ’these are the dumbest thoughts I’ve ever had.’ I feel like I am extremely stupid, but everyone says my comedy is very raw and gritty. They’re pretty much telling me that I look like I have the thoughts I have. You know how smart I have to be in order to be this fucking stupid? But I’m a genius, and I’m wasting it on jokes about balls and flaps.”
Four years into her stand-up grind, Woodward — who absolutely crushed it at the Vanyaland Comedy Festival last year at Bellforge Arts Center — is living out a dream she’s had since she was a kid. From a very young age, she knew, at the very least, she was going be an artist, and since she didn’t really fit into any of the usual cliques you find in a school setting, she knew the only way to get through was to be true to who she was.
As she got older and realized that “regular” jobs were not her jam, she knew doing something for herself like this would eventually be the game plan.
“I always wanted to do stand-up when I was younger, but I wasn’t a theater kid. Like, I’m outgoing, but I’m also not. I mean, I’m not shy, but also don’t look at me,” says Woodward. “I was always funny because I was the fat kid, so I wasn’t going to be the hot one, and I was never good enough at school to be the genius. I was smart, but I was also an asshole, so with being the asshole kid, I became the funny one.”
In addition to her stand-up endeavors, Woodward is also the founder of Not A Damn Cheese Productions, which she uses as a vessel for putting together a variety of visual art projects, including show posters for her fellow comedy comrades. The visual medium that allows for her to deliver her delightfully unhinged comedic chaos, for a comedian who holds a heavily visual element in her live delivery, only makes sense. Additionally, as she’s fine-tuned it over the years, Woodward feels a palpable connection between her stand-up and graphic design as helping to balance her creative and comedic output.
“When I’m doing bits, they turn into movies in my head. When I say the words, I can see the scenario. That really makes me tell more of a story, and I’ve had people come up to me after shows and tell me that they could see what I was saying. It’s like reading a book, where the best part of it is the hallucination.”
Until the day comes where she stops getting anything out of it, Woodward is excited to see how her double-barreled creative machine will evolve as she continues to put the work in. Luckily, thanks to the early exposure to MS Paint programs and the influence of eccentrically visual TV shows like Pappyland and Pee-Wee’s Playhouse, that doesn’t seem to be much of a worry for Woodward as she continues to work toward realizing another dream of being a movie poster designer or the creator of an Adult Swim show.
And as long as the result of poster design offers a practical purpose, it’ll be where Woodward wants to be.
“I’ve always been a very practical person, especially with arts and crafts where whatever I made had a double purpose. My mom always brings up how she feels that she could give me a roll of duct tape, and I would come up with shoes and a vest and a hat, and that’s just how I do things because it’s practical,” says Woodward. “With poster design, it has the artsy part because I get to draw whatever I want, but it’s also practical because it has a use, it’s informative. So, it itches both sides of my brain where I do it because it serves a purpose, but it’s also weird shit and it’s fun to do.”
With the energy of a cigarette comic like Doug Stanhope or Bill Hicks (although her straightedge lifestyle would probably replace the cigs and whiskey with cotton candy, tootsie rolls and fun dip), Woodward has made the best of a childhood made up of some dark and traumatic moments, both at home and in school, by taking the “jail mentality” her father instilled in her early on, while consciously breaking the cycle of actual physical violence, by channeling her wit into a verbal defense toward bullies.
Even long after her high school years, Woodward maintains that edge, but has also turned it into a more positive mindset.
“The only coping mechanism I’ve ever had about the dark shit I’ve gone through has been to just laugh and make fun of it. Like, when my dad was being a horrific person, I would just roast the shit out of him for it,” says Woodward. “On the flip side of that, the only positive memories I have with my dad are from when we were just being dicks in the car, and my mom would leave us there because she couldn’t take us into public. Not a single person could walk by without him having something to say about it. He is the master of chirping.”
While her comedy may be deeply rooted in survival, the idea of having “roots” of her own isn’t something Woodward considers too often. Make no mistake, Woodward is a New Englander through and through, and wouldn’t want to trade her access to MassHealth for anything, but her wanderlust is an ever-burning flame, and once again, comedy has proven to be an aide in keeping her globetrotting heart beating.
“I love traveling and not being in just one place, because we moved so much when I was a kid, so I’ve never been about ‘my roots’ or ‘my home,’” says Woodward. “I don’t have a sense of home. Wherever I am is home. I’m very comfortable not being in one place all the time, and comedy has helped that. It helps get the deeper things in my brain out in a funny way that doesn’t make me want to die so hard, and I get to go to different places. it certainly has a lot of perks like that.”
Along for the trip to Nick’s and beyond is Woodward’s creative collaborator and life partner, Al Christakis. Considering him “the yin to my yang,” in both a creative and personal sense, the championship tag-team mentality of the duo has been evident in their respective work on stage over the last few years. But for Woodward, the soul connection between her and Christakis is at its creatively strongest behind the scenes, and quite literally on the road.
“I feel like comedy has gotten easier because you have a partner who just understands. We can write together, and if I have a joke that he hears and goes ‘that’s fuckin’ whack,’ I trust his opinion,” says Woodward. “He’s also pushed me to work on bits that I wanted to burn, and I’ll do the same for him. We help each other in a lot of ways, and on the road, it’s great because he’s my co-pilot and I’m his. It’s definitely a great partnership, and that’s rare that you can find someone who you can work with in a professional sense, as well as in terms of a relationship. I honestly don’t know what I would do without him.”
While not wanting to become a “clubs only” type of comic, as she loves the vibes of doing comedy anywhere from open fields to weird little coffee shops, Woodward is grateful for the chance to throw down on the stage at Nick’s after all the hours she’s put in to deliver her art at the high-octane level we’ve come to know from her. And she doesn’t feel the need to be cocky about it, unless of course, anyone around her needs a reality check.
“I’m not going to let it go to my head, like, going around telling people to suck my dick,” says Woodward. “Unless you’re actually a dick to me, in which case, you can definitely suck my dick.”
BRIEANA WOODWARD :: Friday, August 25 at Nick’s Comedy Stop, 100 Warrenton St. in Boston, MA :: 8 p.m., $22 :: Advance Tickets