“I learned growing up that you need a lot of humor and the ability to laugh things off or you’ll just die,” says Saymoukda Duangphouxay Vongsay, one of the co-founders of FAWK. “I learned at a young age how to laugh when things become uncomfortable, and how to laugh to dispel the funkiness in the air.”
Vongsay, along with co-founders May Lee-Yang and Naomi Ko, started FAWK (Funny Asian Women Kollective) in 2014 to give Asian women a place they could express themselves and make stuff they thought was funny.
“As Asian women in the bodies we’re in, we’re expected to act or say or think a certain way, and that can be very frustrating and disempowering,” Vongsay continues. “So when we’re able to take up space with our bodies and our stories and our long-ass Asian names, it’s just so good.”
This Friday night, they’ll bring laughs and long-ass names to St. Paul's Fitzgerald Theater for "The Extra Quality Super Show," a night of standup comedy, sketches, music, and video featuring the nine members of the collective. While they’ll likely have “a big ass-room packed full of Asians,” Vongsay’s reports, performing live wasn’t even on FAWK’s radar when they first launched.
“The first three years we facilitated workshops on how to do comedic storytelling,” she says. “If we did perform, it would be small events like fundraisers and stuff like that. Then eventually people started asking us if we’d consider doing a longer, bigger program.”
That seed would blossom into a project that included cabaret shows, comedy workshops with national headliners from across the country, and large-scale events like the supershow this weekend.
Tiffany Bui attended the group’s last supershow in 2022.
“I had never been in a space where Asian women were considered funny and got to be the stars of the show,” she says. “Watching those women onstage being as nuanced and raunchy and irreverent as they wanted to be was really life changing for me. I heard a lot of people tossing around the word ‘empowering,’ but I think it was just really fucking cool.”
Bui decided she wanted to go beyond being a FAWK audience member, and joined the collective this past spring.
“FAWK launched a comedy fellowship lab for aspiring Asian American and non-binary folks in comedy,” she continues. “It was a two- to three-month crash course in standup comedy. Before that, I had never considered comedy as something I could do, but finding out that I could be lighthearted and funny was really cool.”
While some members of FAWK prefer to focus their energy on standup, the group encompasses all types of comedy.
“We know that funny is subjective and it’s not one size fits all,” Vongsay says. “Some of our members aren’t comfortable with standup, so they want to do sketches. Other people just want to be on film or on the podcast instead. We give our members so many access points because we know our stories have so many ways to live and breathe.”
Stories include inter-community beefs and the problematic themes of Miss Saigon.
“We’re trying to create something that is unique to us,” Bui says. “We want it to be funny and not just retread a bunch of old tropes about Asians. It’s uniquely for us.”
“None of us are trying to get a Netflix special,” Vongsay says. “We’re going to do what makes us and our community feel good. So we don’t really care what anyone else thinks. We get to operate how we want out of the construct. We don’t have a blueprint. We’re just having fun together.”
While they’re mainly focusing on tonight’s stacked supershow, which will also feature headliner Dulce Sloan of The Daily Show, Vongsay says they’re excited to see what the next decade holds for FAWK.
“We’re a bit surprised we made it this long,” she says with no irony. “Lasting 10 years speaks to the need for the community, and the importance of us creating spaces and programs and opportunities. Whether it’s the comedy lab, scholarships, mini grants for artistic development, we try very hard to meet the needs of our artists. We hope the supershow encourages people to join the collective and help us keep growing. It’s really a recruitment effort.”
FAWK Extra Quality Super Show
Where: The Fitzgerald Theater
When: 6:30 p.m. Friday, November 8
Tickets: $22.50-$47.50; find more info here
