If you go to a comedy showcase, you will see a lot of dudes. Most of the people you see onstage, in fact, will be dudes. Some people may assume that this is because dudes are, in general, funnier. These people would be wrong.
Kachel had done a similar study of five showcases in 2016, but she wanted to expand her data set. So between January and October, Kachel tabulated the acts in 19 comedy shows—including one of her own, Hoo Ha Comedy—in a spreadsheet. Many of the shows sent her their booking ledgers; for those that didn’t, she researched the performers on social media and event flyers. Then she asked her friend Austin Scheaffer, a “numbers guy,” to crunch the data and put it into graphs.
Kachel plans to continue the study in 2018. This year, she wants to look at audiences and see if a more diverse lineup will bring in a more diverse audience. She also wants to create a template so the study can be duplicated in other communities besides Chicago’s stand-up scene. She’s already gotten a lot of feedback, not only from women who are grateful someone has proved that the problem exists, but from producers and showrunners who tell her they knew they needed to do better but didn’t know how much.
