We recently connected with Lisa Lane and have shared our conversation below.

Alright, Lisa thanks for taking the time to share your stories and insights with us today. Can you talk to us about a project that’s meant a lot to you?

Who knew? Not me! Turns out, joke-telling and being a professional clown/big mouth is indeed a meaningful project. My life’s work, in fact . . .

As always, we appreciate you sharing your insights and we’ve got a few more questions for you, but before we get to all of that can you take a minute to introduce yourself and give our readers some of your back background and context?

I am a stand-up comedian, which is a job title so far afield from anything I ever imagined for myself it makes me dizzy. Titles I have felt more comfortable with include: teacher, writer, scholar, speaker, community organizer, project manager, communications consultant, voiceover actor, wife, mother. All quite serious pursuits, which I took quite seriously.

This is my job now. I try to find the funny–and help others do the same–in the balancing act of raising a family, middle-aged relationships, and navigating the chin hairs and wrinkles on my very own face. It’s been a long and winding road, which began (as it so often does for professional jesters) from a distinctly un-funny place. Necessity breeds invention; I needed to laugh when I wanted to cry, so I invented new ways to look at things.

My comedy is inspired by my book BEYOND MAMA BEAR: HOW TO SURVIVE THE BALANCING ACT OF PARENTING TEENAGERS, which was inspired by my actual experience of watching my beloved children turn into awful adolescents.
When the hormones hit, family life turned into a three-ring circus. Everything I thought I knew about parenting went right out the window. Meanwhile, my parents (and all of us) were aging and the world felt like a garbage fire and I was just so exhausted! But I was also teaching high school, spending my days with teenagers, and I saw some championing parenting. I noticed that some families seem to survive the storms of adolescence intact; their actions and reactions help struggling kids survive and thrive. I wanted to know more. I wanted to learn from them.

My research began as informal observation and curiosity, but after hundreds of interviews with parents, teenagers and young adults, as well as study of the adolescent brain and family systems, I concluded that parents need new role models as we help our progeny navigate the rocky journey toward adulthood. I think if we KNOW, PROTECT, and HONOR our teenagers, we can help them accomplish the tasks of adolescence and grow into the people we always hoped they’d be. So I wrote a book about it.

Meanwhile, I developed a keynote and workshops for parenting groups, educator conferences, book clubs, and coaches. I got great feedback, both on the content and the performance. People told me I gave them hope and changed their lives. My message was frank but also funny, offering wisdom but also wit. I started to realize that the shared laughter was maybe more important than any serious advice I had to give. If we don’t laugh, we’ll cry.

As a former theatre kid, chronic overachiever, and professionally trained actor (that’s a whole other story), I wanted to put on the best show possible, which always means rehearsal. The magic comes from repetition, revision, re-writing, trial and error. When I learned that Denver hosts several comedy open mics every night, at various dive bars and coffee shops and restaurants (but mostly dive bars), I started going out and rehearsing my Beyond Mama Bear material, three to five minutes at a time, honing my writing and hoping to develop a few laughs for my “real” audiences.

Eventually, I sent my kids off to college, got a divorce, and threw myself into stand-up comedy. Night after night I experienced the sickening anxiety of it all, the agony of “bombing” and being a woman comic, the sticky bar floors and scary walks to my car. I listened to my set on the way from one mic to the next, revised it, and tried it again. And again and again and again. As I got better, thanks to many mentors and the crazy grind, I started to feel heard. And seen. I’m not the first person to know the intoxication, the power, the ecstasy of making people laugh. As we all contemplated our values and discerned our purpose during the painful isolation of 2020, I realized the real, healing, communal power of laughing together about our shared experiences.

Now it’s 2024 and I am proud to be part of MOMS UNHINGED, a stand-up show produced by Andrea Vahl and selling out venues across Colorado. We’re taking it to several new cities this year, including Seattle, Pittsburgh, New York, Fort Lauderdale, and Dallas. The show is practically groundbreaking in the male-dominated world of comedy; featuring an all-female repertory of comedians who happen to be mothers (plus the occasional token dad), it sells well and pays well. We are bringing laughter and joy and camaraderie to other parents, and somehow it makes them feel heard and seen. I get to deliver the message of BEYOND MAMA BEAR* from a less serious point of view, and somehow the impact is profound.

It’s nothing I imagined but it is rewarding, challenging, and life-affirming. I get to laugh every single day. I am a stand-up comedian and I love my job.

*I still hope people read my book because it really can be helpful, and it’s a pretty fun read.

We often hear about learning lessons – but just as important is unlearning lessons. Have you ever had to unlearn a lesson?

I’ve been alive for more than half a century and I’m still surprised by how useful it often is to unlearn.

Unlearning patterns of behavior and response has improved my personal and professional relationships. Unlearning what I thought I knew about teaching and parenting made me a better teacher and parent.

But when I started stand-up comedy, I felt certain my *learning* was going to be an asset. Whereas other newbies might struggle with stage fright or awkwardness, I could rely on my professional theatre training, my experience treading the boards in my 20s, my education in vocal projection, movement, and the *je ne sais pas* of stage presence.

Yeah . . . not so much. I did appear confident onstage, and some of my experience helped me manage the out-of-body experience of trying to remember jokes and make strangers laugh. But I wasn’t connecting with audiences. I was talking AT them, not TO them. Bright, even blinding stage lights made me more comfortable than really seeing–and communicating with–the actual people in the audience. The fourth wall had to come down.

As I was unlearning my formal training, the pandemic gave me an ironic gift. Several of my comedy buddies and I, desperate to laugh and make others laugh, started telling jokes from the mandated social distance. We set up microphones and speakers outside dispensaries, restaurants doing only take-out business, at drive-in theatres and open fields and public parks. My focus as a comedian turned away from myself (and everything I had learned). I was intent, in a visceral way, on grabbing the attention of unwitting–sometimes even unwilling–“audience” members. I really, really wanted to make them laugh. We used to think we needed dark rooms with low ceilings and full bars to do comedy. Out there in the open, where if a punchline doesn’t land you hear actual crickets, I got better.

When we started gathering again in dark rooms with low ceilings and full bars, I had new skills, learned by unlearning. As I continue to hone my craft and put in my reps, I am warmer and more relatable to audiences. I crave seeing their faces and really talking to them. Don’t get me wrong; my OG theatre training still comes in handy (I really do have great stage presence!) but it’s only one tool in my toolkit.

Can you tell us about a time you’ve had to pivot?

I spent my life as a mother pivoting around the axis of our family. Stay-at-home mom; part-time jobs in communications; home voice-over studio for gig work; full-time high school English teacher; back to stay-at-home-mom when our teenagers struggled; contract work in corporate training and project management; full-time comms job at an academic research center; author, speaker, announcer.

When I turned 50, became an empty nester and got a divorce (big year!), I had to pivot, and hard. In my heartbreak and disorientation–living alone for the first time in my life!–I took conscious steps toward health, happiness, fulfillment, and purpose. Of course the road took serendipitous turns, as well, but the pivot has led me on a journey to myself.

The pivot to professional comedian was nothing I expected but now it almost seems inevitable. My experience and skills, my pain and my passions, and above all, my ability to pivot have led me here, where I get to share my message of hope and make people laugh and feel a little less alone on the big blue marble.

Contact Info:

• Website: LisaLaneComedy.com
• Instagram: LisaLaneMamaBear
• Facebook: Lisa Lane
• Youtube: Lisa Lane Comedy