We were lucky to catch up with Jeff Klein recently and have shared our conversation below.

Jeff, looking forward to hearing all of your stories today. What were some of the most unexpected problems you’ve faced in your career and how did you resolve those issues?

Doing stand up as an openly gay man has its challenges. Hetero comics can just get on stage, talk of their spouses/significant others, and never lose a step. I’ve found that i need to introduce into the set and get them on board first, and if it’s a majority gay audience i find i have to throw all that nuance out because they don’t need it. I also deal with people thinking it’s a “gay show” when in actuality it’s not different than the last comic, but I’m talking from my perspective. All of this while wondering, who’d i lose in the audience because i decided to speak honestly about my experiences.

Jeff, before we move on to more of these sorts of questions, can you take some time to bring our readers up to speed on you and what you do?

I started comedy 8 years ago in Provincetown, MA when friends of mine told me they got me 5 min on stage at a local show. I then spent the first half of my vacation writing my first ever 5 minutes of stand up comedy. It was in front of strangers I’d never see again, so I said why not, let’s do it. There was maybe 12 people in the audience and I made them laugh (at mostly different times) and had a blast being myself on stage. That was a stark difference to what I was doing as I futilely had been going after acting prior. The more I did comedy the more I connected with it. I met people in the comedy community that I may have never met otherwise and vice versa. One comic (Jander Gray) said he’d never known I was gay if I hadn’t told him and maybe I should talk about that on stage. This is what changed my perspective on stage and when I started talking more about myself and my community. I also quickly learned that I needed to and got to introduce the (primarily) straight audiences to the gay community and my struggles in it. As the world has evolved and more laws are put against the LGBTQIA+ community, I find it more and more important to be myself loudly on stage. Even if being me is amongst the most boring of gay archetypes there is. all representation is important. Even if the glitter is a little on the beige side.

Is there something you think non-creatives will struggle to understand about your journey as a creative? Maybe you can provide some insight – you never know who might benefit from the enlightenment.

One thing I think people assume about stand up comedy is “how do they even think of that?”. The reality is, for me, I am talking about real life experiences on stage. One, I have learned how structure the storytelling into jokes and get laughs, but also I don’t assume my experiences are unique. The moment I realized that telling my story on stage could resonate with so many more people, the easier writing became. Instead of thinking “nobody would understand this” and now thinking “I bet I’m not the only one that deals with this”; this has connected me to so many more people because ultimately we’re not alone in everything that we deal with. We just don’t talk about it as much.

We’d love to hear the story of how you built up your social media audience?

Social media is the newly necessary beast in the world of stand up. I used to be so annoyed that we have to post and create content, instead of just going out and proving that you’re funny on stage. A lot of that has changed with advice from a more seasoned comic and some of the messages I have received. A comic told me once that in order to find a following, or your audience, you have to be naive enough to think people care about what you’re saying and consistent enough in posting that they find you and do. Those 2 thoughts started my Beer with a Queer show. Weekly I try a beer, give my review, and then complain/talk about what’s on my mind. What started with a couple dozen views moved to hundreds, to the occasional thousands on some of them. Now on the grand scale of social media, that’s still a toddler crawling, but when I get messages from people seeing BWAQ or one of my clips and I read things like a guy who messaged saying he’d been depressed and down on himself because he’s gay and a little overweight. He stumbled upon some of my shows and clips and that helped him that morning laugh and get out of his depression. One person having a better day or even morning due to something I posted and said? That makes it worth the naivety that I thought anyone would care and hones in my consistency to keep it going.

Contact Info:

• Website: www.thatjeffisfunny.com
• Instagram: thatjeffisfunny
• Facebook: Jeff Klein
• Twitter: thatjeffisfunny
• Youtube: thatjeffisfunny