We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Mackenzie Jaquish a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.

Mackenzie, looking forward to hearing all of your stories today. What was it like going from idea to execution? Can you share some of the backstory and some of the major steps or milestones?

The Sleepover show was a year in the making, and like a lot of my ideas it started with Taylor Swift. On May 5th of 2023 I was standing in the last row of a 75,000-seat stadium in Nashville at the Eras Tour. It was the start of the concert, and everyone was so excited for it to begin. I had never been to a Taylor Swift concert before, and honestly wasn’t a fan of concerts to begin with. Couldn’t I just listen to the album at home? That way I could even skip the songs I hated! However, my college friend persisted it would be a fun time and a once in a lifetime experience, so I put on the sparkly jacket and went. Halfway through The Man, a song I consider to the Pretty Funny Comedy theme song, I realized something amazing. Everyone was singing, and I mean EVERYONE. There wasn’t one person in ear shot who wasn’t singing their hearts out. They knew every word. The two girls sitting next to us grabbed our hands as if we knew each other for years. It wasn’t just a concert, it was a community, it was an experience. That night I went home and called my then boyfriend (now ex) and told him about how I wanted to create a standup comedy show that would make people feel the exact same way.

One year later, on April 28th, 2024, I was standing backstage with my team about to go on stage and present The Sleepover Show. A narrative driven variety show that took the audience and made them the focus of the show. I wanted every audience member to feel like they were part of the show, as if they were invited to their best friend’s sleepover, there were almost 200 people in the SoHo Playhouse theatre, but every audience felt like the show was created just for them.

That year of planning wasn’t easy, sets needed to be built, we had to cast a team, write a script, find sponsors, insurance and details I didn’t even know existed were suddenly my responsibility.
It was a crazy year, I was stressed for all of it, but The Sleepover Show, and the Pretty Funny Comedy Girls kept me going. It was worth every single moment of stress and sadness, for the moments of bliss and purpose it brought.

Mackenzie, love having you share your insights with us. Before we ask you more questions, maybe you can take a moment to introduce yourself to our readers who might have missed our earlier conversations?

I started in comedy when I was 20 years old, I wrote jokes for an older male comedian who was popular in the city. I had no interest in doing it myself, I just wanted to write, my goal at that time was to be a television reporter. But when he moved from the city, I decided to give it a shot myself, and I fell in love.

For me, stand up makes me feel like I’m breathing, the rest of the time I’m just holding my breath, waiting for another opportunity to tell jokes on stage. I started pursing comedy more seriously when I moved to New York at 25. A lot of people move to New York with big dreams of success and wanting to get on SNL. I just wanted to be able to breathe again. The global pandemic was ending, and lockdown was finally over, so I threw myself into comedy. I did one to two open mics every night, took improv classes, and took every audition that came my way. I ended up doing some pretty interesting shows, like climbing 16 sets of stairs to be in an online cabaret, I played The Dude in a female adaptation of The Big Lebowski and did a stand up in parking lots!

At one of my improv classes I asked the instructor how shows were produced at the theatre, and how I could get on one. He assured me that if I put in enough time and patience I would get on a show in a matter of years. Patience is not something I’m good at. A group of girlfriends and I were chatting about it after the class and I suggested that we should just produce our own, that way we could star in it, but also work with people in the community who we really respected and wanted to learn from. We also had the hope that if producers saw the show, they would book us on future shows, and I would never have to produce again.

The night of the show came, and we were at the same bar after, and I can’t describe the feeling I had. There had never been anything in my life that made me feel as in control as producing in, as creatively, mentally, or physically fulfilled as putting on that show. Three years later and I produce 13 shows across the country and have built a comedy collective that puts women at the front of every single one of our shows.

Stand up makes me feel like I’m breathing, producing gives me a reason to breathe.

Do you have any insights you can share related to maintaining high team morale?

The objective isn’t how successful you are. The objective when managing a team should be how successful we all are together. A major aspect of Pretty Funny Comedy is the community. We’re more than a comedy troupe, we’re more than performers who share the stage. We’re a team. We often say that the name on the front of the jersey is more important than the one on the back, and then we stop using sport metaphors because none of us are familiar enough with any sport to keep that up. But the sentiment remains. We’re a team, we win together, and we lose together.

The shows are important, and creating content for our audience is always on our minds. However, at the end of the day, we’re seven girls who really like to hang out together. Which is why we plan hang outs often that are just for the Pretty Funny Comedy girls but aren’t show related.

We’ve done karaoke, costume nights, and group outings that revolve around dancing and where we’ll find the next espresso martini.

When we started planning the tour it was really important to us that we spend one night in every city just being friends and hanging out. In LA, Olivia Benedict cooked us a homemade lasagna, in Nashville we’re throwing the Co-Director Caroline Pace a fake bachelorette party, and in Chicago we’ll all try deep-dish pizza. The list goes on and on.

Making sure we all spend time together, not in character, is what allows us to play such good friends on stage. It’s not acting, it’s real.

What do you think helped you build your reputation within your market?

I think it’s hard for anyone to know what their reputation is, in any market. There were times in my life where I felt like I lost my good name, only to find out I’m the only person who has the power to do that to myself. My name is created by me and supported by me. Other people’s opinions aren’t a concern for me, good or bad, it’s their opinions and I didn’t ask.

I would like to think my reputation is that of a hard worker, someone who shows up and gets the job done. I also want to leave behind me a legacy that helps build women up. If Pretty Funny Comedy represents anything it’s women helping women, which is also the reputation I hope to leave behind.

Those qualities aren’t just line items I say though, a catchy phrase to throw around, it’s a behavior I try to adopt and put to work every single day. It’s not always easy, and I often fall short and let people down, but I’m trying and sometimes that’s all anyone can do.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.mackenziejaquish.com/
• Instagram: pretty_funny_comedy

Image Credits

Emily Austen