On Sunday, November 5th, Aleesa and I got to see Phoebe Robinson and Ilana Glazer perform nearly two hours of stand up comedy at the Barrymore Theatre on Atwood. Phoebe Robinson is widely known by Two Dope Queens, a podcast she has been hosting with her friend Jessica Williams since 2015. Ilana Glazer is best known for her television series Broad City which she created and stars in with Abbi Jacobson.

Aleesa and I had high expectations for the night – we are fans of Broad City and Two Dope Queens and think that both comedic duos are great examples of smart, empowered, hilarious and interesting women. While Phoebe and Ilana's stand up made us laugh and left us set up to have interesting conversations on our ride home, many aspects of the night were pretty disappointing to us. To start, Ilana and Phoebe performed two different sets of stand up for the crowd and so we only got to see the two of them on stage together for a couple of minutes at the beginning of the night. Second, Aleesa and I were eager to hear Phoebe and Ilana discuss their experience living in two different intersectionalities in America right now – Phoebe is an African-American woman and Ilana is a Jewish woman. Phoebe was fabulous – she spoke about her identity from both a comedic and serious standpoint throughout her 45 minute set. She was unique and personal. On the other hand, Ilana neglected to talk about her Jewish identity once. Instead, she clung to funny yet totally redundant and generic jokes about being a woman that are certainly important but that we both felt like we had heard before a handful of times. Aleesa and I were particularly disappointed about this, we're both Jewish women who often talk about what it's like to be living in America right now with each other. Lastly, we weren't able to take any photos during the show. We heard from afar that the ladies designated the first minute of their show to photo taking but Aleesa and I were downstairs getting popcorn with extra butter and salt. 😉

Given that we were seeing their second or third show, we're hoping that their tour progresses and that they'll start to incorporate some new themes and content!