The multi-hyphenate Brooke Cartus grew up in Buffalo, New York, became a professional opera singer and started doing stand-up comedy while living all over the state, including in New York City. She moved to Columbus in 2011 to attend law school at Ohio State University and has lived there ever since. Soon after she moved to Ohio, she officially came out as gay.
“I came out three times and each time a different family member or friend pushed me back in,” Cartus says. “It’s fine. It makes for good jokes.”
Cincinnatians will have a chance to hear those jokes when she performs at Taft’s Brewpourium’s Laughs at Taft’s on July 13, hosted by local Bombs Away! Comedy showcase. A big part of her shtick is coming to terms with her queerness.
“Grappling with that is a huge challenge to talk about with your friends let alone into a microphone with strangers,” she says. “Finding my own voice in comedy has also helped with my own identity outside of comedy.”
Though the jokes came first, she got her law degree so she could help LGBTQ people fight the system that’s sometimes rigged against them, she says. “It made me want to have the tools to be able to do something about it and people listen to you more when you’re a lawyer. Though I don’t always come out onstage as a lawyer now. Oftentimes I’ll come out as queer way sooner than I’ll come out as a lawyer, because everyone hates lawyers.”
Currently, she doesn’t practice law but instead volunteers at The Legal Aid Society of Ohio. In June, as part of her activism, she hosted a fund-raiser in Columbus and raised almost $1,000 to help provide hormones to transgender migrants in Mexico.
As a queer performer in a conservative state, Cartus says her liberal brand of Midwestern queer comedy forces her to work harder to entertain audience members, like a 70-year-old woman wearing a MAGA hat and knitting (the woman thought Cartus was funny), or an angry man who wouldn’t uncross his arms for the entire show.
“You still have to connect with folks,” she says. “You still have to make them laugh, or at the very least make them listen. I can’t leave my politics off stage. I’m not going to change my jokes for people. I have to make sure my queer identity and what I like to do as a lawyer is something that they can still laugh at it.”
During her set — and also on her comedy album I Have Straight Friends & Other Confessions — she talks about how a homophobic woman hides her hate in her bangs and how Catholic school turned Cartus gay. “For me, my lens of the world is inherently radical to some folks,” she says. “But I can’t not talk about that, because it’s my experience. The straight cis white dude is going to tell his experience, so why wouldn’t I talk about representing incarcerated individuals who are suing the state of Ohio?”
Speaking of white dudes, the conversation turns to “the most famous rapist in comedy right now,” comedian Louis C.K., who recently performed six sold-out shows at Columbus’ Funny Bone.
“It’s harder for people who aren’t famous comedians to call out the misogyny and the rape culture we see all the time,” Cartus says. “And it’s not just comedy. It’s in our culture. I’m not blaming comics. I’m not blaming stand-up. It’s just as infuriating as seeing some local guy who’s really put down some women. What Louis C.K. is doing is signaling to those people that what they do is OK, and audiences’ reactions to him are cueing to comedians around the country that your treatment of women doesn’t matter.”
But it does matter. Cartus feels OK about getting grouped into queer comedy slots or all-women shows but she also likes getting booked for straight shows and doesn’t want to be pigeonholed as just a queer comedian.
“For me, looking up and seeing diverse voices at a national level is so important,” Cartus says. “But when I look in local shows — that’s where I look because to me that’s what matters — frankly sometimes it’s great and sometimes it’s not. I think we need to make space for diverse voices in all sorts of venues.”
Brooke Cartus will perform at Taft’s Brewpourium (4831 Spring Grove Ave., Spring Grove Village) as part of Laughs at Taft’s July 13. Tickets are $10. The show also features David Broermann, Josh Faust and Erica Russell. More info: facebook.com/bombsawaycomedy.
This article appears in Jul 3-10, 2019.
