Hamilton students are constantly busy with work and other activities, but last week, they got to take time off studying by spending an hour of comedy with Zainab Johnson. The Campus Activity Board invited the comedian and actress to perform stand-up comedy on Wednesday, Feb. 15. You may recognize her from Amazon Prime’s

Upload

or from Netflix’s

100 Humans

, both of which she regularly appears on. In addition to her TV performances, she works as a stand-up comedian. She has been featured on NBC’s

Late Night with Seth Myers

and does live shows. Much of Johnson’s material came from her experience as one of 13 siblings growing up in New York City as part of a Black Muslim family. The audience particularly enjoyed Johnson’s jokes about her eclectic mix of siblings. One sibling is an engineer and another works as a criminal, but she supports each of them equally, she later told the crowd.

Johnson was highly engaged with the audience, which kept the show lively throughout. In traditional stand-up comedy shows with multiple acts, the host will do “crowd work” to warm up the audience. Since Johnson was the only comedian performing, she did the work of both the host and the comic, poking fun at members of the audience sitting in the front row. This seating area of a comedy show is notoriously a dangerous place to sit. If the performer wants to improvise, they may use these front-row seaters as their material. Usually, the jokes are unflattering, which was the case during Johnson’s show. She pointed out the visible hickies on one audience member’s neck. This person and their date maintained their cheerful attitudes even as they were being targeted. They laughed with Johnson and bantered with her to keep the joke going. Johnson clearly appreciated the couple’s reactions as she continued to revisit them throughout the show. Those not lucky enough to snag a front-row seat had to settle for an observatory experience.

Members of the audience who hail from the greater New York City area could relate to Johnson’s material on growing up in the city. Students from the area laughed knowingly when she spoke about her annoyance towards those who claim to be from NYC when they are instead from nearby suburbs. Johnson admitted to the audience that she is ashamed of the times she called people out for this, which may have been a learning moment for some NYC natives still bothered by those who stretch the truth about where they grew up.

Johnson also told stories about her joke-writing process and even her joke-receiving process. In one particularly entertaining anecdote, Johnson detailed the time she performed a set at her first taped late night show, where she had planned to tell a crude joke about her brother. She and her brother were in the elevator to the stage when she realized she had not told him about the joke’s content or that she was going to perform it. Luckily, he was not upset. He even guessed that she would speak about their childhood story in which Johnson stole her brother’s journal so that she could find out his sexuality.

Just as Johnson’s brother did not mind being the subject of a joke while he sat in the audience, Hamilton students alike laughed when the comic poked fun at the audience’s reactions. She joked about how the crowd chose which risqué jokes to laugh at and which they did not. Attendees did not have a problem when Johnson made light of abortion, gentrification or religion. Still, when she joked about lying under oath, an awkward silence fell over the crowd. Johnson commented on the inconsistency in people’s reactions to her controversial jokes asking, “that’s where you guys draw the line?” at one point. Her interactions with the crowd made the event feel intimate. She asked the audience questions about the dating scene on campus and was not satisfied until she got specific answers. While her questions occasionally brought on indistinct murmurs from the crowd, her upbeat attitude and ability to joke about the awkwardness made the audience feel more at ease.

Hamilton students who attended the event were delighted by Johnson’s set and connection with the crowd. Her show came at a perfect time: right as the semester intensifies and midterms approach. This de-stressor was clearly appreciated by the group, who laughed at (almost) every joke.