Brooklyn Borough President Antonio Reynoso celebrated Women’s History Month with a comedy show called Laughter is Medicine at Borough Hall on March 24th.
Reynoso awarded a citation to Carine Jocelyn, the executive director of Diaspora Community Services (formerly known as the Haitian Women’s Program) after more than 25 years of work in human services. Additionally, Jocelyn established a community health center in Port Au Prince in 2007. Reynoso also awarded a citation to Lorena Kourousias, the executive director of Mixteca Organization which is led by immigrant women.
One of Reynoso’s goals for his tenure as borough president is to make Brooklyn the safest place for black women to have babies.
“Black women die at nine times the rate of their white counterparts during birthing and that is unacceptable,” Reynoso said. “I want to make Brooklyn the safest place in the world for black women to have babies.”
Reynoso went on to say, “I’m also incredibly proud to say that Brooklyn Borough Hall’s current staff is over 50 percent women. It was a pleasure celebrating my first Women’s History Month in this new role by sharing the time with the real people who make up the best place in the world – Brooklyn.”
The show featured standup comedy from three female comedians who are all members of the Brooklyn Comedy Collective: Chanel Ali (@chanelali on Instagram,) Dee Luu (@iamdeeluu on Instagram,) and Meaghan Strickland (@stricklygram on Instagram.)
“We just reopened after COVID and it’s exciting to be here at Borough Hall,” said Philip Markle, the artistic director of BCC (Brooklyn Comedy Collective.) “At BCC, we do shows and classes and it’s a place to do weird, fun art in Brooklyn.”
I also had the opportunity to speak to all of the comedians. “I’ve been in New York since 2017 and have been doing comedy since 2018,” Luu said. “I recently created a virtual set called Trans Moses about my experience as a recently out trans person but I do comedy all over and I’m really excited to be here.”
“I always knew I was a comedian when I was a little girl but it took me about 20 years to do an open mic,” Ali said. “I just kept going to open mics in Philly until I started booking independent shows, and then clubs heard of me and invited me to come in and the rest is history.”
“I started off doing improv in Chicago and then started doing standup and I’m excited to be here now,” Strickland said.
I can’t do justice to their standup here but they did a great job and the crowd loved them. I also asked for their advice for young comedians.
“The only thing that makes you good at comedy is doing comedy,” Ali said. “A lot of people think they can write something funny and say it one time and it will be perfect. The reality is you have to say it a bunch of times, and mess it up a bunch of times, and fix it and then fix it again. That’s how you get good so if you want to try comedy, you better get started.”
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