Amy Shanker - From Chalkboards to Punchlines

You can learn a lot of valu­able lessons while speak­ing with Amy Shanker. Which isn’t ter­ri­bly shock­ing giv­en our comic’s 13-year tenure as a teacher in inner-city Chica­go. Shanker grew up in Kansas, attend­ed the Uni­ver­si­ty of Kansas for both an under­grad­u­ate and a master’s degree in edu­ca­tion (and even­tu­al­ly a sec­ond master’s degree in school admin­is­tra­tion). The under­grad­u­ate path was some­what of a hap­haz­ard choice hoist­ed upon Shanker who, by her junior year had not yet com­mit­ted to a major. The coun­selor chose the less­er of two evils between jour­nal­ism and education. 

I spent ten years liv­ing in Chica­go and I’ve seen those inner-city schools. I’ve men­tored kids whose sole escape from a dif­fi­cult home life is the school. One can imag­ine that after a stereo­typ­i­cal exis­tence in Kansas, the cul­ture shock of mov­ing to Chica­go and teach­ing in these envi­ron­ments would be daunt­ing. Shanker was famil­iar because she had spent a lot of time work­ing for a group home for delin­quent boys who oth­er­wise would end up in juve­nile deten­tion. And Shanker was pro­tect­ed by arma­ment that not all of us are born with – being Jew­ish. Shanker shares that the love lan­guage among her fam­i­ly was rip­ping on each oth­er. While she’s not admit­ting to doing this to her Chica­go stu­dents, her pro­tec­tive shell had already been shaped by the time she stepped into those class­rooms, enabling her to sur­vive the most chal­leng­ing of situations. 

But the pro­tec­tive armor didn’t last. Wit­ness­ing a shoot­ing occur­ring out­side the school, observ­ing the cor­rup­tion and fraud by a prin­ci­pal in one of her schools, and the exhaust­ing admin­is­tra­tive ele­ments that comes with being a school­teacher led her to think about oth­er options after so many demor­al­iz­ing years.

When Shanker per­formed at her first open mic, she had three dis­tinct advan­tages: 1) grow­ing up in a Jew­ish home where com­e­dy (and famil­ial rib­bing) was her family’s love lan­guage, 2) teach­ing in an inner-city school where pre­sent­ing and learn­ing to con­trol an audi­ence was part of her dai­ly life, and 3) she start­ed com­e­dy lat­er in life when her sense of self was already well established.

When she start­ed to per­form standup com­e­dy, she real­ized that while she was new to com­e­dy, she wasn’t new to being on a stage, in front of peo­ple, con­trol­ling a crowd. After her first open mic, she let the expe­ri­ence sink in for a few months before try­ing again. But with that next try, she com­mit­ted ful­ly to being a standup com­ic. The com­bi­na­tion of a life­long sense of humor meant that with­in six to sev­en months she was passed at Chicago’s Laugh Factory. 

Chica­go is famous for its hot dogs, cor­rup­tion, and last, but not least, its improv and sketch cul­ture. When asked if she had tried out improv, Shanker, despite 13 years of shar­ing her­self as a teacher, quick­ly admit­ted ​“this is all mine, I’m not a shar­er (of the stage).” Giv­en how quick­ly and how far she’s come in her com­e­dy career, we can’t blame her. 

With her sense of self well-estab­lished, Shanker nev­er felt the need to be a char­ac­ter on stage and she’s quick to encour­age oth­ers to be their authen­tic self because for her ​“Being your most authen­tic self on stage gives you an advan­tage, because who else can do that?” Les­son num­ber one in the School of Shanker.

With a rapid tra­jec­to­ry in Chicago’s com­e­dy scene, Shanker was ready for a move after end­ing her career as a teacher. Giv­en the choice between Los Ange­les and New York City, for Shanker, the choice was easy. In New York, Shanker’s writ­ing got more pre­cise and she learned to trim the fat from her style of comedic writ­ing she had per­fect­ed in Chica­go (she was also a life­long writer hav­ing been encour­aged to read pro­fuse­ly and write book reports by her father as a child). There was abun­dance of stage time and, before she knew it, she was land­ing book­ings on shows all over the city. She even land­ed a spot on the inau­gur­al Skank­fest at Creek and Cave which at the time was in NYC. She hasn’t missed a Skank­fest since and has been wit­ness to its phe­nom­e­nal growth (in 2023, the fes­ti­val was held in Vegas with record crowds).

There’s a com­mon per­cep­tion that when you fall in with the Skank­fest crowd, you are a cer­tain ​“type” of com­ic – a no holds barred, no top­ic is sacred, I can say what­ev­er I want with no con­se­quence type. It should be said that the comics who head­line Skank­fest fes­ti­vals are comics who’ve been per­form­ing for 10, 15, 20 or more years. They’ve put in the work to fig­ure out how to be fun­ny while talk­ing about top­ics most of us cringe think­ing about. Shanker is no dif­fer­ent, she’s worked hard to fig­ure out how to talk about dif­fi­cult, uncom­fort­able top­ics in a way that is first and fore­most fun­ny, but also makes you think about the soci­ety we live in. 

While dis­cussing how she goes about the writ­ing process for jokes on sen­si­tive top­ics, Shanker shares, ​“If I knew a joke was caus­ing peo­ple pain, I would rethink the joke a lit­tle bit because I don’t go on stage to make peo­ple feel bad, I want them to laugh. I want them to be hap­py when they leave.” Which is Les­son num­ber two in the School of Shanker. Yes, you can take sen­si­tive top­ics to the stage, but you have to put in the hard work to make them fun­ny because with­out that work, you will alien­ate your audi­ences. A byprod­uct of the pan­dem­ic helped her learn that lesson.

When NYC com­plete­ly shut down and she need­ed to escape a black mold infest­ed apart­ment, she decid­ed to fol­low her friend Rebec­ca Trent who had recent­ly trans­plant­ed her Creek and Cave club to Austin, Texas. She drove to Austin and made stops per­form­ing along the way. She cred­its this expe­ri­ence of dri­ving back and forth per­form­ing in front of dif­fer­ent crowds with help­ing her fig­ure out how to make touchy top­ics fun­ny on stage. 

Spend­ing more time in Austin also led to gain­ing a new set of skills. While New York helped sharp­en her writ­ing, she observed that Austin audi­ences need­ed a lit­tle more cod­dling before she start­ed deliv­er­ing punch­lines, so she learned to incor­po­rate more crowd work into her set. 

Does Shanker have a favorite city at this point? Not real­ly, she’s hap­py to split her time between New York and Austin and to con­tin­ue learn­ing from audi­ences every­where in between. When asked to reflect on the time she spent teach­ing ver­sus becom­ing a standup com­ic, she doesn’t regret teach­ing. She grew up shy while also lov­ing atten­tion and teach­ing helped her achieve the atten­tion. She wish­es she hadn’t spent thir­teen years doing it. Because with com­e­dy, she final­ly found the thing that made her hap­py (and shame on the col­lege coun­selor for not sug­gest­ing a career in comedy!). 

Lead­ing us to Les­son num­ber three from the School of Shanker: ​“do the things that make you hap­py, cause life sucks.” 

Fol­low Amy 

• Tik­Tok — @amyshankercomedy
  
• Twit­ter — @AmyShanker
• Insta­gram — @amyshanker
• Face­book — face​book​.com/​A​s​h​a​nkers
• Youtube — youtube​.com/​A​m​y​S​h​anker
  
• Do512 — do512​.com/​a​r​t​i​s​t​s​/​a​m​y​-​s​h​anker

Amy can be seen and heard:

• Unbe­liev­able — Debut Spe­cial (released sum­mer 2023)
• The Most Expen­sive Joke Show — 1^st and 3^rd Sun­days, 6pm Creek and Cave
• Bri­an Holtz­man & Friends — Tues­day Novem­ber 21, 8pm 
• Chicago’s Laugh Fac­to­ry — Novem­ber 24 – 25
• Fort Worth — Decem­ber 7