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Comedian, Performer, Writer: Heather Gold likes to bake cookies & connect with fellow geeks
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Heather Gold (Photo by Jason Madara)
Heather Gold is a modern day Renaissance woman. She performs stand-up comedy with Margaret Cho, Judy Gold and Maria Bamford. She is a leader among geeks and is set to host her own online talk show. She co-founded Equality Camp and is working on a new Prop. 8/marriage show. And she's baked over 24,000 chocolate chip cookies with audiences in her hit show, "I Look Like an Egg, But I Identify as a Cookie."
While Heather Gold's resumé is impressive, it's her honesty and humor that make her so remarkable, along with her credo of wanting to "create a space big enough for everyone." I recently interviewed the law-degree wielding comedian and asked her about her art, her wife and her strong attraction to all that is nerdy.
How and when did you first know you wanted to be an artist/comedian?
I wrote my first play when I was 8 or 9. I loved to make my family laugh and my extended family of about 16 had dinner together every Friday night which gave me some opportunities. But I also got the middle class idea from my family that it was great to go to the theatre but not to be (in) the theatre. So I put it away for a long time. I dabbled, I hung out around artists in college, but I did what I thought I was supposed to do until I was so miserable in law school that I couldn't really take it any more.
How do you hone your craft, write your material, etc.?
A lot of my process was inspired by my friends' Internet start-ups. Create publicly then iterate. I like to write socially so I generally improv with an audience and videotape. For many of my shows, I'd have to say it's the "people formerly known as the audience" because I involve everyone in what I'm doing. "Cookie," my (upcoming) talk show and the "Law Project" all involve creating a space that draws out other peoples' stories and sets them up to be funny.
If I have an image or moment that just shows up and stays with me over (the) years, then it really compels me to make something. It sort of grounds the work. I had this image of slow dancing with someone in the audience under a disco ball to Air Supply for years before I wrote "Cookie."
How has being gay impacted your art?
Well, I'm a bad lesbian. I've not been very cliché or consistent about it. Gay men and drag queens taught me that being a girl is more fun when it's play and not work. And I've just generally learned to enjoy fabulousness from many people who enjoy big feeling and expression and kitsch and soul, gay and not.
My work is about my life and so of course there's stuff that's "gay" in there. I spend as much time laughing at the foibles of the gay community as anything else.
How has it impacted your life?
Coming out has been one of the most powerful experiences in my life. And it's about something much bigger than being honest about your desires and love. It's about being truthful and vulnerable in public, even when there's no guarantee someone else will like or accept that about you. That act of self-acceptance and holding your own space, it's the most transformative thing. Obama has done it incredibly well. I think that everyone--gay, straight or unconcerned with labels--is happier if they come out as themselves. It's the only way to be seen as you are and understood. And everyone wants that, myself included.
It got me through adolescence without getting pregnant. It's very inexpensive too.
What inspires you? Artistically, socially, personally...
Honesty. I am inspired by anyone who is free and fearless. What is fun, celebratory and powerful. Anyone or any moment that isn't looking for status or approval. People who have given themselves utter permission. Young children and older people. I love 'em; they almost always have this. The rest of us have to work at it.
Sandra Bernhard's first solo show absolutely captured my imagination and so did the kind of alternative performance/comedy I saw in LA in the early 90s at Uncabaret and at Brigid Murphy's shows in Chicago during law school. I loved the mix of truth telling, provocation and comedy. I love work with heart and nuance and that captures the layers of how our personal, social and political experiences are connected.
I've been very personally inspired by the Internet and many of the entrepreneurs. I've spent about 10 years learning how to do "live" what I saw happening online: an iterative conversation that's inclusive and has to constantly shift to be relevant.
I delight in intellect and insight and play but I think it is courage and heart that really wins the day for me. Simple kind acts between people who are strangers. That's maybe the most inspiring thing of all.
My wife inspires me all the time. She is the most humble and consistent person I've ever met. She's a very kind, loving person.
Tell me more about your "geekness."
I'm a total nerd. I always have been. I love learning and I love problem solving. I love people too. I never would have predicted becoming so connected to computers, but I worked on the web in it's earliest days and the great community of webgeeks has been my favorite 'audience' and teachers too. My solo shows developed by performing at SXSWinteractive. I did a show at Maryville College in Tennessee not long ago and some of the students asked me to have lunch with them in the cafeteria. I realized the table had theatre people, gay kids, Jews, outsiders and geeks and realized 'my audience is the nerd table.'
I had a lot of shame about being so into school and ideas as a kid (it was the essence on uncool) and it's been fun to own who I am and take it all less seriously.
(You may contact Heather Gold via her website or by Twitter: twitter.com/heathr)
For more info: Heather Gold
(Copyright © 2009 N. E. Francis. All Rights Reserved.)
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