Heavy Flo

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DC improviser and essential medical worker Angela Karpieniak sits down with podcast hosts Puss and Kooch to talk about the ability to be vulnerable, having no-clothes days, and the time and place for fart jokes.

Angela Karpieniak on Heavy Flo with Puss and Kooch

Angela Karpieniak was one of the iconic members of Wonder Whale, a now-retired Washington Improv Theater Harold team. (Fun fact: Wonder Whale was the team all of your podcast hosts were part of at some point in their improv careers.) 

Angela is also a staple of the amazing indie improv team, Stovëtron. During the day, she’s an occupational therapist.

The following interview has been edited for length and clarity. To hear everything Angela has to say, listen to her podcast episode.

Having people’s backs, on and offstage

Since being quarantined, I miss improv. I miss performing. It was definitely a source of stress relief. I think there’s a vulnerability that comes with playing on a team of people you know and care about. That’s just not really happening now. It’s a part of life that is just different.

Dunno if you noticed, but improv shows—and group gatherings—like this aren’t happening right now.

I haven’t thought about improv that way. I’ve always thought about it as a creative outlet, but it’s also a vulnerability outlet that we’re kind of missing now, too.

It’s interesting because a lot of times when I tell people I do improv or when people come see improv shows, they’re like, “I don’t know how you do that. You’re onstage. You have no idea what’s about to happen. And then you just deal with it.” 

Angela had no idea what was about to happen here.

I think that’s a skill most people should have in life because, seeing what’s going on now, we don’t know how to deal with it. I think if you at least have somewhat of a, “That’s okay, I’ll just improvise how I’m going to survive right now,” attitude or coping mechanism, it makes the uncertainty a little bit better. 

I’m definitely an oversharer. I talk a lot. But it does take something, I think, to put yourself out there, trust your teammates, and know that people have your back. It’s also a comfortable skill to have in life to know that you can trust people. People have your back. People aren’t going to leave you alone. In improv, that’s just what you get, which is nice. 

Especially now, my job as an occupational therapist has become a huge team effort. If someone slips up, somebody picks up the slack. Whether they’re happy to pick up the slack or not remains to be seen. But especially now that the therapists are helping the nurses, it’s been more of a joint collaboration.

Award-winning burlesque performer GiGi Holliday sits down with podcast hosts Puss and Kooch to talk about owning your own sensuality, the importance of recognizing the DC art scene, and how much she loves Beyonce.

GiGi Holliday on Heavy Flo with Puss and Kooch

GiGi Holliday is an international burlesque performer. Really, she’s a performer in every sense of the word. She’s also a teacher of dance and fitness. In DC, she runs a party brunch known as La Boum Brunch, which is one of Bravo’s Top 5 Raging Brunches in the United States.

The following interview has been edited for length and clarity. To hear everything GiGi has to say, listen to her podcast episode.

A brief rundown on the art of burlesque

I do a very niche art form that has roots in various places. Stripping is definitely a part of it, as well as vaudeville comedy. Hence, why I’m also very funny. But I do the art of tease. It’s a form of striptease that can be very sensual, very funny, very fast-paced, whatever you want. 

This art form has been around since the 1800s. Two major names you might know are Josephine Baker and Dita Von Teese. My parents tell their friends, “She’s like a modern day Josephine Baker,” and they go, “Oh, we get it!” And if say Dita Von Teese to other friends, they say, “The woman who was married to Marilyn Manson?” She was a burlesque performer who made burlesque a household name for us. 

The difference between burlesque and the work done in a strip club

I’ve been a commercial stripper, as in I’ve worked in a strip club. I find that what I do is sex work and sex work adjacent. So I like to consider a lot of my burlesque “sex-y” work because sex work is a whole different thing. Hustling for tips in a strip bar is different from hustling for tips in a burlesque place. 

The difference between a burlesque performer and a stripper is that a stripper can pay their rent on time. That’s a joke, but it’s also for real. I’ve seen burlesque performers go broke and go into debt, myself included. 

But I’ve also been one of those strippers who were just like, “Well, I just made a bunch of bands tonight, so I’m gonna go to Red Lobster.” I’m gonna go to the fanciest place and eat and keep it moving because I can afford to do things.

I love both sides of the stone. But for burlesque performers, it’s a different hustle. We’re trying to be the sparkliest, we’re trying to win a different set of awards. We have a whole award system. Strippers also have an awards system. But burlesque performers have to hustle to headline. 

Burlesque performers definitely have more of a character, more of an act. Some people can take two weeks to work on an act. I have worked on an act that took two, three years. The costume was expensive. The music was a lot, as were the concept and the dance moves. I was in someone’s dance studio almost every day trying to figure out the music and routine.

I love that routine, love it to death. But it’s also one of those things where I say, ” You’ve gotta pay me a whole lot of money to get me to do this routine again.” I spent a lot of money and a lot of time on this routine. But yeah, that’s the difference. 

Learning to own sensuality through burlesque

The burlesque that I do is considered classic, which is what you might know from Gypsy Rose Lee.

Improviser Lauren Jordan, author name LAUX, sits down with podcast hosts Puss and Kooch to talk about her new book, To All the Places I’ve Had Sex Before, traveling book clubs, and why we should all be in therapy.

Lauren Jordan on Heavy Flo with Puss and Kooch

Lauren Jordan is a black woman. She’s a native Detroiter. She’s sex-positive. And she’s the first-time author of To All the Places I’ve Had Sex Before, on presale right now. 

Lauren took the DC improv comedy scene by storm last year. We interviewed her FIST team (now an indie group) I Don’t Know Her on one of our first FIST 2019 recap episodes. She was previously on WIT Harold team Hudson.

Her energy is so original, and it makes her one of the most exciting people in the DC improv community. We’re so thrilled to have her here today to kick off season two of Heavy Flo.

The following interview has been edited for length and clarity. To hear everything Lauren has to say, listen to her podcast episode.

The origin story of To All The Places I’ve Had Sex Before

I’m a part of a traveling book club called It’s Lit, which is made up of me and three of my really good friends. One of those friends is Precious Jenkins, who’s also on I Don’t Know Her. Two of us live in DC, and two live in New York, so we would go back and forth to see each other. One time we decided to go to Philly, and while we were in Philly, we went to a bookstore and decided to start a book club. It’s been a joy ever since. 

We’re kind of on hiatus right now because of quarantine, but we’ve been to California, Louisiana, and a few other places that are escaping me right now. It’s fun to be able to do two of the things that I really enjoy, traveling and reading, together with a really good group of friends.

At one point we’d read Roxane Gay’s Hunger, and the tagline of that book is “a memoir of my body.” So we all decided to write memoirs of our own bodies, kind of like a homework assignment. Mine ended up being about sex. 

I wrote 500 words for the assignment and then I realized I had a lot more to say about it. So I just kept on writing, and I kept on writing, and I kept on writing. Eventually, it became a really big project. And now it’s a book—somehow, some way. I’m finishing up the editing right now, and my beta readers will be reading it soon.

Turning a homework assignment into a book

What really helped me to formalize my piece was participating in a program called Creator Institute. It helps first-time writers get from a place of, “I don’t know, maybe I want to write a book,” to, “Oh my God, I have a book!” 

The man who created the program is a business professor at Georgetown, so most people are writing about social entrepreneurship or more technical topics. But I was like, “You know what? I’ve been writing this thing about sex, and I think it would be a really good book.” So I decided to join.

What was one of the biggest aha moments from developing your project from what you’d into an actual book?

I think a lot of the things I’ve learned have ...

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2019 is coming to an end, so we wanted to take a moment to think about the most impactful moments in the DC comedy community in 2019. 

In the last year of the decade, we laughed A LOT with and for our fellow comedians. We also mourned the loss of significant performance spaces that were home to improvisers, sketch comedians, stand-ups, and storytellers. But in true comedic form, we did a lot more celebrating than grieving.

Overall, 2019 was a great year for DC comedy. Take a look at our list of some of the top DC comedy moments of the year. And comment with your own top moment if we missed something!

Top DC comedy moments of 2019

This list was compiled using answers from a community survey of DC comedians. The answers are listed in no particular order and are grouped by theme.

WIT FIST 2019 

Washington Improv Theater’s Fighting Improv Smackdown Tournament—commonly known as FIST—is an annual bracket-style competition. Improv teams of four players or fewer compete for the title of FIST champion.

A win for Broken Bones

Broken Bones (Erick Acuña, Neil Baron, Kristina Martinez, and Kelsey Peters) emerged as WIT FIST champs for 2019’s tournament.

This is a what a champion FIST team looks like

“Watching Broken Bones win FIST felt like a win for everyone and for DC improv!” said improviser Nicole Barrett.

Improviser Heather Marie Vitale agreed, saying, “It was so fantastic to see a new brand of comedy get the recognition it deserved. [Broken Bones has] two improvisers who came from a different city and two improvisers who play more NY style, and they just played balls to the wall. It was so gratifying to see them win!”

Improviser Geoff Corey also pointed out that Broken Bones’s 2019 win was a big deal for diversity in the DC improv scene: “It felt like a big deal to have not only the first Latinx FIST winners, but I believe the first FIST champions to have more than one POC too.”

I Don’t Know Her’s stellar debut

I Don’t Know Her (Nichole Hill, Precious Jenkins, Lauren Jordan, and Simone Webster) was another FIST team that received a lot of attention this year. A student team whose members are all women of color, I Don’t Know her made it all the way to the tournament’s Comeback Bracket and were definitely a crowd favorite. 

I Don’t Know Her seemed to come out of nowhere with their amazing performances.

Improviser Béatrice Leydier recalls being backstage during the group’s first show, saying, “The noise from the audience was so loud we had to turn off the speakers entirely.” At that point, she says,

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Blog post coming soon!

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Blog post coming soon!

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Improviser Molly Graham talks with Puss and Kooch about tapping into your wise mind, the benefits of improv and storytelling, and saying funny things.

Molly Graham on Heavy Flo with Puss and Kooch

The following interview has been edited for length and clarity. To hear everything Molly has to say, listen to her podcast episode.

Starting out with The Quitters

Thank God for The Quitters. I wouldn’t have stuck to improv without them. I took a break from improv after doing one class because I thought we were going to move. So I didn’t sign up for a class because I thought we were going to leave before that eight weeks was up. 

That turned into two cycles where I thought we were going to move. But then we didn’t move, so I signed up for another improv class. That was where I met Kristin O’Brien and Tonya Jordan. I think that’s when we started going to Zach Mason’s practice group together. Helper Pony came out of that, and The Quitters were sort of a spin-off from that practice group. 

Had I not had the experience of re-finding Kristin and meeting Tonya when I landed back in improv, it would not have stuck the way it did. Now with teaching, I see students on indie teams get a thousand percent better between Levels 2 and 3. It’s not class. 

They’re doing improv with a group of people on another day of the week and getting the reps. But they’re also doing improv in a way that’s self-directed, with a group of people they chose. They like each other, they’re jamming on the same stuff. Those students get way, way, way better. 

I don’t think I would’ve stuck to improv if I hadn’t had The Quitters to make me better faster. I’m not good at doing things I’m not good at. I will stop very quickly if I’m not good at it. So I think having the reps to get better at improv faster made it stick for me when it might not have otherwise if I’d just been doing classes.

Working with Story District 

I came to DC with a job that turned into a software project management thing. I followed that through various job changes and promotions until I was working at a job that I won’t name because I’m going to say bad things about it. 

Word to the wise: If someone offers you a huge raise, ask why. I took a job for a huge raise, and it turned out to be a mess. I could not save it. Superman could not have saved it, and I certainly couldn’t. 

Molly Graham’s feelings about leaving her old, bad job

It was terrible, and I was crying in my car every day and wanting to go in and hand my laptop to the CFO and say I was never coming back....

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Maddox Pennington sat down with Puss and Kooch to talk about writing a memoir, their experience in the comedy grind, the importance of truth and inclusiveness in comedy, and their dream to be a guest on another cool podcast.

Maddox Pennington on Heavy Flo with Puss and Kooch

The following interview has been edited for length and clarity. To hear everything Maddox has to say, listen to their podcast episode.

Writing and publishing a memoir: a pretty cool thing to do

I was in grad school, and I wrote a short essay about my life growing up reading the Brontës. A workshop group told me I needed to actually expand on all the information in the essay. So I kept writing, and it was 60 pages, and then 120 pages. Then my professor told me it wasn’t an essay anymore. So it just sort of took shape, and I’m proud of it. 

But it’s very complicated because I just had to put “girl” in the title. And now I’m sort of in this trans-masc transition phase. It’s very weird. I want to write to Daniel Mallory Ortberg and ask, “How do you get over having the wrong name on this piece?” It’s a memoir. My life is supposed to be in there, and I left out this hugely important part. 

So it’s complicated. But it’s out there. I’m proud of it, and everyone should buy it. The memoir is called A Girl Walks Into a Book: What the Brontës Taught Me about Life, Love, and Women’s Work. And I was a girl when I walked into the book. It doesn’t say what I was when I walked out of it.

Have you written a memoir? Because Maddox Pennington has.

The memoir traces my life alongside the Brontë sisters’ lives. I tackle each of their books and movie adaptations and the terrible relationships I was having in New York in my 20s, as one does. I’m proud of it, and everyone should buy it. 

It just feels uncomfortable to try to still promote it. My mom would love it if I was still doing book events. I did 12 of them when the memoir came out, and it’s over. I know how publishing works. The life cycle ends. So it’s just a weird thing I did, a good thing. I’m proud of most of it 

It’s the first memoir.

There’s definitely going to have to be a part two because I spent a lot of the book chasing an unavailable man who’s 10 years older than me. At the end of the book, I married him, and the marriage was ending. 

In two weeks in 2017, I quit my day job, left my marriage, the book came out,

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Blog post coming soon!

You can follow this podcast on:

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Blog post coming soon!

You can follow this podcast on:

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