Defiant Joy

[Note: This article is Part 1 of a 2-part series on Defiant Joy. Read Part 2 here.]

Defiant Joy was a queer, mischievous comedy show that ran monthly at Al’s Den from September 17th, 2023, until November 17th, 2024.

Over the 14 shows, at least 80 comedians were featured. But Defiant Joy will never really end. This isn’t an obituary.

The show goes beyond its numbers – sets, performers, months. At its heart is Joe John Sanchez III, whose infectious laughter and guidance has empowered countless Pacific Northwest comics. This show is just one facet of their comedic prowess and community passion.

Over the last three years since Joe John returned to comedy in Portland, the scene has grown from a few shows like Lez Stand Up (@lezstandup) and Roy G Biv’s Comedy Show (@roygbiv_comedy) to more than two dozen showcases that are hosted by queer people or feature queer comedians exclusively.

“It’s definitely changed and exploded in a way that I fully support [laughs]. And some people don’t.”
— Joe John Sanchez III

The Call to Defiance

The only dedicated comedy club in Portland platforms comedians known for racism, xenophobia, and transphobia. Joe John participated in a protest against one of these comedians earlier this year. They told me how they witnessed local comedians get shouted in the face by police, harassed and assaulted by fans trying to get into the show. Standing in the freezing cold and seeing a window smashed in a local comedian’s face.

“It was definitely necessary, I think, to say all that, and I think the major problem is the corporate side of things. They just refused to shut [the show] down. All the signs were there, that this could get violent, that someone could get hurt. And they just pushed through. And that was frustrating to see, for me. Because at the end of the day, you want people to be safe, and for shitheads not to be platformed [laughs].”

Comedy clubs have an economic incentive to platform content that disparages identities, that punches down to marginalized communities. That’s their choice to make, even when it clashes with the character the city is known for.

“It doesn’t feel Portland in a way, for us to be propping up any kind of hate, or racism, or bullshit. But, it happens.”

Joe John is defiant by rejecting that part of the club scene, and for good reason:

“I don’t think I’m a club comic because I don’t have the drive to deal with the bullshit. I just, I hate auditioning for things and part of being a club comic is the constant audition. And I think I’m over contests. I might, I’m not saying I’ll never do a contest again, but if I’m doing it, I’m doing it to compete against myself, and not other people.”

But there is a part of the competition they recognized and took with them when they decided to start producing their own shows:

“It’s really just to have that environment of, all these people came to laugh. The community of it all. And that’s what I’ve always enjoyed about that aspect. I have a lot of fight in me, but I don’t want to fight for the approval of someone who doesn’t want me.”

During pride month, at the club’s yearly competition, a comedian with transphobic material was given a platform at the comedy club, and they told transphobic jokes while trans people were in the audience, and as Joe John recalled:

“As a queer, non-binary person, I sat through jokes about trans people, and I heard from other people that they had friends who came, who were trans, witnessing these jokes and a whole room full of people laughing at them. When that happens to you and you’re in that moment when you realize that your identity is a joke to someone, it kind of breaks something in you. It’s the realization that you live a little bit in a bubble, that there are so many people that fucking hate you, for no good reason. And it’s a terrible feeling. Witnessing that just fucked me up for a moment.”

Something that people lose sight of, especially in comedy, is that there is a history to the platforming of content that disparages people’s identities, and harms marginalized communities. People use the excuse that because the content is comedy, we don’t have the right to disagree. As a producer, Joe John has created a unique and beautiful alternative.

Joe John first produced Fluid Comedy with Jenna Britann (@jbritanncomedy) which celebrated its two-year anniversary on November 16th, 2024 and has spawned spin-offs like Be Gay Do Crime (@begaydocrimepdx) to further explore comedy concepts. Defiant Joy was Joe John’s solo production:

“It was created, kind of, out of a place of bitterness, we’ll be honest. People have called it a spite show. But I knew from the get-go that I just wanted to put queer art in a space where it wasn’t already. Or, it wasn’t actively propped up on a regular basis.”

Bitterness is a signal that something isn’t right, that something needs to change. Defiance is open resistance; the choice to acknowledge injustice and then do something different instead. In Joe John’s case, defiance took the form of creation, the choice to pursue queer joy.

“I do feel like that’s what we’re seeing with the queer comedy scene in Portland, is people creating the world they want to exist in. Rejecting the idea that only these elite few people can make these choices. […] We are going to make our own choices and choose our own headliners. And say ‘you’re going to watch these people.’ [a beat] Well, they’re probably not going to watch them, to be honest. [laughs] But, ‘you’re going to see in a few years, the people headlining our shows are going to be headlining your shows.’ I swear to God, queer people have good taste.”

“We’re also listening to one another. And caring, and seeing people for who they are versus what they’ve accomplished. There’s less of this, ‘oh if you book me i’ll book you’ trade-off, it’s just seeing people for the funniness and the joy they put in the world, and not propping up the hateful bullshit.”

Cultivating Joy

Joe John is a role model for recognizing the status quo and acting for positive change in the pursuit of joy. That is so important because when one person does it, others will be encouraged to follow their passion, too.

“I think [Defiant Joy] did, I don’t want to say I did anything or I contributed to anything, but I think that we’re seeing people step up to the plate and create great shit that’s sold out, that’s packed regularly. And if, like, in any way I played a part in inspiring anyone to make that leap, whether it was a single conversation or this or that, like, that is so much more important than me succeeding in what I did.”

Joe John is a passionate curator, and even manages to design shows around out-of-town comedians, having to work within a limited window.

“If I know someone is going to be here early enough I’ll build the show around them with local performers who tonally compliment, or, shake it up a little bit. It’s almost always done with intention. Is it always done well? Maybe not. [laughs] Someone else could be looking at my lineup and be like, ‘that’s crazy! What are they thinking?’ But, it came from a point where I was like, ‘this is done with the intention of creating some sort of ride’. Sometimes, figuring out the puzzle of how it’s gonna flow happens afterwards.”

The energy in the room is vital to the success of a comedy show, in that the energy of the performance and the room have to rise to meet each other. When asked about how they design the flow of the showcase, part of their philosophy is,

“How do we keep this energy up and make sure everyone’s having fun non-stop from start to finish. And, you know, for any given person, there may be peaks and valleys where they’re like, well, that person wasn’t for me. But it’s like you take that energy of, okay, well, this person has this energy. We’re not putting someone with the same energy next to them. We’re creating a journey for the audience and that’s always been my philosophy on it: ‘How do we take people on a really fun ride?’”

They note how well drag and comedy can combine into a show, which they also feature in their show Exquisite Nonsense, co-hosted with Imani (@imanigotmilk) :

“Even if it’s not a comedic queen, there’s something about the excitement of drag that just lights the room up. It could be a fully just sexy little number, but when you get that ‘Woo!’ going, that next comedian would sometimes tell me, ‘how do I follow that?’ And I’m just like, you bring it. Like at that point the room is warmed up for you. Your show doesn’t need a warm-up comedian, you need a warm-up drag artist! It gets the room ready for fun. Like, no matter what.”

Joe John’s innate inclusivity and ingenuity is also demonstrated by the Designated Ally slot on Defiant Joy, reserved for one non-queer comic each month. Originally meant as a tongue-in-cheek nod to making a mischievous show, that creative choice inspired further creativity:

“I’ve witnessed so many people be in that slot and the different ways they’ve approached it. I think people took it seriously no matter what, which is something I love to see. There are people who over-thought it and then there were people who were just like, ‘I’m here because you believe in me and you know I’m not a hateful piece of shit.’ [laughs].”

They offer advice to comedians when thinking about the order they appear in the lineup:

“I know one thing that’s helped me as a comedian is knowing what my placement means in the lineup. When you see where you are in the lineup, it’s like, ‘Okay: I’m opening, and this other person is after me. So the assignment you’ve given me is that I need to crack this room open. I just need to bring energy. It’s been the most interesting thing to learn and grow and figure out, even fail at, and be like, oh, I misread this situation, or this audience.”

Every artist experiences failure. Any musician can tell you that not every song is a hit. It comes with the territory of making art. Risk is part of the space we play in. And in comedy, there are a lot of variables that have nothing to do with you as a comic. Time of day, size of the room, the weather, the day of the week, the temperature of the audience when you start your set.

But in our queer comedy scene, thanks to producers like Joe John, queer and non-queer audiences can feel acceptance and respond in kind.

“When an audience has that warmth, it’s the best feeling in the world. In all the time running the show, no matter how big the audience was, when there were four people or forty there was always this warmth and like a welcoming of, ‘We want to laugh. We are ready for this.’ Creating that space for primarily queer comics to thrive and be received by a receptive audience like that, it feels so good that it became hard to let go.”

Season Finale

“Is the show dead? I don’t think so. It needs to adapt. To change. To sort itself out. Something is missing, and I want to find that missing puzzle piece before it proceeds. Maybe it is over, but the concept itself will always live on.”

Looking to the future in the Portland queer comedy scene, Joe John wants to find out, “How do we get more queer people running shows? Making choices in positions of so-called ‘power’ within the community? Because the people making the choices aren’t often including us, or are including us as a token. It’s both frustrating and inspiring.”

What can we do to respond?

“One thing I’ve worked on is building a bridge. Not just propping up queer comedy but building a bridge between the different forms of comedy and finding within the queer scene, how do we incorporate improv, drag, musical comedy? Other forms of comedy because it’s not a binary of ‘wakka wakka’ and ‘yes, and’. We should be crossing paths and creating together. Because at the end of the day it’s about, ‘is this shit going to make people laugh?’ Not ‘oh, it’s gotta be about the craft of stand up and if it’s not stand up then get out!’ [laughs]. It’s like, ‘No!’ We should be creating art that is for everyone and invites different styles of humor.”

Whatever we choose to do, we will discover what works for us and pursue it, just like we did when coming out, and just like we do when we find solidarity in each other during times of fear and worry.

“I saw someone completely unrelated to my show use the phrase defiant joy in the past week, that it is what we need right now. And I was like, ‘it sure as fuck is.’ We are living in a world that’s trying to break us, flat out. And it needs to be a situation where we say, ‘No. You can’t fucking break us. You won’t. You simply won’t.’”

This is a time where we are all going to grow in our resilience. We have to. We have no choice. For me, I feel more queer and more myself than ever before, and I’m not going to let it be taken away. The world can’t fucking break me. Though this show has reached its finale, I have learned that each of us carry the capacity for defiance and joy within us. No one can take away our defiance. No one can take away our joy. For these reasons, because of Joe John, because of you and me, the world will never be without Defiant Joy.

Catch Joe John’s other shows!

Fluid Comedy (@fluid_comedy)

Exquisite Nonsense (@exquisitenonsense)

Giggle Bottom (@gigglebottomshow)