For Laughs
Blaire Postman’s varied career leads to stand-up comedy
BLAIRE POSTMAN has had quite a varied career. The former Washington, D.C., lawyer has been a talent agent and vice president of the Washington Speaker Bureau. She worked for acclaimed comedy club and school The Second City and produced her own comedy festivals. These days, she works as an account executive for WECT while moonlighting as a stand-up comic.
While it may seem like a bit of a meandering career path, Postman believes that everything she has done in her life so far has slowly edged her toward finally making the decision to become a stand-up comic.
Shortly after graduating from law school at Washington and Lee University, Postman worked as a media attorney for a First Amendment group as well as the Federal Communications Commission but quickly found out that being a lawyer did not appeal to her.
“I was waiting for things to fall apart instead of creating things,” she says.
It was during this time in the 1990s that Postman began to perform improv at D.C. clubs and realized that she had a passion for comedy.
Postman decided she wanted to work as an entertainment agent and took a job at the prestigious William Morris Agency as a talent agent trainee – an experience that was both rewarding and eye-opening.
“I have so many interesting stories from working there,” she says. “To this day, it remains one of the most competitive interview processes of my life.”
She worked alongside Ivy League graduates who, like her, were asked to do “anything and everything” from delivering mail and getting coffee to writing coverages for scripts and giving summaries and opinions to agents.
The experience she gained there served her well when she went to work at the Washington Speakers Bureau, where she booked corporate gigs for authors, comedians, and other performers. At a subsequent consulting job, Postman began to do business with The Second City and went on to work for the improvisational comedy enterprise for over a year as a booking agent.
Postman returned to work as a talent agent with Rain Management Group and began to put together annual comedy festivals. Her final festival in 2008 proved to be a disaster financially.
“It was not a good time in the country to be putting on events,” she says. “All of my paying sponsors pulled out, and there were no new ones to be found in the newly devastated economy.”
She moved to Wilmington in early 2010 to work in her current position at WECT. When Postman initially came to town, she was not involved with the local comedy scene and was not looking to be. Her years working in the field of comedy and entertainment, coupled with the disappointment over her final festival, had left her feeling “burnt out” and she needed a break from comedy.
She eventually attended a few shows at the Nutt Street Comedy Room – recently reopened as the Dead Crow Comedy Room – and decided to take an improv class there with comedian Anthony Corvino. She made connections with local comics such as Timmy Sherrill and finally decided to try stand-up at an open mic night put on by Sherrill at The Reel Café in October and has been performing regularly ever since. Postman tries to do stand-up four to five nights a week.
“I would do it every night if I could,” she says.
She is one of the few women who regularly performs at the Dead Crow Comedy Room’s open mic night – a fact that baffles her. Stand-up comedy has long been a male-dominated arena, but Postman believes the role of women in comedy is shifting, and she remains hopeful that more women will decide to become stand-up comics.
“There are a lot of creative, very funny women in this town,” she says. “I want to see more of them coming out.”
Postman’s credits her own past experiences and failures for making her “fearless,” and she wants to encourage other women to try things that are out of their comfort zone, like stand-up.
“I think there’s this unspoken rule in our society that says ‘you can try something, but if you aren’t immediately great or the best, you have to quit,’” she says. “I think people should fail early and often. As far as I know, no one ever died from bombing on stage.”
She urges local women to contact her for guidance if they are interested in comedy.
“We don’t have to braid each other’s hair,” she jokes. “I’m not interested in starting a sorority, but I will try to support them in any way I can.”
For more about Postman and her upcoming shows, go to www.bpcomedy.com.
To view more of photographer Katherine Clark's work, go to www.katherineclarkphotography.com.
