With the U.S. presidential race hanging in the balance, the Funny Asian Women Kollective (FAWK) planned two very different shows for the Fitzgerald Theatre on Friday.

One was a night of celebration. The other, a night of healing. Wednesday’s election results tipped the show into laughter as medicine, FAWK co-founder Naomi Ko said.

“It feels like our humanity has been stripped away from us, again,” she said Wednesday. “But we’re gonna put ourselves and our Asian female bodies on full blast Friday night. We’re going to be unapologetically and unabashedly us. I know there’s a lot of things that are out of our control. But we’re still going to be, and that should be celebrated.”

FAWK’s 10th anniversary showcase, “The Extra Quality Super Show” will feature “Daily Show” correspondent Dulcé Sloan, among other guests.

Ko said the writers are prepared to deliver timely content. “Our shows are typically pretty political. Now it’s going to be extra political,” she said.

Breaking the mold

FAWK founders Ko, Saymoukda Vongsay and May Lee-Yang found an artistic and comedic home in each other in the early 2010s, a time in which the artistic work emerging from the Asian American community dealt with heavy, serious issues such as war, identity, and trauma. 

“All three of us kind of felt a little bit like outsiders in our own community when it came to our art-making because not only did we want to do something different, we wanted to say it in a different way, in a different tone, in a different style, and we didn’t really have that many opportunities to do that,” Ko said.

At the time there were few Asian-American women in comedy. The white, male dominated culture of comedy clubs felt unsafe for many, including Ko and Lee-Yang. Beyond doing live performances, they wanted to build infrastructure and a safe community for Asian American women in comedy.

“So many [Asian American women] get censored in white spaces, in our own community spaces, and even by ourselves,” Yang-Lee said. “So we were like, let’s create a space where we can do comedy, do whatever we need to do, uncensored.” 

In 2017, FAWK scored a major grant from the Knight Foundation to organize a yearlong cabaret series at St. Paul’s Indigenous Roots Cultural Arts Center, providing their community a place to play, experiment, and learn from each other. Over the course of the year, the three founders fostered an interdisciplinary, comedy community that cultivated the artistic practice of over 200 Asian women. 

Cabaret participant Sam Green said working with other Asian women offered support, solidarity and a “new lens” on her work. “We were not alone and we were not invisible,” she said. 

During the height of the pandemic in 2020 when many artists were losing work, FAWK secured funding to continue nurturing the community they started. To FAWK’s founders, funders, and community members, it became evident during this time that the world needed laughter. 

They organized an online discussion group called the Ramen Salon, created opportunities for Black and Asian solidarity in the wake of the murder of George Floyd and the rise of anti-Asian hate, and curated “Poetry of Vengeance,” a night of grieving for Asian American women after the 2021 Atlanta salon shootings. 

FAWK’s live performances didn’t stop either — members organized “The Trunk Shows,” a series of pop-up outdoor comedy performances in St. Paul.

Ko, Vongsay and Lee-Yang say their 10th anniversary show will celebrate how far they’ve come and expand their body of work. With a grant from the Minnesota Humanities Center, FAWK partnered with the API Film Collective to realize a longtime dream: producing and filming sketches that will allow FAWK to share its work with a wider audience.

“Unless you’ve come to see us live, people probably wouldn’t know what FAWK is all about,” Lee-Yang said. “The videos offer a glimpse into our world.” 

FAWK will debut the sketches at “The Extra Quality Super Show,” along with games, storytelling, and stand-up comedy by Sloan and other guests. 

Taking their show on the road

In February, FAWK plans to go on tour to three greater Minnesota cities to reach Asian American communities outside of the metro area. Yang-Lee also plans to launch Mayhem Games, a board game company that “elevates Asian-Americans from sidekicks to heroes.” 

The first game to be released in the next month is “Clap Back,” inspired by FAWK’s initial Clapback cabaret workshops in 2018. The game invites Asian Americans to build community and find catharsis in responding to microaggressions. 

FAWK’s founders want to expand the audience for Midwestern Asian American stories — and share their platform with more Middle Eastern, Pacific Islander, and Desi artists. 

“It’s really hard to be an Asian American artist and break the mold of what I like to call Asian America 1.0,” Ko said. “We haven’t had a lot of opportunities to share 2.0 or 3.0 stories. I’m craving to hear what is going on in the lives and minds of Asian Americans that doesn’t revolve around us versus them, or America versus homeland. We’re paving the ground for more of those stories to live, but we’re not there yet.” 

Yang-Lee is confident that audience members are hungry for more: “I think maybe 10, 15 years ago, people might have said, Asian Americans don’t go see comedy shows. They don’t see theater. They’re not a viable audience. But actually, our community comes out. They want to see this. They’re excited to be centered.”