With ‘Resistance Comedy,’ scene veteran Lisa Geduldig launches an aptly named new series for the times
Tariffs, threats to annex Canada and Greenland, the wholesale destruction of entire government departments, siding with Russia instead of our allies, threatening to leave NATO, interning immigrants at Guantanamo: The list of the Trump administration’s wrecking ball to the United States’ body politic is endless.
You can get angry. Mourn what was. Protest. And/or you can take that anger and despair and laugh.
That’s the idea, at least, behind “Resistance Comedy,” a new monthly standup series from longtime San Francisco comic and publicist Lisa Geduldig, which launches at the Eclectic Box in the Mission on Sunday, March 23. Partial proceeds from each show will go to different nonprofit organizations, with the March donation going to the American Civil Liberties Union.
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The inaugural show stars comedians Dhaya Lakshminarayanan, Orion Levine, Carla Clayy, Bob McIntyre and Geduldig herself.
Geduldig knows her way around a standup series. She first began mounting the locally beloved “Kung Pao Kosher Comedy” shows, Jewish comedy in a Chinese restaurant on Christmas, 33 years ago.
In early November, she hosted a benefit show for then-presidential candidate Kamala Harris, also at the Eclectic Box. The new series is not an outgrowth of that show, she says, but the reactions she got after the show provided some of her inspiration.
“People came up to me at the end of that show and just said, ‘Thank you, I needed to laugh,’” Geduldig recalls over Zoom. “And that’s a lot of what this is about. It’s about … giving people laughter and a release.
“You can get on a soapbox, do comedy and do a little bit of political or educational shtick,” she says, “and people come away with feeling better, feeling energized. Feeling that they’re part of a community.”
‘You need to get involved’
Community has been central to Geduldig’s comedy since she first stumbled into the scene by accident in 1989. She was “best woman” at a friend’s wedding, and her speech brought down the house. A few months later, she noticed a sign on a bulletin board at El Rio, advertising a class aimed at wannabe comics. For four consecutive Tuesdays, she attended a workshop at a house in Bernal Heights. The last meeting was held at El Rio, where the class members performed before the night’s scheduled comics.
“To be in a real comedy club and to have some real audience members, it just gelled,” Geduldig says. “And [original El Rio co-founder and owner] Malcolm Thornley came up to me afterwards, and said, “If you want to do five minutes sometime before the scheduled comics, you can.”
That was in July 1989. By September, Geduldig had worked up the courage to take Thornley up on his offer, and a standup comedy career was born. From that sprung her other careers, producing comedy and public relations for comedy, the arts, and sometimes politics. Kung Pao Comedy was born after she was booked to do standup on a women’s night at a place called Peking Garden Club near Springfield, Massachusetts.
“I thought it was going to be a comedy club, and when I got there, it was a Chinese restaurant. So, then I was telling Jewish jokes at a Chinese restaurant,” she says. “Told a friend in New York about it the next morning. And then the idea of Jewish comedy on Christmas at a Chinese restaurant came about.”
Geduldig has personal as well as political reasons for wanting to spearhead “Resistance Comedy.” For 12 years, she hosted a monthly show at El Rio. During the pandemic, she hosted a show called “Lockdown Comedy” over Zoom, which ran from July 2020 through September 2024. She spent a large part of the pandemic in Florida, caring for her mother, Arline, who died in August 2024. Now, back home in the Mission, she is eager to get started again.
“Laughter is necessary, especially when something horrible is going on,” Geduldig adds. “I miss my mom so much … I just thought, how am I going to get on stage again? Am I going to perform while I’m grieving? But I have, and it’s been really healing. So, whether you’re dealing with impending fascism or the recent death of a parent, laughter is so essential.”
The other inspiration for “Resistance Comedy” is obvious: her outrage at Trump and company, and the pain they have inflicted one appalling executive order and nonsensical mass firing at a time.
“I’m not trans, but I’m in the LGBTQ+ community,” Geduldig says. “I’m not an immigrant, but I have lived in Mexico, and I know people who are immigrants from Mexico who are my extended family … you need to get involved.”
“I went to a meeting a couple of weeks ago, largely Latino, largely in Spanish, about immigration issues and know[ing] your rights,” she adds. “And I came out of there feeling better, to be doing something, to be getting involved with people.”
For now, Geduldig has booked “Resistance Comedy” into the Eclectic Box for one Sunday a month through November. She hasn’t decided about December, since she will be in Kung Pao mode then. Beyond that, she isn’t sure. She can only use her past as a guide.
“I started the El Rio comedy series, which I thought was going to be a year long, and it was 10 or 12 years,” she says. ”Kung Pao, I thought was a one-off, and now it’s 33 years. So, if the public wants it, and people keep coming, I’ll continue to do it … I mean, we’re definitely going to need to laugh.”
The first ‘Resistance Comedy’ takes place 7 p.m. Sunday, March 23 at Eclectic Box (446 Valencia St.). Tickets (sliding scale, $27.50 and up) and more info here.
