There’s a thin line between what’s sad and what’s funny, and Aida Rodriguez knocks it down whenever she performs. As a standup comic she’s delved into family tragedies, cultural stereotypes and her own personal struggles, and made it not just humorous, but surprisingly uplifting.
“That’s a coping mechanism I’ve had since I was a kid,” she said by phone this week. “We called it ‘playing the dozens’ when I was a child, and we either cried or laughed. Many people have had children to help escape from the bad things in their life — we’re not psychopaths, we’re just surviving. My comedy became an extension of that I didn’t have a lot of money and couldn’t afford therapy, so that became the place where I could deal.”
Born in Boston, she grew up poor in the Dominican Republic, and was kidnapped twice as a child due to family conflicts. When she began performing, she was living homeless in Hollywood after losing a job and being evicted. By then she’d been writing screenplays for a number of years, and was aiming for a career as a writer. “I’m one of those people that they’d call an introverted extrovert. I spend the majority of my time in near solitude, or in very enclosed spaces. Onstage I get to have that splash, where I get to express my points of view — and then I go back into my shell. I’d say that writers are my people more than anyone.”
She got mainstream attention with a recent HBO special, “Fighting Words,” which includes an emotional reunion with her estranged father. But she’ll come to the City Winery Wednesday with an all-new show, which she’s calling “Don’t @ Me”– a title that reflects her mixed feelings about social media.
“It allows us to point the finger at others without consequence. And you know, I’ve reached the point where I get really tired of people trying to make meaningful statements without any substance behind it. Being out there as an entertainer can wear on you in that way. Sometimes I just don’t want to hear someone’s take on what I said.” She got a taste of that recently, when some of her lines about the gay and transgender communities were criticized out of context (she in fact supports both). “I had a line about my grandmother not understanding pronouns, because she was illiterate. Does that mean we should set her on fire, or would she have the space to grow and learn?”
She’s also delved into her Latin heritage, and turned a few stereotypes on their ear. “Whe I talk about that it’s from the perspective of my own family and the way we dealt with race. You don’t have to like it, but you can’t deny those experiences were true. When I make observational comedy it comes out of my own experiences. If I’m talking about race or gender or LBGT, I have a personal story about them all, and you move forward by confronting those things.”
The one thing that is off limits is cruelty in her humor. “I don’t want to weaponize words toward anyone who is marginalized. There is a joke about blind people in the show, but it’s there because a blind person saw me and said he felt left out. I’m tired of the division and the hatefulness being sown in this country, and I want to be part of the solution.”