Bushwick is and always will be the coolest neighborhood in the United States. There are things happening here that validate every conservative nightmare about America’s Sodom and Gomorrah, New York City. It’s a neighborhood where you can spend your Saturday watching two drag queens get married in a basement and then light a candle at the sex doll memorial on the way home.

When I heard that there was a comedy show where the comics perform completely naked, I instantly said “of course there is.” It sounds like the exact affront to decency someone like Alex Jones would conjure in his colloidal silver addled brain and I simply had to go. 

The show has been put on since 2022 by Billy Procida and was originally hosted exclusively at Hacienda, the Troutman Street sex club and event space. “We’ll still go to Hacienda every few months, but for the most part we’ll be hosting at Bushwick Comedy.” said Billy. 

As the show began Billy disrobed and then made his way into the sold out showroom. He climbed up the steps to the stage to the gaze and applause of the audience and began with, “OK, did anyone here not know?” Two women raise their hands and say they weren’t aware the comics would be performing naked. 

“It is Valentines’ Day and you all deserve to be broken up with,” he says to their husbands who swore they thought their wives would be cool with it. 

Though the comedy club hasn’t yet adopted the policy of allowing the first few rows to be clothing optional, like they do at Hacienda, the boys at BCC adapted the space incredibly well to accommodate the unique demands of Naked Comedy. They constructed a makeshift green room that allows performers to disrobe privately instead of next to the stage. This is because legally performers are not able to disrobe (or dance) on stage for fear of violating city ordinance regarding public decency. 

“The first time I did it, I was a little nervous,” comic and co-owner of Bushwick Comedy Club, Jad Sleiman told me before the show, “but after a few minutes you don’t even remember you’re naked, you’re kind of just performing.”

Stand up is an artform that takes place under a Sartrean gaze, where the performer must both observe the world then step on stage to be observed by it. As a comic you are bound to the perception of the crowd and doing Naked Comedy exacerbates that by removing any shield or sartorial language you can use to connect with the audience. There are no cultural signifiers in your style of dress; the sports team you support, the brand of clothing you wear. It’s just you and your jokes. 

Athena Pepe, a comedian and photographer from Saranac Lake, NY drove the five hours South to perform and take pictures of the show. She shared her experience doing naked comedy for the first time, “I’m still pretty new to stand-up, and I have a lot of jokes about liking to dress cute, about being a hot girl, and people will talk down to me because of that, like the way I dress or the jokes I tell. People will tell me to not dress up because people won’t take me seriously or I will have male comics say like ‘oh we know why the booker hired you.’

“I wanted to do naked comedy because it felt like just taking the power out of that whole idea and taking the power back as a performer,” she shared in a phone interview. “I know it wasn’t how I dressed, people were laughing because of my material, it had to stand on its own,” 

But what does it feel like to be in the audience? For me, it was thrilling. I couldn’t believe the openness it created in the comics, and how innocent and fun it ultimately felt. 

A comic like Jad, whose recent instagram reels are clips of sets where he jokes about how his mom was a coward when she was facing cancer treatment and how he’s not worth the $20,000 the US Government spends on a life saving medicine for him, is right at home pushing the boundaries with the audiences. 

I’ve seen him many times bring an audience along with him on an risque or culturally sensitive premise, it’s what makes him a great comic, but when he was on stage fully laid bare, his act adopted a sort of playfulness to it. He simply looked like he was having a lot of fun. He smiled at his jokes like a schoolboy who got away with doing something naughty in the team yearbook photo.

What I love about stand-up, and what draws me to it, is the tension between the performer and the crowd. As an audience member, when the person under the spotlight is stark naked you have this initial shock of what Sarte would say is shame. You are aware of how you are observing the act because now you know that they know that you can see their entire body. I felt an initial shyness, looking away from the body parts of comedians that I know outside of comedy. 

Approximately three minutes in, however, you do genuinely forget they are naked. Sarte be damned but the shame almost instantly dissolves. Certainly in part this is due to the talent of the comics, but I also think in large part it’s due to the type of show put on by Billy. 

The comedians are well cared for and compensated, consent and communication are key to how he approaches booking, and he’s dynamic as a host. If an act ultimately doesn’t want to perform or cuts their act short, Billy is deft enough as a performer to assuage any disruption and create new opportunities for the audience. 

“[Billy] is a fixture in the city,” says Jad, “it’s shows like this that make NYC interesting.”

“This is why we consistently have some of the most diverse lineups in the city,” Billy tells me as he shows me the intro email that he sends to performers pitching the show. The email is a tantamount consent contract: clear expectations, full breakdown of pay and scale, and resources for any issues they may face, such as an audience member reaching out over social media in any disagreeable way (Billy refunds them their ticket and bans then from attending that show or any future shows). “Luckily we’ve been doing this for years and it’s very rarely ever come to anything like that.”

“I always say whenever I get booked on a regular comedy show and there are no women,” he adds, “I’m like ‘I have at least one or two women on stage every single show and they have to go up there naked! What is your excuse?’”

“I’ve been an art model before,” says Athena, “and so I’m not new to being the only naked person in a room. But, I would say that I felt so much better in this experience because I still had my voice, I still had my material, and people were looking to hear what I had to say.”

A stand out set from the night was from the closer of the show, Rachel Paula Green, a comedian and musician based in Astoria who has 10 years of stand up under her proverbial belt. I’ve seen Rachel perform many times before and she’s always a consistently great part of any show. Her set at Naked Comedy though was among the most physical and comfortable sets I’ve seen her do. I spoke with her a bit to discuss why that might be. 

“I think my situation is a little different from most comedians,” she told me over the phone. “I’ve been going to the nude beach since I was 19, I was polyamorous for many, many years… and so when Billy had the show at Hacienda I was like ‘oh, well, I’ve already been naked here before, I’ll just be doing comedy instead.” Green has performed five times at Naked Comedy, now at both venues.

“And it’s just also always a specific type of audience that attends. Like, your average person might think it’s nothing but perverts that go, but it’s like, no, there’s a coolness for that audience and there is this space that gets created where you’re all in it together. For me, that makes me feel like ‘oh yeah I can get down with this.’”

I asked if there was a specific experience she felt as a female comedian. My assumption would be that it’s hard to separate the politics of the female body from this type of performance. You can overcome the gaze of the crowd, but ultimately that’s a different gaze than the one felt by performers that are cis-men. 

“Well, I had a breast reduction in June, and there was, for a while, a part of my act that centered around how big they were because it was sort of like the elephant in the room. And so, doing Naked Comedy was a bit like ‘alright fuck you, you want to see them so bad here they are. But besides that, no, I’ve never made any connection between the experience of doing comedy naked and misogyny.” 

About midway through the show Billy gets on stage and says “OK, after our next comedian, there will be an opportunity for someone in the audience to come up here, take off their clothes, and tell a joke.” Almost universally each crowd member shot a look at the person they came with. “You can not volunteer someone else! Remember it’s all about enthusiastic consent here! If you don’t have a joke, I will give you a joke to say.”

Suddenly, I was thinking about an old boyfriend’s Hunter S. Thompson tattoo and how much he respected the gonzo journalist for “just going for it.” Did I have a journalistic obligation to do ‘just go for it?’ I barely heard a word of the next comedian’s set while I decided, ethically, that if no one else raised their hands, I would go up in service of both the story and the show. But, when the time came, two men in the audience shot up their hands and ripped their clothes off, much to my relief, but also a little to my disappointment. 

A man named Colin, a European who insisted naked was his natural state, told a joke piece by piece as Billy whispered it in his ear, and then a middle-aged theater instructor named Josh recited an original joke revolving around vodka and Hitler. Ultimately the crowd placed the crown of “Best Joke” on the head (not that one) of the European.

“Yeah, I probably wouldn’t do it again,” Josh told me after the show. “It was terrifying.” 

But isn’t that what makes stand-up so alluring? It’s terrifying! Stripping yourself, your worldview bare to a crowd, hoping they see you as more than an object standing in front of them and instead as a person who has something to say? Sartre might call that the burden of being seen. Billy Procida just calls it a good show. 

You can catch The Naked Comedy Show monthly at Bushwick Comedy Club (along with the rest of BCC’s impressive spring lineup) or at Hacienda. Billy will also take Naked Comedy to Philadelphia every other month after a successful inaugural show at Velvet Whip at the beginning of March. Their next shows will be this weekend at BCC, March 14th and 15th, and tickets are available on the Bushwick Comedy Club website or the show’s Eventbrite. You can follow Billy on Instagram @billyprocidajr for more information or sign up for their email updates here.

Rachel Green will be performing her one woman show “I’ve Gotta Be Me” at The Green Room 42, March 23rd. You can buy tickets, here.