Comedy writer highlight: Violet Gray

Violet Gray (Facebook here; Instagram here; Twitter here; YouTube here) is a Baltimore-based comedian, Dungeons & Dragons player, and podcaster. She has been doing comedy for over ten years, performing on Night Train with Wyatt Cenac, pearl Next Superstar Comedian contest (as the winner), and the Bentzen Ball comedy festival along the way. She often performs many anime, video and gaming conventions on the east coast - this January, catch her at the Katsucon anime convention.

Below, we made her answer five short questions.

What draws you to D&D? It fulfills several of my more creative desires. I'm usually the dungeon master, so I get to act, create narratives, characters and create stories.

Describe the composition of your normal fans/audience. When I'm in a more mainstream comedy environment the audience is, of course as diverse as any other comedy audience. That having been said, if I were to describe any audience as "mine", it would be Fantasy/Sci-fi/Gaming nerds and LGBTQ folk. I'm often tapped to perform at either a gaming convention or a pride event, since I am part of those demographic groups.

Tell us about some of your best Halloween (or Renn Faire) costumes. Oh goodness! Well you know the tooth fairy? One Halloween I went as the eye fairy. I was covered in blood, and had a bag of quarters, a bag of eyeballs, and an ice pick. I also did a show as my D&D character Eshael, half-demon sorceress. Any good stories about recently being hit on? I once got two messages from a stranger. The second message was a dick pic. The first message just said [unsent message.] To this day I wonder what first message was, since he thought the dick pic was the safer option. How did you come up with your best joke?

It seems that my best jokes are just creative re-tellings of things that have actually happened to me. I also seem to find it easier to ridicule bigots.

Describe your comedy writing process.

I've tried. I've TRIED to write jokes. Maybe it's an ADHD thing, but I can't. The joke has to beam down into my brain from the heavens. I'll be doing laundry one day and I'll basically get sort of a mental "new email notification" that I have a new joke in my brain. Support us by downloading our free comedy writing app (iOS here; Google here).