Comedy Show for Abortion Access Is Coming to Funhouse Lounge

Mother’s Day is usually associated with prissy brunches, pastels, and hanging fuchsia baskets. But this Sunday, May 11, a group of local comedians is subverting all of that and throwing a show called Wrangle Your Rights at Funhouse Lounge as a fundraiser for Northwest Abortion Access Fund.

Brunch? Fuchsia baskets? Try a clown lassoing abortion pills from atop a womb-horse, the central image on the event flyer.

Aliya Wark, a NWAAF volunteer, came up with the Wrangle Your Rights concept with her partner Almond Larson, a local standup comedian. Comedy is particularly impactful, Wark says, when it subverts dominant cultural narratives. The one she’s after is the narrative that all abortions are horrible tragedies. It doesn’t give room for people’s other experiences of the procedure being a relief or neutral or even joyful.

“Using comedy to talk about abortion outside of the sad and morose narrative feels poetic,” Wark says. “And it is an effective way to raise funds because people want to laugh.”

The Wrangle Your Rights lineup will be Larson as host, followed by comedians Arlo Weierhauser (a former WW Funniest Five winner), Aunt Jamey, Cimberly Nickell and Andrea Joseph. In addition to the comedy, the Mother’s Day event includes a sex-positive raffle, a secret special guest, and a pie-throwing contest. To clarify that last point: Wark will wear a vulva costume and people will pay to throw cream pies at her. (She had the costume left over from her counterprotesting days at abortion clinics.)

It’s all about breaking stigmas and increasing access to increasingly threatened safe abortion care in the U.S. NWAAF is the only abortion fund that serves the Pacific Northwest, and about 40% of callers reaching out to the organization are from outside of Oregon, Wark says. It has supported 8,200 people in getting abortions since the U.S. Supreme Court’s 2022 decision in Dobbs v. Jackson overturned Roe v. Wade. NWAAF helps people with the direct cost of the medical care, transportation services, hotel stays, and more.

The event organizers left it up to the comedians how much they’d like to lean in or out of the abortion topic onstage, says host Larson.

“It’s not a show about abortions; it’s a comedy show for abortions,” Larson says. “So some people may choose to talk about their own experiences, but others may just have fun.”

SEE IT: Wrangle Your Rights at Funhouse Lounge, 2432 SE 11th Ave., 503-841-6734, funhouselounge.com. 7 pm Sunday, May 11. $15.