Real Women Do It Standing Up, by Leighann Lord, is an interesting memoir of her life and experience on stage as an acclaimed comedienne. Throughout her memoir, Lord takes readers through the very nuances she faced while crafting her passion and building her fan base throughout the world. Her stage presence can be felt reading through her various anecdotes.
The book introduces Lorde as she’s figuring out her life after graduating. She starts off in the corporate world working in the communications department. This would be a dream job for most newly graduated communication majors but for Lorde, these jobs take a toll on her life over the next five years. She’s stumbles through the job, calling in sick as often as possible because she knows that she can’t be confined to a cubicle. She has too much personality to be stuck behind a computer doing something she hates when her passion is clearly calling her.
Eventually, she follows her heart and quits the corporate world to go after a career in comedy. Leighann takes us with her as she travels the world, honing her timing and making our troops laugh from the middle east to Haiti. She shares the hard work and ethics that go into becoming a successful comedian. It isn’t all about timing but the importance of writing and rewriting your act. Figuring out what jokes work best for which audience and when to move on from a certain demographic. Lorde hilariously shares a tale about her experience on the college comedy tour and when she realized that she was no longer built for college tours, chicken fingers and plastic silverware.
The biggest issue I had with, Real Women Do It Standing Up, is that Lord won’t allow herself to be naturally funny. I can tell that she has good timing and found her last story to be her absolute best. I couldn’t help but laugh as she shared with us how she figured out that girls and boys have different anatomy. Although I found her stories insightful and loved learning of her experience on multiple USO tours. However, after each story, she would go for an overused punchline instead of letting the story come to a natural conclusion. I laughed the most when she was being a natural storyteller.
This book is ideal for anyone that is interested in learning more about the world of comedy and what happens beyond the stage.
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