"Your liberation and your joy are deeply linked to the people around you"
A conversation with comedian Marcela Onyango
It’s every first Saturday at Friends and Lovers - aka this coming Saturday May 3! Funds go towards direct action projects like mutual aid for people seeking asylum. Equal parts hilarious, generous and enlightening, the show always leaves my face wet with tears and my stomach cramped from belly laughs. We recently got coffee in Brooklyn that turned into a much longer Zoom conversation.
ASK: I have a lot of questions for you, but my first question is: how are you feeling right now?
MO: I'm feeling lots of feelings. A little story - a guy, a resident, just yelled at me because he has a water leak in his apartment, so I’m rattled… but otherwise okay. I was reading Scenes of Subjection by Saidiya Hartman, it's really good. So yeah, that's kind of where I’m at: tumultuous, yet validated.
ASK: I feel that way when I go to your show! I actually don't know when or how they started?
MO: I was doing stand-up for two years and then the pandemic hit. We were all stuck at home. There was this new thing called TikTok, and my husband was like, “It’s where kids post videos. You should do your news videos.” The first video I made was about white people in Zimbabwe getting reparations and one video got 12,000 views. Most of the comments were hateful, but teens who wanted to learn found me and defended me, so I kept posting.
In 2021, things opened back up a bit and I was cleaning the Classon Community Fridge in front of Friends and Lovers, the bar where I used to do my shows. The manager came out and was like, “Hey, we’re doing shows again. Do you want to pitch something?” I told him I had this TikTok show called Feel The News. At the time, I had 50,000 followers, so I pitched it, and the first show was sold out. It's the longest-running project I've ever worked on in my life.
ASK: How did you get to the format of the show?
MO: I have a monologue up top. I pick a piece of news and talk about it from an anarchist perspective. Then I have segments: one is called Freak Out or Don’t Freak Out, where I share news and ask the audience to react - are they freaking out or not? And usually people are wrong, which is part of the fun. I wanted the show to be engaging, like late-night TV but participatory. Not just someone talking at you. I want people to feel talked to.
ASK: It’s honestly one of my favorite nights in the city. And there’s a donation aspect, right?
MO: Yeah. Before, we’d pass the bucket and raise money for different mutual aid projects. Now the money always goes to Flatbush Mutual Aid, the group I’m most active with.
ASK: I love that your show started with the community fridge.
MO: Yeah, that’s where it all began. It’s full circle.
ASK: What I love so much about your show is the name, Feel the News. Feeling it, not numbing to it, alone, taking it in on our phones. In your show, you process it with others, by laughing, by reacting, by making the audience participate.
MO: News is often overwhelming. We keep consuming it without direction. The media is a tool of the state and the capitalist class, it wants to keep us overwhelmed so we don’t act. But I want people to understand: your feelings are valid. You are autonomous. Well, it’s hard to be autonomous in hell… but there are places where you can practice it. That’s what the show is.
ASK: “It’s hard to be autonomous in hell” should be on your merch.
MO: Seriously.
ASK: I used to think being creative and being helpful were separate but now I’ve learned we need both.
MO: The show lets me do both: it feels good and it does good.
ASK: What does mutual aid mean to you?
MO: It’s the understanding that your liberation and your joy are deeply linked to the people around you. Mutual aid is just participating in society like it’s yours, like you’re not separate from it.
ASK: That’s why your show is mutual aid. It’s more than collaborative - it’s collective. It brings people in. You’re not just performing to them, you're creating with them.
MO: Yeah. I used to be obsessed with personal success, like, get the job, get the promotion but I didn’t care enough to chase that. When I realized my goals could be about community instead of just me? That’s when I felt fueled. I feel like one of the reasons I have the politics that I have is because, deep down, I really just want to be a fairy who floats around and does whatever I want. I don’t want to have obligations. That’s the honest truth. I think that's kind of the thing about activism, this idea that it's separate from your actual life. But liberation is an everyday activity. How do you live your life in a way that reflects the world you want to build?
ASK: Yes! Practicing freedom even if you’re not free.
MO: Exactly. Practicing autonomy, even in hell. Even if it’s tiny, it gets your body used to the idea of being free. It becomes who you are. It's not two separate lives, it's just your life.
ASK: A lot of us are trained into this segmented way of being: your job is over here, your activism is over here, your joy is over here. We’re taught that way from the beginning, in school, in work, in everything… and it's exhausting.
MO: We’re taught to fit into a schedule that serves capitalism. Your internal voice gets drowned out and then you feel disconnected, that’s part of why everyone feels so burned out. It's like emotional irregularity is baked into our culture.
You’re allowed to express joy, but if you’re sad or upset, you're supposed to hide it, especially in public. And definitely not rage, unless you're a white man, maybe. I’m not allowed to be angry in public, or even in private. That’s why Feel the News is so important to me. It’s about feeling things in public. About not pretending everything is okay when it’s not. We’re gaslighting ourselves trying to act fine.
ASK: Yes, and I think the way you do it… you’re not shaming people.
MO: Because I used to be one of those people who was like, “How dare you not know this!” But then I remembered, I wasn’t always like this. It took patient people explaining things to me. I had to unlearn so much. Capitalism hijacked my brain. It still pops up sometimes.
People will come up after the show and be like, “I didn’t know what mutual aid was, and now I want to be involved.” Or they talk to someone from the group that was there. I try to book people who are funny but maybe not getting booked a lot elsewhere. I don’t need everyone to agree with me, but I do have boundaries like no racism, no transphobia, no toxic nonsense. I’ve got to protect the room. But beyond that, I like a mix.
ASK: How do you find people?
MO: Mostly I see people around, or they’re recommended, or they reach out. I like booking folks who I think are doing something different or who are really funny but not clout-chasing. It’s a treat to curate.
ASK: Do you remember the first time you did stand-up?
MO: Yeah. I started as an actor. I was doing plays and stuff, and people kept laughing when I wasn’t trying to be funny. So I was like, maybe I should just try this thing and then people started asking, “What are you going to do with this?” And I was like, “Have fun?” But then I got caught up in it, like, I need to write a late-night packet, I need to get on The Daily Show. I started feeling pressure. I forgot why I was doing it in the first place. I almost quit. But then when I started doing my show, I was like, I love this.
ASK: Do you think being an immigrant gives you a different perspective on all of this?
MO: Oh, definitely. Coming from the outside, I wasn’t steeped in the same delusions. I saw what this country says it is… and what it actually is. In Kenya, I was Luo. That was my identity. Here, I became just “Black,” which I love - Blackness is amazing - but it also gave me a different lens on power. I still remember what it felt like to live in a more collective society, I had aunties and uncles and cousins who helped raise me. Coming here and being isolated from that… it was hard. I changed how I dressed, got rid of my accent and tried to fit in. But I couldn’t give up my thoughts, my values. I was a communist in high school in Texas, talking about the American empire. I wasn’t getting invited to parties.
In college I tried to chill, but still, I never fully bought in. I got a Master’s and tried to go the career route but I just... couldn’t. I was crying in the closet at work. Eventually, I just couldn’t pretend anymore. I used to be so good at it, wearing pencil skirts and heels, doing the whole corporate drag but it was all performance. The best acting I’ve ever done was in corporate America.
ASK: And now you’re performing, but you’re you. What’s your dream for the show?
MO: I want to take it on tour. Use comedy to make people think and laugh. I want it to feel like a safe space, especially for folks who usually don’t feel comfortable at comedy shows.
ASK: Like a political comedy festival –
MO: – with radical artists, organizers, mutual aid groups! An abolition day block party but with comedy! I haven’t seen anything like that and I want to make it happen. I love this show, it’s brought so many incredible people into my life. If I hadn’t done it, I wouldn’t have met some of the coolest people I’ve ever known.
Next Feel the News show is this Saturday May 3rd at 7:30 PM at Friends and Lovers (641 Classon Avenue Brooklyn, NY 11238)
“The best acting I’ve ever done was in corporate America.” This really jolted memories. Same in corporate London. Even as a white guy. Just one way to be in that world.
This was great!