What Do Yoga and Comedy Have in Common? At ‘Barefoot Comedy,’ More Than You Would Expect

“Barefoot Comedy” isn’t one for false advertising. Hosted by Harvard Square’s Breathe Cambridge, audience members and comedians alike are required to remove their shoes before padding into the yoga studio, where the hardwood floor is dotted with an eclectic mix of cushions. On a rainy Saturday night in September, audience members, bereft of their footwear, were treated to the inaugural showcase of “Barefoot Comedy,” in which four comedians performed their sets — sans shoes.

Breathe Cambridge has, in fact, previously hosted events that do not involve yoga mats and stretching. It was the site for Secret Sounds Boston’s inaugural show and has put on intimate concerts for Sofar Sounds in the space, all of which were similarly shoeless events. “Barefoot Comedy,” however, is the fitness studio’s first foray into comedy shows.

The novelty of the experience was felt not just by the audience, but by the performers.

“I’ve been doing comedy for 14 years now, and I’ve never done a yoga studio before,” Doug Key, the show’s headliner and closer, said in an interview with The Harvard Crimson.

“Barefoot Comedy” was almost a different show entirely. Andy Pyman, a manager and yoga instructor at the studio, was initially approached by a comedy company who wanted to host a show in Breathe. But the fact that the show had to be shoes-off proved a “dealbreaker” for the company, and the plan fell through.

Instead, Pyman reached out to Cher Lynn, a comedian who practiced yoga at Breathe. She agreed to produce the show and found the other comedians — Brieana Woodward, Logan O’Brien, and Key — who completed the lineup.

“It’s my way of giving back to the studio that gave me so much happiness,” Lynn said, who teared up as she introduced the show. “That’s why I was emotional, because this is my safe space.”

Another unique feature of the venue was the floor-length mirroring that yogis, on a more typical night at Breathe, use to check their postures as they contort their bodies into complicated positions. On this night, though, the comics made jokes not only to their audience, but to their own reflections.

“I’m looking around the room. The room is covered in mirrors. So I’m seeing people staring at me, and then I’m seeing myself staring at myself. It gets in your head a little bit,” Key said with a laugh.

In Breathe’s Hot 26 hot yoga series, the studio — also known as the Hot Room — is set to 105 degrees and 40% humidity. Thankfully, the studio didn’t subject the comedians and its audience to that sauna, but the room nevertheless ran much warmer than a typical performance venue. And with audience members sprawled out on the floor, the environment was much more casual than an average comedy night, which affected the way that the audience interacted with the stand-up material.

“It was definitely a warm room, which can be an enemy of comedy. If people are hot, they’ll start to relax, and the physical output of laughing isn’t as verbal or audible,” Key said.

Considerations about the unique environment and the audience’s composition meant that the comics adapted their sets so their jokes could land, adapting on the fly and utilizing a more off-the-cuff style to relate to the audience. In particular, the fact that the audience were mostly yoga practitioners proved easy cannon fodder for comedians to riff off.

Brieana Woodward, for instance, good-naturedly teased the crowd as they stretched on the floor amidst the cushions, commenting that they “loved [themselves] way too much.”

“You could tell the crossover. A couple of people did tell me, ‘Oh, I saw you,’ because across the street is The Comedy Studio, and I do the first and second weekends there,” Woodward said. “I was like, ‘Oh, and you guys were the ones I was looking at laughing the most.’ You could see people who were yoga fans, and then comedy fans who also do yoga.”

It’s a little counterintuitive, perhaps. Comedians are performing and constantly being judged by an audience for laughs; in contrast, yoga is largely framed as a way to discover inner peace. But for Lynn, comedy and yoga are two sides of the same coin.

“I feel like having both is such a benefit,” Lynn said. “I wish back in the day when I tried to do acting, that I had yoga and comedy. Because it teaches you to improvise, and to be present where we’re always rushing to the next thing — traffic, work, train, whatever.”

In that sense, comedy is not unlike yoga, a practice that demands self-reflection translated into physical output. Both activities serve as a form of catharsis: While yoga relies on inward reflection to derive a feeling of inner peace, comedy instead relies on articulating the comedian’s life experiences to connect with the crowd.

Even so, yoga as a medium remains sincere in a way that comedy, a medium that demands lampooning, simply does not. The Hot Room’s relaxed and cozy setting made the more explicit jokes feel jarring, and illicit in a way that they would not be in a regular comedy studio.

Despite the departure from what Breathe preaches in its standard fare, Pyman welcomes the opportunity to introduce levity into the studio.

“Yoga can be a pretty serious thing, though we always encourage people to take it lightly and make sure you smile at yourself when you’re in there, doing yoga,” Pyman said. “But this, obviously — the whole point is to laugh. So it’s a nice sort of balance.”

—Staff writer Angelina X. Ng can be reached at angelina.ng@thecrimson.com. Follow her on X @angelinaxng.