Esther Manito on defying the expectations put on brown comedians

We need to talk about trauma porn.

As a culture, we devour it. We sit back, clasp our pearls, and sigh, ‘how dreadful’ while secretly relishing the spectacle of someone else’s pain. It’s why true crime is the most consumed form of entertainment: a communal binge of suffering, dressed up as empathy.

That fetish for trauma has bled from TV into our stages, galleries, and literary prizes. Comedy, though, was never supposed to be that.

Most comics I know got into stand-up to make jokes – to give audiences a break from their lives and bathe in the cleansing absurdity of laughter. Comedy has always been an underdog art form: a place where the voiceless could finally shout, ‘How the hell am I supposed to put up with this?’

But somewhere in the nebulous world of ‘the industry’ – that strange man-behind-the-curtain pulling strings – comedy has been warped into something darker.

Now, apparently, laughter alone isn’t enough. Jokes must be marinated in suffering, repackaged as pseudo-intellectual theatre so critics can sip from the chalice of pain and declare: ‘Ah, now this is art.’

This creates a rift. On one side, comedians hustling in clubs, making a living from punchlines. On the other, theatre-makers smuggling humour into monologues of misery for cultural cachet. 

But the bigger problem is what happens when you’re not white – when you tick the diversity box, when your family comes from a place scarred by war – and you refuse to perform the ‘trauma dance’.

Because if you’re brown, the expectation is clear: talk about your immigrant parents, your racist abuse, your inherited war trauma. Bare your wounds or risk being dismissed. Critics grow furious if you don’t feed them your suffering; after all, how else can they leave the theatre feeling virtuous?

This isn’t just abstract. I’m Lebanese. My father fled Lebanon. My Catholic mother lived through war, nursing a newborn while bullets sliced through the walls. I have family now living day to day, waiting for peace. I know what it is to watch your parents rant at the news because it’s too close to home.

But my daily life? It’s not bombs. It’s PE kits, packed lunches, NHS appointments, gardening, Crocs, dance recitals, and WhatsApp groups of mums slagging off husbands. And yes, sometimes it’s war and politics too – because that’s what modern life is: messy, ordinary, and overwhelming.

And here’s the truth: I don’t want to cry on stage. I don’t want to deliver a monologue so audiences can pat themselves on the back for witnessing. I want people – especially mothers drowning under invisible pressures – to come to my show, laugh at the madness, and leave lighter. To hear me say, ‘Yes, life is bloody insane, but we aren’t alone.’

Motherhood itself is still treated with open misogyny in comedy. We’re told it’s boring, overdone, not worth the stage time. But mothers desperately need honesty, connection, and relief. To laugh at the absurdity of juggling domestic chaos while carrying ancestral trauma is not trivial — it’s radical. We were meant to mother in tribes, not alone, comedy helps rebuild a tribe.

So no, I won’t apologise for being a mum speaking to mums. I won’t apologise for refusing to turn my heritage into cabaret for trauma tourists. If you want tales of bombings, go see a play. If you want to laugh at the glorious, exhausting madness of life – at the fact that domestic drudgery doesn’t pause even when your family lives in a war zone – then I’m your brown mum with a mic.

And I promise you this: the louder I’m told to keep quiet, the louder I will shout.

• Esther Manito’s Slagbomb tour continues until  February 27. Dates. And her new podcast The Running Joke with Esther Manito & Zoe Lyons is available now.

Published: 5 Feb 2026