On a recent Thursday evening, a line of women snaked up the staircase leading to Capitol Hill’s Comedy/Bar dressed in their best form-fitting going-out tops with freshly curled hair and full-faced make-up. In the app-dominated world of modern dating, many singles—especially Gen Zers—are looking for literally any other way to find a partner. Sometimes, that’s via old-fashioned meet-cutes or by prowling nightclubs. Other times, it’s by signing up to be part of a live dating comedy show.
Started in 2023 by 26-year-old Zahnae Aquino, Comedy/Bar’s monthly Fun & Flirty show takes in-person dating gimmicks and makes them funny. In one portion of the show, comedians make PowerPoint pitches about eligible audience members, highlighting their good qualities—mediocre Kermit the Frog impressions, not knowing the definition of “fuckboy”—and then beseeching the audience to date them. In another, people from the audience are selected to play sexy Truth or Dare onstage. The show ends with a series of speed dates.
“It's like watching reality TV in real life,” Aquino says. “You know it's curated, but you're also not sure what's gonna happen.”
Fun & Flirty is definitely both fun and flirty, but as a form entirely dependent on what each audience brings to the table, it’s not always smooth sailing. Maybe, in a world hungry for connection and a comedy scene focused on interaction, that’s the point. It’s giving “live” comedy an entirely different meaning, and, Aquino says, her “horny singles in Seattle” audience can’t get enough. The concept has consistently sold out shows at Comedy/Bar and that hype has propelled Fun & Flirty, after only a year, to the Crocodile’s mainstage, where Aquino will host the biggest Fun & Flirty yet on August 29.
The First Date
Aquino, who started pursuing comedy two years ago, came up with the concept for Fun & Flirty while she was deep in the “desolate Seattle dating pool.” She described a hollow purgatory of endless swiping. Her options were so bleak her mom bought her a book titled How to Not Die Alone. Through the book (which she actually read) and her screen-driven experience, Aquino determined dating apps had ruined dating mostly because people have become too picky.
“[On the apps] you get the opportunity to list out every single thing that you would want in your perfect match when, in reality, your perfect match isn't necessarily always going to be aligned with every single thing,” she says. “There's this performative part about dating that we don't really want to acknowledge. All of us put on a front. All of us want to be perceived in a certain way, to find a partner who likes us based on that front and everything. So, why not just do that in a funny way?”
And sometimes it works.
“Some people have gotten into relationships after the show,” Aquino says. At the very least, people are getting laid. “Typically, people are in the DMs after the show. [Participants] get a lot of action. The new tagline I'm trying to push is ‘Comedians get you laid, finding love is just a byproduct.’”
Truth, Dare, or a Secret Third Thing
The show’s structure is broken up into three portions: First comes PowerPoint pitches for two pre-selected single people; Then there are two audience member dates and a round of speed dates. Aquino selects the participants for the dates from attendees who fill out forms via QR codes floating around the venue.
“Our main demographic is single women,” Aquino says, noting that for a majority of those women, Fun & Flirty is their first live comedy show experience.
It’s like an unscripted singles mixer, and everyone else—those too shy or too settled in their relationships—gets to watch. Sometimes this makes for awkward moments, and other times, it brings out big, genuine audience reactions. “From the audience perspective, even if you're not partaking in the crowd work or the interaction, you are like, ‘Oh, this person is organic, they came here, and they're choosing to put themselves out there,’” says Aquino.
Largely due to the success of clips of unscripted moments on TikTok, comedians these days are focusing more on crowd work. Some comedians aren’t even writing jokes anymore, choosing instead to go up onstage just to needle their crowds. It’s a polarizing trend in comedy spaces, but Aquino loves it. She recognizes it can also be hit or miss.
“The show is dependent on what the audience is doing,” Aquino says. “If it's a weird crowd, it'll be weird onstage.”
At one show, Aquino invited two men onstage for a speed date. They played the show’s version of Truth or Dare called Get Fun or Get Flirty. The two listed three things they liked about one another. They seemed like they had real chemistry, according to Aquino, and everyone in the crowd was invested. At the end of the segment, a Get Fun or Get Flirty card prompted them to share a kiss. “And one of the guys on the stage was like, ‘Oh, well, surprise guys, I'm actually straight,’” Aquino recalls. “That was a fucking plot twist.” Aquino cringed; the audience went wild.
At a show I went to, I was entertained, but I couldn’t help but wish the audience participants were funnier, quicker-witted, and knew how to speak into the microphone more. (Maybe that’s why they’re still single?) But the audience around me gobbled everything up. Though I didn’t find anything truly hilarious, much like reality television, I found Fun & Flirty interesting. It’s always entertaining to experience people being people and this concept puts that on display.
“Someone told me it was like watching live sports,” Aquino said. “Those raw, organic moments are always a gamble. They can either be deeply uncomfortable or really successful.”
Catch Fun & Flirty Thursday, August 29 at the Crocodile, and Thursday, September 26 at Comedy/Bar.
