In 2018, Francesca Ayala emerged from a seven-year relationship and into the unchartered waters of online dating. “It was a strange time,” says Ayala, a US-born Filipino who has been in Hong Kong for the past 11 years. “There were no dating apps the last time I was single.” After joining the popular dating app Tinder, Ayala started sharing stories about the Hong Kong dating scene with friends. “They were like, ‘You should be telling this to an audience.’” So she did. While on the open-mic circuit she crossed paths with American expatriate Dannie Aildasani, the pair bonding over conversations about the lack of female voices in a male-dominated industry. “I’d hear people say, ‘Oh, women just aren’t funny’ – like it’s inherent to our gender identity,” says Ayala. “Hong Kong is so diverse, a microcosm of the rest of the world, but even in ‘Asia’s world city’ there was this big gender gap in comedy.” Determined to fill that gap, the duo formed B*****s in Stitches in 2021, a collective of female and non-binary comedians (it now has 15 members) with a mission to turn up the volume on topics such as body positivity, gender bias and representation. The timing seemed right – if not a little overdue. On the global stage, comics like Ali Wong , Tiffany Haddish and Amy Schumer push boundaries with routines that tackle issues from the female body to race and gender inequality, their reach wide thanks to their own stand-up series on Netflix. And while venue closures brought on by Covid-19 might have grounded them, B*****s in Stitches are now back and better than ever. Their last show was a sell out and their May 29 “Birthday Show Blowout” at The Aftermath in Hong Kong’s Central business district, to mark the group’s one-year anniversary, is also sold out. Comedy, says Aildasani, is the perfect antidote to “what has been three years of high stress”. “With everything that’s been going on in Hong Kong – first the protests and then the pandemic – to have the opportunity to make people laugh makes me feel very special,” says Aildasani, who is a journalist at the South China Morning Post. On a personal level, she says stand-up has been a major confidence boost. “A lot of comedians take what makes them feel most insecure and kind of work with that. And if you make a joke about it, then it sort of takes away the pain of it and makes it less impactful to you,” she says. Group member Jenna Hudson agrees. “Whenever I get on stage and talk about personal issues, I’m taking the embarrassment away. I’m getting the power back from it.” Our audiences comprise mostly women, many who had never been to a comedy show before Rose Rage, transgender comic And nothing is off limits. “I want to talk about depression or drinking and I’m going to talk about eating disorders – I’ve had bulimia since I was a kid and it’s the one thing I’ve struggled with my whole life,” Hudson says. “Comedy is a way of creating a dialogue – if we joke about it then we can start to talk about it. I’m English and comedy is a big part of the culture – we’ve always been very self-deprecating. It’s a coping mechanism and a big part of interacting and bonding with people.” Rose Rage, who started her “on and off” career in comedy 15 years ago as a man before transitioning, says B*****s in Stitches has latched on to a market that nobody in Hong Kong has served. “Our audiences comprise mostly women, many who had never been to a comedy show before … I was doing a show at The Aftermath and I asked the audience if this was their first stand-up and six silver-haired women in the front all raised their hands.” And heckling is rare. “Hong Kong audiences are ridiculously polite,” says Rage. “Rarely does somebody come back at you. I’m a pretty commanding stage presence: I’m big and I’m loud. When I was a guy, honestly, the club owner told me to tone it down because I was scaring the audience.” For those thinking about getting their comic on, Ayala has some advice: know your audience. “It’s vital to read the room,” says Ayala. “If you come off as tone deaf, or you’re not showing up with a giving heart, your audience is smart enough and has a bulls*** detector to know if you’re there to get their admiration and applause instead of there to entertain them. “That distinguishes really good comics from OK ones.”