Mary Kay Has a Posse — Brandy Sullivan, Jennifer Buddin, Camille Lowman, and Jessica Mickey —­­ have been performing for about 15 years now, according to Mickey, but that doesn’t mean they have trouble keeping each performance fresh. “As long as shit keeps hitting the fan in our lives and in the world, there will always be inspiration,” she says. The show features a talk-show element, in which the women interact with the audience, as well as a long form segment.

“Being four very different ladies all at different phases in our lives, I feel like a lot of that is reflected in the work we do: relationships, aging, children, all that shit makes life, life,” says Mickey. “Of course we’re coming at it from a female stand-point, but you’ll see just as many men portrayed on stage as women.”

The question of gender roles comes up, inevitably, during improv performances. Maybe you’re not consciously thinking of it — Comedy Fest performers are damned good at being whoever they want to be — but as mentioned with other groups, now, more than ever, do comedy acts reflect the state of the country and our new president. So, where were we? Ah, yes, gender roles. Mickey’s definitely thought about it.

Mickey says it better than we could: “I remember one time we had an unusually difficult show; the audience was mostly older and conservative (and maybe a little too stone-cold sober), and we just couldn’t click in the usual way with them that MKHAP always had. And I had just read Tina Fey’s book Bossypants, in which she recalls Amy Poehler making a vulgar, not-so-ladylike joke, and Jimmy Fallon jokingly whined, ‘It’s not cute! I don’t like it!’ Poehler very seriously responded with, ‘I don’t fucking care if you like it.’ I told the girls about that excerpt the next day and was like, ‘See, that’s us!’ We know who we are and what we do and that we’re good at it.”

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