“When you are up there on stage for five minutes and nobody is laughing, it’s the most horrible feeling in the world,“ comedienne Pat Daniels said in talking about her six months as a stand-up comic. Daniels, 25, used the word “horrible” again to describe the knot-in-the-stomach feeling she had the first time she performed her act at the Holy City Zoo.

Pat Daniels is one of the few comediennes now on the Bay Area comedy scene (“we need more women comics”). Five or six women were on the scene when she started in comedy last August, but have since quit comedy for one reason or another. 

Daniels at first switched from acting to stand-up comedy for practical reasons, but now finds comedy more rewarding than acting. “Actresses are a dime a dozen; there is less competition in comedy,“ she said. “But now I love it. I love when people laugh for my material more than I ever enjoyed the satisfaction of acting.“ 

But, Daniels said, a comic must put a lot of effort into reaching an audience. “When you first meet a person, you have to go a little more than halfway but a comedian has to go almost 100% to meet an audience. If a comedian reaches the audience, though, then they really give,“ she said.

Daniels, favorite comedian? W.C .Fields. “He was totally into the Fields character, with all the foibles frailties,“ she said.