Right up front in their podcast “Throwing Shade,” Bryan Safi and Erin Gibson tell their audience they will be taking on issues important to gay men and to women, and “treating them with much less respect than they deserve.” They are silly and sometimes catty, discussing a disappointing celebrity sighting of Suzanne Somers at one moment and then moving on to the US Supreme Court’s ruling on same-sex marriage.
For Safi, it’s a way to keep people interested in weightier subjects — and to take on those who would marginalize gays and women — while still having fun. “I feel like people don’t really listen when you take it too serious,” he says. “Yes, we want it to be very funny first, but yes, there probably is a message there as well. You can either choose to laugh or cry, and I think people just listen better if they laugh.”
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He and Gibson are not always preaching to the choir, he says, citing some of the feedback he’s gotten from fans, including a frat house full of loyal listeners in his home state of Texas. “I think there are some people who come especially for the issues and to hear what we’re going to talk about politically,” he says. “But there are other people who come for sort of the ridiculous and sometimes potty humor. And those are two very different audiences sometime.”
Since “Shade” debuted in 2011, the enterprise has grown. The show joined Jesse Thorn’s Maximum Fun network of podcasts in 2012, and is also shown in an abbreviated video format on the comedy website Funny or Die, where Safi was once a writer. Monday’s live shows at Oberon in Cambridge kick off a 16-city tour, the longest they’ve done to date.
Part of the podcast’s appeal is the chemistry between Safi and Gibson, who met while working at the Upright Citizens Brigade in Los Angeles some five years ago. They weren’t instant friends — but once they did connect, they found they shared a common comic language.
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“It definitely feels like we know how to push each other’s buttons very well,” says Safi. “It almost feels like a sibling rivalry of sorts. She knows what’s going to get a reaction out of me, I know what’s going to get a reaction out of her, and we love seeing each other at our best, and we love seeing each other at our worst. And that certainly helps us keep that ball in the air.”
The podcast features occasional guests like author and TV personality Ross Mathews or comedian Nikki Glaser, but it will be just Safi and Gibson onstage at Oberon. That’s not the only difference.
“It almost works as like a stand-up show,” he says. “It’s pretty interactive with the audience. So we’re not sitting in chairs recording something. It definitely feels like a big comedy show.”
They will do a bit of catching up before the show, because, as Safi says, “the only time we see each other is when we do the podcast and when we do the show.” But after that, they’ll each take an issue they want to talk about and riff. Since same-sex marriage is in the zeitgeist, Safi has been looking at how The Knot has been capitalizing, offering gay couples ill-informed tips, he says, on planning their weddings. “One of the pieces of advice was, if you feel uncomfortable registering at a place like Crate & Barrel or Williams-Sonoma, why not register at your local CD store?”
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It has been a good year for Safi. Formerly a writer for “The Ellen DeGeneres Show,” he is working on ABC Family’s “Young and Hungry” as a supporting character, and he expects to have an expanding role during the season, which premieres Aug. 19. He also had a supporting role in the Will Ferrell/Kristen Wiig Lifetime movie, “A Deadly Adoption.”
Safi’s interest in politics came long after his interest in comedy. “I became very politically aware during the Prop 8 campaign out here and became very involved in it,” he says, referring to the 2008 California ballot measure to make same-sex marriage illegal. “Then I just merged both of those things.” Outside of his comedic efforts, Safi works with The Trevor Project, a nonprofit that works to prevent suicide among LGBT youth.
When he first started studying comedy, Safi was only out to a few close friends. It took him a couple of years to finally open up to the world at large, and he was unsure how that might affect his career. “I think I was always afraid to be perceived as ‘the gay comedian’ or doing ‘gay comedy,’” he says. “But I feel that has sort of been shattered. Funny is funny.”
Throwing Shade
Bryan Safi and Erin Gibson
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At: Oberon, 2 Arrow St., Cambridge, Monday,
7:30 p.m. and 9:30 p.m.
Tickets: $20, 617-495-2668, www.americanrepertorytheater.org/oberon
Nick A. Zaino III can be reached at nick@nickzaino.com.