Comic Carol Tyner Commits to the Stage as One Half of Group Chat Girlies

To pursue stand-up comedy takes a little bit of recklessness no matter who you are. To walk away from an established career in the medical field to follow that pursuit is acting with a different level of abandon.

But that’s the choice that local comic Carol Tyner made in August 2025, when she left her 13-year career as a registered nurse and director at a private practice to pursue her passion full time.

This was not some midlife crisis for Tyner but a calculated decision. Ironically enough, Tyner’s move to pursue comedy came out two tragedies: COVID-19 and Hurricane Helene. Seeing the storm wipe out homes, businesses and community infrastructure in her hometown of Burnsville in September 2024 reminded Tyner that nothing is promised. 

“Watching my community be impacted so directly made me reflect on what I was waiting for,” Tyner said. “It pushed me to stop treating comedy like something I’d get to eventually and instead treat it like something worth building a life around,” Tyner said.  

“It gave me the clarity – and honestly, the permission — to fully commit to comedy, not as something on the side but as something I was willing to bet on.” 

Now, about nine months after following through on that life-changing decision, she’s hitting the road with Group Chat Girlies, a comedy duo she launched with local comic Skylar Schock around the same time she committed to pursuing standup full-time. 

The Girlies will start in the South before heading west. But first, Tyner has a couple shows here at home, first opening for Judy Gold at Carolina Theatre on May 7 before taking part in Crown Comedy’s Friday Night Lights show on May 8, at Norfolk Hall in South End. 

Group Chat Girlies passes the mic to women in standup… and the crowd

Tyner met Schock when the two appeared on the same bill at a local venue. The two hit it off and quickly began collaborating on the Group Chat Girlies (GCG) project, which puts women in a room and asks them questions about what they’re actually doing — like a group chat, but IRL.

GCG shows start with standup, followed by interactive comedy segments during which women in the audience divulge what they’re watching, listening to, reading, etc. Then Schock and Tyner go through a juicy story or piece of gossip before getting to the “Burning Questions,” which is Tyner’s favorite part of every GCG gig. 

Submitted by the audience prior to the show, Burning Questions often consist of things the women might be too embarrassed to ask in a group chat — perhaps a trend they have seen on TikTok that they want to know more about. 

Read more: Skylar Schock Uses Comedy to Open a Door to Mental Health (2025)

The shows have brought women together. Tyner mentioned that fans have told her after shows how they met their best friend at a GCG show and are still attending together. 

It’s also been a help to Tyner professionally, as GCG’s unique format has helped her get into different venues and make connections where she otherwise may not have. 

According to Tyner, it’s not always a disadvantage being a woman in comedy. 

“Because there are fewer women in the circuit,” she said, “there are bookers who are looking for women to have in their lineups to have diversity.” 

Despite that, Tyner has found the comedy scene to be less than inviting to women. 

“It just seems to be a world that exists on a structure that supports men more than women,” she said, recalling that she’s heard men ask, “Who’s taking care of the kids?” to women at open mics. 

There are also many tropes that surround women in the comedy world, stubborn holdovers from a more chauvinistic time. 

“People tend to think women aren’t as funny or don’t have as much good material, which is categorically untrue,” Tyner said. “The women in the scene are better prepared, funnier and very often, in my opinion, better comics.” 

She added that folks are quicker to write off a woman’s thought process than a man’s. 

“I think people often don’t want to listen to what women have to say,” she said. “Even when we’re trying to make it funny, the immediate response is, ‘I don’t want to hear that anymore.’ It’s like, ‘Okay, I don’t want to hear you talk about your dick anymore.’”

Carol Tyner’s early journey in comedy

Tyner’s first experience performing comedy was in an improv class at the Charlotte Comedy Theatre and Training Center (CCT) in early 2022. She loved it enough to stick with it, eventually becoming a founding member of Shameless Society improv, a two-time Queen City Nerve award winner for Best Improv Troupe in 2023 and 2024. 

Tyner took a standup comedy class taught by Lauren Ansley in 2023 and performed her first set during graduation in June of that year. 

“I think standup was always the thing that I was most interested in,” she said, “but it seemed so terrifying to try while improv seemed like a team sport and a little more attainable in some ways. I loved it and very quickly realized all the dreams that I just pretended I didn’t have when I was young are real and I should look into them.”

At the graduation for Ansley’s all-women class, Tyner performed in front of around 100 people. Though she found that frightening, it was the best type of crowd because they were so kind and supportive, she said. After she got her first laugh, she thought, “Okay, I love this and I would be up here for as long as they would let me talk with the mic.” 

Comparing standup to improv, Tyner said writing is the hardest part of the former, but the payoff makes the effort worth it. 

“The high of a great standup set is so unbelievable,” she said, “but the low is so unbelievably low. Standup is very vulnerable. 

“There’s very little you have to do to prepare for an improv show, because you’re going to make it up once you’re there,” she continued. “If things go badly in improv, you care less because there’s somebody in the boat with you while it’s sinking. The silence in standup is a lot louder.” 

The improv skills do come in handy when a standup set starts to go the wrong way and Tyner is forced to pivot onstage, she said. That’s why working out material on open mics is important. 

“Open mics are super helpful because you can learn that what you think is funny is sometimes not funny at all,” she said, “and areas you don’t think had jokes in them is what the crowd is actually responding to.” 

Tyner is willing to stay stubborn with some material, however. “Sometimes something is worth fighting for. It’s not funny … until it is.”

Read more: My Trip Through the Introductory Improv Class at CATCh

While her comedy career is still in its early stages, Tyner said she performs six or seven paid shows per month. She’s not making a living off the art yet; she works with a nonprofit during the day. 

Thus far, Tyner said Group Chat Girlies has been her most rewarding venture because it was built from the ground up and successful enough that comedy venues in other areas are interested in hosting shows. 

“But more than that, I think it has really allowed a place for women’s voices, which is a huge part of why I love doing comedy and one of the reasons that I really wanted to pivot to make it my full-time focus,” she said, “proving to women that we can do anything at any time.”

Learn more about Carol Tyner at her website and check her out at Norfolk Hall this Friday during Friday Night Lights. Tickets for any upcoming shows can be found on her Linktree.