At 7:15 a.m. one Tuesday in April , the comedian Bonnie McFarlane woke her 11-year-old daughter, Rayna, so that Rayna could read for 45 minutes, as she likes to do before she goes to school. McFarlane had already made coffee, walked the dog and showered. Then she emptied the dishwasher, wheeled her luggage to her Kia Sportage and drove to Somerville, N.J., to catch the commuter train. She was spending the next two nights at a hotel in the city directing comedic videos — internet commercials — for a local limousine service called Carmel Car.

Video by Sasha Arutyunova

On the train, McFarlane ate avocado-and-cucumber toast and sent emails to her Carmel Car contact with last-minute notes about the casting and revisions to the sketches, all of which would be shot in the back seat of a luxury S.U.V. McFarlane had given them 25 scenarios, and they had chosen six, one of which involved a driver who found himself in standstill traffic caused by a women’s march. McFarlane would also perform as many 15-to-25-minute sets as she could squeeze in around the Carmel gig. The sets would refine her latest stand-up material, and the commercial would bolster her director’s reel and help pay the bills.

By 10 a.m., she was in the studio of the SiriusXM radio show “You Up With Nikki Glaser,” seated on a stool in front of a microphone as Glaser introduced her former comedy hero, now a colleague and friend. “You Up” is the only SiriusXM comedy program with a female executive producer, a female comedy coordinator and a female host. Glaser recalled McFarlane’s blog, which she read obsessively in college, with its photo of McFarlane in short shorts, playing soccer; “you looked so badass, so scary and so intimidating,” Glaser said effusively. McFarlane joked: “This is a compliment.” It was. “She’s brutally funny,” Glaser continued. “She is an amazing joke-writer.” The comics’ conversation would span atheism and masturbation but first went to the hidden affirmations in relentlessly having to flog your own accomplishments. “What have I done?” McFarlane commiserated. “What have I done? I realize I’ve done a lot.”

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Raised on a self-sustaining farm in Canada in a house her father built, McFarlane made her way in the decades before female comics were a proven commodity. She did all the industrious things that would be considered the markers of success for a male comic: early specials on HBO and Comedy Central, development deals, a starring role in a failed sitcom, writing for TV shows, writing for other comedians and — throughout it all — performing live stand-up and making short independent films. During her time in Los Angeles in the late ’90s and early 2000s, she wrote for “Spy TV,” a hidden-camera reality show, and was the only female writer in the room for the second iteration of “The Man Show.” The business clearly recognized her talent, but her managers and agents wanted her to dress sexier and look happier — at least onstage. The refrain, McFarlane said (but only when I asked), was: Wear more makeup, show more skin, smile more and get rid of the baseball hat — or at least turn it around backward. “One time I was doing the show and the producer guy made me sit with him at lunch.” He told her: “You could be a star if you just smiled.”

“That’s not really kind of like my comedy,” she says she told him. How do you brand a woman who doesn’t communicate her need to please — then, or now?

Nearly all comedians talk about their personal lives; McFarlane multitasks by braiding her family into her work routines. In 2004, she met her husband, the comedian Rich Vos, on “Last Comic Standing,” a reality show, before she was booted. They held their wedding party at Carolines on Broadway. They have tried to sell scripts about their comedy life in a New Jersey condo. (“Seems like a no-brainer,” she says.) For a time, they went on the road as co-headliners. In reality, this meant McFarlane opened and Vos headlined. Club owners preferred that he do morning radio, which further increased his name recognition and cultivated his audience. And, McFarlane adds: “Rich was a stage-hog. He never let me do more than 20 to 25 minutes. There was nothing in it for me.” In retrospect, she believes she should have gone out to build an audience on her own.

She used her marriage to better advantage on a joint radio show, “My Wife Hates Me,” which the couple had from 2014 to 2016 on SiriusXM. It became a podcast — 354 episodes and counting. They broadcast from their dining-room table. When she asked him how he wanted to celebrate one birthday, he suggested a roast — “because he likes to be the center of attention,” McFarlane says. She produced, directed and M.C.ed it. The brutal result is available on Vimeo.

Often, during the week, the couple would drive into the city together to do sets at clubs. After Rayna was born in 2007, McFarlane and Vos took her along; one would watch her as she slept in her car seat while the other did a set, then they would switch. When Rayna got older, McFarlane told her M.C. or opener to read to Rayna while she took the stage. She instructed them to act out the animal parts, and they did, earnestly. “They were so afraid she would cry,” she says. Now Vos tours Thursdays through Sundays, and Rayna usually accompanies her mother on weekends wherever she’s performing.

McFarlane with her daughter, Rayna, on their way to a gig at City Winery. Late night at City Winery.

“Unlimited tablet time,” McFarlane says. “She used to be more interested in my material. Sometimes I would try out some of her jokes and tell her how it went onstage.” If McFarlane is working in New York, they often have dinner at their favorite sushi place and kill time between shows by climbing into neighborhood playgrounds that are closed after dark. On the road, they spend hours at the hotel pool, and McFarlane usually reads to Rayna after the final show. (“Sometimes I read, like a cool person,” Rayna told me.) She calls her father by his first name, Rich.

To survive in the extremely competitive world of stand-up, you try just about anything that comes your way because you never know what will lead to the next opportunity. “I just keep doing everything all the time,” McFarlane told me. Her 2016 memoir, “You’re Better Than Me,” resulted from her appearance on a roast for Anthony Bourdain. She heard she was called in to replace a big-name comic who had canceled. Bourdain had his own imprint with Ecco Press and gave McFarlane a book contract. Compared with joke writing, book writing was a luxury. She had entire chapters to communicate who she was; in stand-up, you have to define yourself within the first minute or two. “When you go onstage in New York, a lot of people don’t know who you are,” she told me. “The joke in the beginning sets up your character.” The jokes that follow fold into that. McFarlane describes her onstage persona as an unreliable narrator. “Very helpful in stand-up,” she says.

McFarlane writes jokes for other comedians and has hosted second- and third-tier award shows. (She recently was paid $1,000 to perform a 10-minute set at a private fund-raiser in an Upper East Side apartment for an audience of 14.) TV spots increase her visibility — she has appeared on “The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon” and “The Late Show With Stephen Colbert.” Last year, she completed a short called “Anything Boys Can Do” — a comedy slasher film with a feminist, vegan lead, which won a Best Director award at the Houston Comedy Film Festival. Amazon bought her 2014 documentary, “Women Aren’t Funny,” which she directed and starred in.

McFarlane arriving at the Comedy Cellar with her daughter.

There is also a never-ending circuit of unpaid guest spots on all the podcasts, webcasts, live-streaming radio shows and filmed sketches created by other comedians to keep their own careers alive. “I usually work for the perks,” McFarlane says, not sarcastically. She particularly misses the stylists on Fox’s “Red Eye With Greg Gutfeld,” on which she was a frequent guest. She loved the way they did her hair and makeup, and she would try to schedule other appearances for the hours after the “Red Eye” tapings.

On a Saturday night in April, I met up with McFarlane and Rayna in the greenroom at New York Comedy Club. Rayna squatted on a bench, watching a movie on her iPhone. McFarlane asked the M.C. how long she had until she went on. She stood tall in a pair of black ankle boots and jeans, topped by a green zippered jacket.

“I’d say seven, roughly,” he said. “Seven to 10?”

“You’re like a doctor: You don’t say exactly,” she replied. She didn’t bother looking in the mirror, which had a sign: “Objects in the mirror aren’t as fat as they appear.”

Before a show at New York Comedy Club.

McFarlane and other comedians have been discussing a shift they have been sensing in audiences: It used to be that if you were good enough, audiences were willing to go where it got uncomfortable, but now they want you to affirm beliefs they already hold. “You are supposed to be listening to someone else’s thoughts,” she told me, “and they are saying: ‘Hey! Those aren’t my thoughts!’ ” Onstage, McFarlane opened with a bit that toyed with the audience’s smugness. “This is a great club,” she said. “People don’t know this, but not all clubs are like this. This club pays its female comics exactly the same amount of money that it pays its male comics.” People broke into applause. “I don’t know if that’s true — they made me say that. They said, ‘If you don’t say that, we’ll rape you.’ ”

She paused, waiting out the laughter. “So I say it,” she continued. “I do what I’m told.” She then identified herself as a feminist and asked if there were others. Women hooted and clapped in solidarity. “Oh, O.K., lot of single ladies,” she quipped, moving on to her marriage (“This is my 13th and final year”) before she sauntered into the subject of motherhood. “I have a daughter. She’s my world, she’s my everything.” McFarlane smiled her lopsided grin. “She’s 5, or 12, or something like that.” The line regularly earned a solid laugh.

When she first tried out the material a while back, McFarlane acted out the confusion over her daughter’s age: “I think she’s ... 7?” Audiences didn’t understand that it was a joke. Once, a woman expressed shock to her friend — “How can she not know her daughter’s age!” — which McFarlane found interesting. The fix made her deadpan delivery easier for crowds to get. But McFarlane couldn’t resist adding: “I love her so much — when she’s sleeping.”

McFarlane does five to eight sets most weeks. “You can’t take too much time off stand-up,” she says. “You have to keep grinding.” These sets for veteran comics pay $20 to $25 on weekdays and $75 or more on weekends. The money covers transportation. It’s the audiences in New York City that stand-ups value; they are considered the most challenging, in part because they are used to seeing the best of the best.

Later that night, McFarlane headed to her second set — a basement room below a restaurant near Times Square. Its sliding door, opposite the women’s restroom, was hard to find until a busboy pointed out the handle. “Like an escape room,” McFarlane noted to the 16 people hunkered down there. There was no stage, and the backdrop was an American flag. She bypassed her opening rape joke — “I’m a feminist, I’m an atheist, I’m a vegan. Let’s have fun tonight” — so she could get into new material about the sex lives of birds, the setup for a punch line suggesting women sleep with men who have small penises as an evolutionary strategy to phase out alpha males. Soon after, she headed off to her next set, forgetting to collect the cash.

McFarlane with her friends the comic Nikki Glaser (left) and singer-songwriter Anya Marina at the Comedy Cellar.

Fourteen hours after she visited “You Up,” McFarlane and Glaser were at the Comedy Cellar in the West Village, sipping from bottles of San Pellegrino. McFarlane had just finished the last of three sets that day, the final one downstairs. Glaser had done a set downstairs as well, following an hour’s workout around the corner at the Fat Black Pussycat, one of the Cellar’s sister clubs, in preparation for the coming taping of her Netflix special. They visited in a cramped booth with their friend Anya Marina, a singer-songwriter who had spent her day at an audition. The three friends were laughing about how men still didn’t realize when they were mansplaining. There was a long, scatological story about another female comic who had to call a plumber on the road.

McFarlane’s favorite kind of joke is the mislead. “My bread and butter,” she told me. She loves an earnest setup and a wicked take. Glaser remembered a joke Rayna had told her. “She has the best joke I ever heard!” Glaser said.

McFarlane knew the one and grinned, allowing herself a rare moment of undisguised pride. It was a gem — a joke that almost made fun of jokes.

“A blind man walks into a bar,” Glaser said, relishing it. “And a stool. And a door.” It was nearing midnight when the three women parted.

The next morning, there were no extras provided for the Carmel Car sketch in which female protesters surrounded the car, and McFarlane had to improvise. Unfortunately, there weren’t any women on the film crew either. She instructed the men from the crew to hold signs — “Equal Pay for Equal Work” and “Equality Now” — over their chests, making sure to film them without showing their necks or heads.

While McFarlane was shooting from the back of the S.U.V., a woman from a nearby office noticed the men holding signs and expressed concern that they were making fun of #MeToo.

A lack of women had created the moment that merited this very scrutiny — for a gig McFarlane had taken largely to prove herself, once again, to a male industry. Her male manager had assured the woman that there was a female director and that they weren’t mocking the movement — but, McFarlane said to me later, “We kind of are.” The sketch, which involved the protesters verbally attacking the male passengers who were stuck in traffic, was poking fun at how stuck men are in the current climate but also at the tendency of some feminists to mistake potential allies for enemies. “If you are going to point your flashlight on the women’s movement, there’s going to be comedy there,” she said. She was determined to find it. “The last step to equality is poking fun at ourselves.”