Hysterecsterical - Women in Improv
By Jason Chin,
August 24, 2009 at 5:09 pm
Women aren't funny. Period.
So goes the traditional, well, bullshit. It's not something anyone with half-a-brain ever thought. Ryan Hubbard is writing a blog for the Chicago Reader on the topic and last week he delved into the women of improvisation. Check it out here.
The demographics have drastically changed in the 10+ years I have been in Chicago. When I first started there were very few women (but then, again, two of the most popular improvisers around (regardless of gender) were Tina Fey and Amy Poehler), but the gender ratio has greatly improved. As a teacher, I must say that the one class I taught at iO Theater that had more women than men remains one of my favorite experiences.
(Kristen Schaal, a Chicago Improv alum who swiftly moved to a coast and is one of my favorite performers.)
The starting numbers (women in classes, women on new teams/shows) are strong. Somewhere along the line we begin to lose the female presence and those remaining become even more valuable. For my show, Whirled News Tonight, we have lost several powerful female players to LA and graduate school.
Saying that women aren't funny is just as wrong as saying that Chinese people can't swim. It's dumb and racist/sexist.
LaWanda Page. Madeline Kahn. Sarah Palin. 3 funny women: 2 by trade, 1 by birth defect.
There have been scads of articles recently refuting the idea that women aren't funny, which is a subject that seems to crop up in waves every few months. This isn't meant to sound like a critique of the subject matter, because I think it's valuable to emphasize to those not within the community that, in fact, our comedy gender equality is pretty strong...but it's a double-edged sword in that you have to acknowledge and name the idea of the "woman in improv" to argue that there's no distinction. I guess we'll know that the public perception is truly equal when magazines stop doing features on it altogether? Or something? I don't know.
Having said that, glad to see Schaal as the face on this one. She's good stuff.