It was mostly an underground affair, but last month, Toronto gave birth to its first women’s comedy fest, the SheDot Festival. Over the course of a long weekend, about a hundred female comics from Canada and the U.S. converged on our city to perform, mostly at Comedy Bar and a gala at the Opera House.
There are Black comedy festivals, nerd comedy festivals, dark comedy festivals, so why not a women’s comedy festival? In many ways there’s never been a better time to be a female comedian. Lena Dunham’s series Girls is the show of the moment; Tina Fey and Amy Poehler have aced the sitcom game; Ellen hosted the Oscars. Sarah Silverman is the reigning queen of stand-up.
I noticed that at the downtown Yuk Yuk’s last month, three out of the four headliners happened to be women. So when I was asked to be on an industry panel one afternoon of the fest, I immediately said yes.
I expected a better turnout than the 30 comics in the room, but the panel went on anyway. The panel had four industry movers and shakers available to answer any and all queries. Except that all of them were male.
Maybe this was a sly move by the organizers to illustrate the continuing patriarchy of the comedy business, but I don’t think it looked very good.
Nevertheless, the panel consisted of Ben Miner, from SiriusXM; Glenn Sumi, of Now; Gary Rideout, from Comedy Bar; Jeff Biederman, producer of CTV’s Spun Out; and myself.
Most of the questions did not focus on women’s issues specifically. Most were about the problems of doing comedy here in Canada, questions I have grappled with since the ice age.
“Listen,” I told them with my characteristic bluntness. “Things are bad, and they’re going to get worse. And frankly, they were never that good to begin with.” Biederman took exception to my comments, noting that each Canadian network has a new sitcom on the air, a pricey commitment. Miner noted that the CRTC forces the networks to spend that money, which makes a few production companies rich but doesn’t put a lot of cash in the hands of those who need it most —working comics.
No one was pleased with the Comedy Network, which this year has exactly zero new locally produced comedy shows.
Finally, the issues specific to women’s comedy came up. No one accused anyone of sexism in the biz. But why, after all this time, was there no gender parity in comedy?
We all agreed that show business is a tough lifestyle and tougher for women than for men, with the constant touring, the loneliness and the grim surroundings. It’s why there are more women in sketch and improv comedy than in stand-up. Women may be drawn to communities and feel they are safe places for self-expression.
No one was trying to say that women aren’t as funny as men, which is Jerry Lewis’ constant refrain. But just because women can do anything a man can do, doesn’t mean they would want to.
Still, I remember, when I first started, back in the ’70s, there weren’t 30 per cent women then.
There were two. Not two per cent. Two women.
As the old ad said, “You’ve come a long way, baby.” And the new SheDot Festival suggests we’ve still got a long way to go.
Post City Magazines’ humour columnist, Mark Breslin, is the founder of Yuk Yuk’s comedy clubs and the author of several books, including Control Freaked.
