Wednesday, February 12, 2014

Female Comedienne FAQs

What's it like being a woman in comedy?

To be honest, it's a hard question to answer because I've never been a man in comedy.

The easiest way to describe being a woman in comedy is like, imagine a woman... now imagine she has a job. Yeah. It's like that.

Why do you think there are fewer female comedians?

They die very young. A lot of them die as babies. My guess is, pretty much every woman that dies before their natural time in old age, was going to be a female comedian and then just died so couldn't be.


Do you think it's harder for women in comedy?

Yeah it can be, for example the gig might be really near to the house of one of the male comedians but a 4 hour train ride for the woman, and then it's really much, much harder for the female comic.

Or, she might have truly awful jokes and no persona whatsoever and then it's practically impossible to succeed. It can be very tough.

What female comedians inspire you?

You know what, it's so hard to choose. I once saw Angela Barnes find out she'd had her skirt tucked in her knickers as she walked through the gig and she got over that really quickly and so that was pretty inspirational. She really just, moved on as though it was no big deal and carried on with her life. To be honest though, that's probably as inspired as I've been by a female comic... usually I'm just laughing at them. Because they're more funny than inspiring. I think maybe if Tiff Stevenson cures cancer or Katherine Ryan invents a new musical instrument I might feel inspired a bit more. Lazy bitches.

I'm a big fan of Tim Minchin, I know he's not technically a comedienne but sometimes he breaks all the rules and says things that relate to both genders which I think is just groundbreaking.


Did you always know you wanted to be a comedienne?

No, when I was a childess there were quite a lot of jobs I considered. I remember seeing the male Prime Minister John Major on the TV and thinking he had quite a cool job; I might like to do that. And I had lots of teachers and teachelles when I was youngerette that I thought were really inspiring to my young female mind, so I considered doing that.

I suppose I was always quite female funny when I was youngerette and I had quite a talent for female writing so it was a natural progression into performing comedyenne.

My female mum and my male dad are really supportive and so is my male boyfriend who I do quite a lot of girl writingling and boy writing with. I feel like I've really been able to make comedyenne a part of my lady life and build a lady life around it rather than in spite of it.

Other jobs I considered but rejected include:

Male comedian
Female everything else
Comedian

1 comment: