A WOMAN WALKS IN TO A BAR…
For years, comedy was strictly a men’s-only club. But there’s a new wave of women dominating the scene and shaking up the punchlines. Nell Frizzell takes a moment to celebrate the ladies making us laugh
Celebrating the women of comedy, plus the names to watch
I HAVE SEEN many things on comedy stages over the years: fights, sweat, a fully naked man standing rigid beneath a spotlight with a whole lemon in his mouth, fibreglass heads, people miming cunnilingus, guns, melons, testicles, keytars, and a man with a rucksack full of ice. But when Hannah Gadsby announced during her show Nanette that she was no longer doing selfdeprecating jokes, I was shocked. I felt uneasy, surprised and strange.
It is a simple enough statement, on the surface: no self-deprecating jokes. No more easy pickings about your appearance, your hair, your outfit, your disastrous Tinder chat, what a mess you are in social situations. How you’re crap (or lazy) in bed, your weight, your voice, your gender, your leg length, your accent – your general, total failure in all aspects of life. Gadsby is not going to play that game anymore. She is no longer going to surrender her status, denigrate herself or undermine her talents, simply to put the unenlightened members of her audience at ease. This was renegade. This was pretty near pop-on-a-beret-and-chug-on-a-cigar revolutionary.
‘Using self-deprecating humour has an effect – on you and on the audience,’ says comedian and star of Austentatious Rachel Parris. ‘It’s become too common, too expected for women, for gay people, for people of colour, for anyone whose status is already lowered by the society we live in, to self-deprecate on stage in order to put the audience at ease.’ She continues: ‘What happens if these comedians are, instead, powerful? Confident? Unashamedly smart? If you look at how London Hughes, Suzi Ruffell, Harriet Kemsley or Lolly Adefope use status, they all do it differently, and that’s what feels hopeful.’
“THE BEST WAY TO A MAN’S HEART IS THROUGH HIS HANKY POCKET WITH A BREAD KNIFE” – Jo Brand The comedy world, as you will have noticed, is changing. Women are coming to the fore. Coming in droves, coming in their work clothes and coming up with many of the best, funniest gags. They are changing the dynamic, landscape, tone and texture of comedy in Britain, America, Australia and the big, serious world beyond.
In the past few years, we’ve laughed as Maeve Higgins took on immigration and climate change in her hit podcast series and book Maeve In America, as well as her new podcast Mothers of Invention.
We’ve watched Hannah Gadsby transform her experience of sexual violence, misogyny and homophobia into a rallying cry for #MeToo. We’ve cheered as Michaela Coel brought black female sexuality into the limelight, first in her stage work and then as Tracey, the virginal, sex-obsessed protagonist of her sidesplitting sitcom Chewing Gum. We’ve heard Sara Pascoe turn theories of skull development, the plunger penis and pair-bonding into hilarious shows, such as Sara Pascoe
vs History, LadsLadsLads and her book
“WOMEN ARE COMING to THE FORE, CHANGING the DYNAMIC, LANDSCAPE AND TONE of COMEDY ”
Animal: The Autobiography of a Female
Body. We’ve seen Cariad Lloyd mine the poignant, sometimes hilarious experience of death in her podcast Griefcast. We’ve gasped in delight as Ali Wong spits jokes about America’s near-fascist attitudes to motherhood and maternity leave in a leopard-print dress with a huge baby bump. And we’ve seen Maria Bamford turn her stay in a psychiatric ward into sitcom Lady Dynamite and live album Unwanted Thoughts Syndrome.
It’s been a hilarious time.
These are subjects that aren’t exclusively of interest to women, but are fundamentally funny, interesting and relatable to us – womankind. And you know what? They’re certainly a lot more interesting than yet another routine about begging your girlfriend for a blow job, or getting so drunk on a stag do that you lose your trousers/keys/all sense of dignity. These women are building a new world of comedy that isn’t in opposition to men, at the expense of men or, really, actually to do with men at all. Praise the Lord(ess). Of course, this so-called ‘influx’ of women was not fast, nor should it have been unexpected. ‘It’s happened very slowly, really,’ says comedian and podcast host Cariad Lloyd. ‘It can seem like women are suddenly everywhere, but each one of those comedians has been working so hard – for years. I remember watching [the] Funny Women [awards] in 2OO8 when Katherine Ryan won. That’s ten years ago. People don’t realise that these women have kept gigging and working for decades because they want to, regardless of the politics of the time.’ The phenomenon, she argues, also extends beyond standup comedy: ’Celeste Barber makes Instagram worth looking at; The Guilty Feminist is a hilarious, important podcast that’s empowered a community of women who needed it. I felt immense joy at the all-female 8 Out Of
1O Cats Does Countdown, because every single one of those women is now a household name, and they don’t need any introductions to a mainstream comedy audience. It’s very exciting that we’re now at a point where not every woman has to address gender on stage, because it’s not the strangest thing about them.’
Comedy is the inversion of taboo: we laugh because we didn’t expect the punchline; we didn’t think they’d dare go there. Then they do. And then we gasp out of recognition and cheer when it raps us on the knuckles for being naughty. It is therefore no surprise that the wonder women of comedy can nail their audiences to the wall in ways a 4O-year-old white man holding a pint of Carlsberg never will.
The first time I saw Ali Wong walk out on stage with a prominent baby bump, I realised, with a feeling somewhere between shock and awe, that I had never seen a pregnant woman on stage before. When she described how, although she loves her first baby, sometimes ‘I am on the verge of putting her in the garbage’, my laughter was 5O per cent empathy, 5O per cent relief that someone had finally said it.
When I saw Phoebe Waller-Bridge perform the original stage version of Fleabag upstairs at the Soho Theatre, I couldn’t believe that she was actually talking about having a wank while your boyfriend reads his book with the light firmly on beside you. I turned to the man on my left, a stranger in a T-shirt advertising wood glue, and silently mouthed, ‘It’s true!’
When Daisy May Cooper picked up her BAFTA for Best Female Comedy Performance in This Country, wearing a bespoke Swindon Town football dress without her £1O eBay shoes because they were ‘agony’, I vowed never to wear a cheap shoe again (a rule I broke days later). And when I heard Josie Long describe having a sister as like being in ‘a long-term culturalexchange programme’, I immediately texted my short, quiet, academic, indoorsy sister to tell her that somebody else out there understood.
For decades, women had to perform the near back-breaking task of stroking the male ego, reaching out a hand to like-minded members of the audience while shouldering the burden of centuries of sexism. So for a woman to say ‘no more’ in front of thousands felt like a cannonball of progress whistling past my ear. How did they do it? Well, thanks to podcasts and the big, scrolling world of memes, kittens and the Kardashians otherwise known as the internet, women have been able to find their audience. Without having to navigate all those boring, self-appointed male
“WOMEN ARE BUILDING A NEW WORLD of COMEDY THAT ISN’T ACTUALLY TO DO WITH MEN at ALL”
“A WOMAN WITHOUT A MAN IS LIKE A FISH WITHOUT A BICYCLE ” – Gloria Steinem “COMEDY IS the INVERSION OF TABOO: WE LAUGH BECAUSE WE didn’t THINK THEY’D DARE GO THERE”
‘gatekeepers’ of comedy: the bookers, commissioners, producers, MCs and agents. The men in pubs with their mitts round pint glasses full of fivers. ‘Online content has allowed women to be seen and heard without someone having to decide they’re going to be,’ says comedy director and agent Corrie McGuire.
“GRAVITY IS THE STORY OF HOW GEORGE CLOONEY WOULD RATHER FLOAT AWAY INTO SPACE AND DIE THAN SPEND ONE MORE MINUTE WITH A WOMAN HIS OWN AGE” – Tina Fey “WE HAVE the RIGHT to BE SHINY, FOULMOUTHED, PERVERSE, SLAPSTICK, REVELATORY
and SILLY ”
Then there is the matter of support – literally, the environment among comedians, as well as who you pick as a support act. ‘I’ve always felt supported by other women in comedy,’ says comedian Lolly Adefope. ‘When Andrew Lawrence went on a Facebook rant about the state of comedy, referencing the ‘women posing as comedians’ on Mock the Week, I decided to set up a comedy night called Women Posing
As Comedians. We had all-women line-ups that always sold out – it felt like a very cool moment of women coming together.’
When Amy Schumer performed at Soho Theatre this year, she got Desiree Burch, Aisling Bea and Felicity Ward (all locals to the British comedy scene) to open for her. Katherine Ryan, Josie Long and Rob Delaney also use their support slots to give female comedians additional exposure. Prominent women in the industry, such as Tania Harrison, arts curator for Latitude festival, or Jude Kelly, former artistic director at London’s Southbank Centre, open the gates for women to step out on stage. Plus, panel shows face mounting pressure to not just book four men every single week. As a result, the male stranglehold on comedy has loosened.
Forget pinging bras, rubber chickens and being the butt of the joke: women are picking through the rocks and rubble of contemporary life and polishing up the fragments until they shine like Beyoncé’s crystal-covered bodysuits with laughter, recognition and joy. They are doing so on stage, behind a screen in a writers’ room, on the radio, in rooms above pubs, on podcasts and in your living rooms while you watch from your sofa.
As Hannah Gadsby says, women are powerful, have the right to be angry, and want to be heard. But we also have the right to be shiny, foul-mouthed, perverse, slapstick, revelatory, puerile, affable and silly. We’re not punchbags or punchlines; we’re punching through and laughing all the way to the top.