No-holds-barred comedy thrusts all-female cast into spotlight
EAST PROVIDENCE — Doreen Collins feels that Rhode Island is supportive of comedy in general, and her perception is that people are going to live theater more than they were during the Great Recession. But asked how Rhode Island is supporting women in comedy and what it could do better, Doreen Collins replied that Rhode Island is doing nothing to promote women in comedy. She's working on that. Collins has been presenting the comedy show “Women Behind Barz” – a title she explains in the show – with comedian Coleen Galvin and a different female guest for each show. She calls it a “menage-a-ha” and the “Sisterhood of the Traveling Smarty Pants.”
“It is an all-female comedy show, but not your traditional open, middle and
headliner,” Collins said. “I have primarily a theater background, [and] I wanted to make it a little less stand-up-y and a little more theatrical, plus I didn't want to write a whole show” – hence the casting of two female comics.
She added, “My main reason for creating it was to highlight female performers, because that doesn't happen often enough, and there are a lot of us.”
The restaurant B. Pinelli's, located at 736 N. Broadway, is presenting “Women Behind Barz” on May 19. Tickets are $45, which includes dinner at 6 p.m. and the show at 8 p.m.
The show features Collins, Galvin and guest Andrea Henry. Comedian Charlie Hall, a dear friend of Collins, will open the show. (Yes, Collins realizes that her “allgal gala” includes a guy.)
Collins opens the show by singing parodies of songs by Cher, Madonna and other one-named lady greats. Her brother, Billy Collins, wrote the original songs.
Doreen Collins acts as the host by opening the show, closing the show and performing between each act. But she still gives herself the same amount of time as each of the other two performers, at 30 minutes.
The three are sometimes onstage at the same time, and the transitions are more conversational than in traditional stand-up nights.
Collins, 57, has been on the NBC 10 shows “UnReal Deal,” “NBC 10 Wedding Showcase” and “Rhode Bytes.” She came to Rhode Island after living in Philadelphia, and then New York, and then Boston. Collins was a theater major at New York University.
In October of 2015, she became the first woman to be inducted into the Rhode Island Comedy Hall of Fame. The other inductees are Rockin' Joe Hebert, Charlie Hall, John Perrotta, Tom Cotter, Funny 4 Funds (Mike Murray and Bill Simas), Frank O'Donnell and Ace Aceto.
Coleen Galvin, a Pawtucket native who has been on the comedy scene since 1987, has appeared on Comedy Central's “Tough Crowd with Colin Quinn.” She has won the Rhode Island Comedy Search and Rhode Island's Funniest Comic.
Andrea Henry's credits include “Last Comic Standing,” Nickelodeon's Search for America's Funniest Mom, Boston Comedy Festival, The Women in Comedy Festival and Chicago Women's Funny Festival.
Henry is also a member of the Fashion Police for Us Weekly, and she has a short film “about her adventures in a beauty pageant for married women.
“We're really a well-rounded generational show,” Collins said, “and just because we're women it's not just for women, although we have found that women are the most supportive.”
She and Galvin were originally trying not to pigeonhole themselves as a “girls night out” type of show, but then she thought, “Why not? That's who's out.”
Her material is largely about her dating history while Galvin's material is “familyoriented but not family-friendly,” Collins said.
The advice Collins and Galvin give to the swing spot is: Know your audience.
“Because we hire comedians that have been around, they know that they can't come into a venue like the Stadium [Theatre] and say [expletive] every other word,” Collins said.
“Read your audience. And we don't belong in a bar entertaining 20-year-olds who don't have kids yet. They are kids; they don't care.”
“Women Behind Barz” was last held at the Stadium Theatre on April 14, and it will be there again on Sept. 9. The show will also be at Newport Grand Casino on Mother's Day and at The Village, in Providence, on Sept. 8.
“It's a show that you can come back to more than once and not say, 'Again?'” Collins said. “Because thankfully with the song parodies, usually when you laugh through stuff, you miss stuff, and we try to change it up to keep it fresh, and we do actually have repeat people.”
In the future, Collins hopes to donate a portion of proceeds from shows to a women-related charity, whether it's an organization that literally supports women behind bars, a domestic violence charity or something else on the “never-ending list of where we can help.”