Dispatches from the Women in Comedy Festival

As some of you may know, when I'm not being the Associate Artistic Director and Resident Playwright of ReVamp Collective by night, or an administrative extraordinaire by day, I dabble in stand-up comedy. (And by dabble, I mean I've gotten just about gotten my pinkie toe wet - I just started doing stand-up last fall, and have only performed a handful of times, always at "Your Sunday's Best," hosted by the Berserker Residents at Quig's, because they're nice and they like me there.) 

But it's fun and I've been looking for more ways to learn and grow as a stand-up comedian, so when I heard about the Women in Comedy Festival happening in Boston April 19-23, I decided to get my whole damn foot wet, and see what it was all about.

The Women in Comedy Festival is an annual event celebrating (you guess it) funny ladies. The festival doesn't focus solely on stand-up, but also includes improv, sketch, musical comedy, filmmakers and storytellers. Over the course of five days, there were dozens of shows, workshops, panels, interviews, live podcasts and more, featuring headlining acts that included Rachel Dratch, RIta Rudner and Sasheer Zamata.

I was only able to be in Beantown Saturday and Sunday, but I packed a lot in to those 24 hours. Here are some highlights:

• The first event I went to was a live podcast with Lizz Winstead, the co-creator and former head writer of The Daily Show. During the interview, Winstead offered what may very well be the best advice I've ever heard, or at least some good food for thought: "If you're not paying me, feeding me or fucking me, your opinion matters less." It was in response to a question about handling critics and other haters, and it struck a chord with me, and a lot of women in the audience (for the record, all WICF events were open to men as well, and a few of the workshops and sketch/improv groups included men, but it was by and large a female and female-identifying heavy crowd). One of the gender stereotypes that society teaches women is that we have to be people-pleasers, to always be pleasant and agreeable and make sure everyone else is happy first. But how to you do that when you want to be assertive and do bold things that you know will get some people's panties in a twist? The short answer is, you can't. If history has taught us anything, it's that people's panties will get twisted by just about anything, especially a woman boldly voicing her opinions and asserting her place in the world as someone of value. So at some point, you have to set some sort of criteria for who you listen to, and who you block out. If this is what works for Lizz Winstead, maybe it can work for the rest of us.
• I also learned during that interview that Winstead is a co-founder of Lady Parts Justice League, described on its website as "a cabal of comics and writers exposing creeps hellbent on destroying access to birth control and abortion," and "the first not safe for work, rapid response reproductive rights messaging hub that uses comedy, culture and digital media to sound an alarm about the terrifying erosion of reproductive access so people will get off their asses and reclaim their rights." Winstead talked about the work the LPJL has done since its founding in 2012, including comedy shows that benefit independently-run abortion clinics. I felt kind of bad I wasn't aware of it before, but I definitely am now, and you should be too. Learn more at http://www.ladypartsjustice.com/.
• I was also stoked to attend the WICF Writers and Industry Panel Discussion, featuring a stage's worth of comedy writers, performers, producers, talent scouts and agents. It was definitely the funniest panel discussion I've ever attended (one would hope that it would be), and at the risk of sounding cheesy as fuck, really inspiring. While I didn't get the secret to becoming the next great female comedian (although apparently getting noticed on Twitter by Patton Oswalt helps), it was great to be exposed to so many talented, ambitious women who are making it happen. One of the things that stuck with me from the panel was the discussion about viewing your womanhood as an asset in your career - not in the sleazy "I'm going to flash the T & A until I get promoted" kind of way, but for the unique and valuable perspective it provides. Maybe that's obvious, but for me, it felt like looking at the issue through a whole new lens. Sure, being a woman has its disadvantages in almost any field, but let's not forget that there are advantages too. How can being a woman, and having a woman's perspective, be an asset? Why does that make you valuable, whether it's in a writer's room or a boardroom? Sure, the men will still probably try to talk over you while you're expressing your valuable perspective, but keep at it. They'll get there eventually.
• That segues nicely into the last nugget of wisdom that stuck with me from the weekend. On Sunday, I saw another live podcast interview with Rachel Dratch (aka Debbie Downer, aka Boston Teen Denise, aka Jadwiga). During the audience question portion of the talk, a young woman asked Dratch for improv advice. "Don't just go for the girl parts," Dratch said. "If you want to be a dinosaur, be a dinosaur." Dratch's message was that, especially in the anything-goes world of improv, don't impose strict gender roles on yourself, which makes a lot of sense. It's great advice that can be applied to the real world as well.
  

​-Kristen M. Scatton