Final Project

For my final project I wanted to attempt to marry one of my interests with what we've learned and discussed this semester. I chose to focus on comedy, particularly improv. I have been doing improv at UCB (Upright Citizens Brigade) since February 2014. While I am still a student at the theatre, I perform on an indie team called Clutch. We've been together for just over a year, and we perform all around the city. Through Clutch, I've been able to meet some incredible performers (male and female). But this project focuses solely on the female performers.

 

My teammate Alli's video

Recently there's been a lot of coverage on "Women in Comedy". Some herald this time as unprecedented, some say it's undeserved, and some say it's always been here and the recent reporting on it sucks. My personal stance on it remains a bit mixed. On the one hand, it's great to see more reporting on female voices, but on the other hand they've always been here and it's kind of annoying that important female voices have been ignored for so long (or worse still they aren't seen on the same field as men in comedy). Women are funny, and they don't need genre films or labels like "comedianne" to further divide them from their male counterparts. With this attitude in mind, I set out to interview my teammates and figure out what they thought about all this.

My interviews are very conversational and I kept the editing very simple and restrained. I set out to talk about origins, the role of the gender binary, hopes and dreams for the future, and current reflections on the state of comedy now. The interviews are broken down into smaller pieces so that the viewer can decide what they'd like to learn more about. There's always room to for more, so I kept my interviews open ended; I plan to continue them in the future. Below I've included part one of Alli's interview. The rest can be found on Youtube.

Sources: Butler, Judith. Gender Trouble. Class reading.
              Fey, Tina. Bossypants. Book.
              Hitchens, Christopher. "Why Women Still Don't Get It". Vanity Fair.
              Kang, Inkoo. "...The Summer of Female Comedies". Vanity Fair.
              Koester, Megan. "Why It Sucks to Be a Woman in Comedy". Vice.
              Lamont, Tom. "Maya Rudolph: 'I'm not a woman in comedy, I'm a comedian'.
              The Guardian.
              Poehler, Amy. Yes Please. Book.
              Tales From the Darkside. NYWIFT Event.
              Women Aren't Funny. Film.
              Women Who Kill. Film.