Audiences are more prepared to laugh at men because convention says women aren't funny. Comic Anne Gildea disagrees
OK, let's get one thing straight. Comedy is a business for the boys: any women are the exceptions that prove the rule. Hand on breast, I say that as a female comic. Only three of the 49 performers standing up at the 10th Cat Laughs Comedy Festival, which begins in Kilkenny next week, are women. I could say grrr, but, it being half a generation since I first got involved in comedy, ho-hum is what I really think. Ho-hum. Yes, there are more stand-up ladies out there who could have been booked, just to balance the genders, but as it's a non-issue with the festival sponsors, funders, punters and booker, does it really matter? Let's just get on with laughing at the men. Sorry, with the men. That's comedy.
The 46:3 ratio reflects what we already know: a lot fewer women than men do stand-up. Any woman involved in comedy for five minutes will have had a (usually female) journalist on the phone, looking for a quote for her why-are-so-few-women-involved-in-comedy article. In the most recent I read, Jo Brand replied that being asked this question yet again made her weep tears of boredom. Readers, please hold the waterworks: that's not where I'm going with this. I hope.
Luckily for me, a Trinity undergraduate called Brona Titley has just written her dissertation on a related topic. I'll leave a pithy summation to her: "This under- representation can only be connected to the historical and domestic role of women in society . . . and the cultural conditioning of the audience. Women rarely enjoy success in this field, but the ones who do seem either to appropriate male characteristics in order to survive and contend with the rules of play (e.g. Ellen DeGeneres) or to portray an exaggerated or archetypical form of the female, in order to subvert the expectations of an audience unwilling to trust a suspicious source (e.g. Joan Rivers)." E.g. The Nualas, I might add. That's what Susan Collins, Tara Flynn and I did instinctively when we formed The Nualas. Subvert and get on.
Brand is one of the finest comics to emerge from the London circuit. She's a bit on the hefty side, as they say where I come from. When she started she called herself The Seamonster. Ironic? Yes and no. It was only when she'd established herself as a headline act, and a huge draw, that she felt comfortable reverting to her real name.
"You're a nice small crowd," she commented in those early days.
"So are you," came an audience retort. I'm reminded of a comic - for the sake of discretion I'll just call him Nylon Doorman - who once mused to me that a woman can't be sexy and funny. I'd just had a so-so gig, so I took it as a compliment.
Any woman gigging as a solo stand-up will soon get used to being the only woman on the bill. Introduced by a male MC, preceded and followed by men, touring with men, she will have to find her comedy voice in a relentlessly male context.
Personally, I found this problematic. I started out in London. I loved comedy, as well as the challenge of learning the craft of writing and performing comedy, and I fully accepted that I was entering an arena that was predominantly male. The London circuit wouldn't be there but for all those funny men, fair play to them. But I found the unremitting machismo wearing.
"She was all right; I'd f*** her," an MC told the audience after I'd done one of my first try-out spots. Whatever attracted me to the business in the first place, I found the reality there repugnant. How do you legislate for this - insist everyone be more lovely? No. Comedy's not ladylike. At the memorial show for Bill Hicks, at the first comedy festival in Kilkenny, in 1995, a young American stand-up recalled the advice he received from the late, great comic.
"Stand-up is about three things," Hicks told the novice as they drank together in a late-night restaurant. "Control, control, control." Then, to underline his point, he threw up in a shot glass, stopping just as his vomit reached the rim.
I asked Kathleen O'Rourke, a talented new Irish female comic, how she found starting out. "At first," she said, "I saw it as an advantage. Always being the only woman on the bill was something different: it made me stand out. But then I realised I had to work a lot harder for the audience. I should have expected that anyway: whenever I went to gigs before I started myself, and a woman got up, I'd be the one folding my arms and sitting back. It's terrible, isn't it, but I just assumed the woman wouldn't be funny."
Ah it's that old chestnut again: "But are women funny, anyway?" It reminds me of the brilliant comic, let's just call him Hardened Manifold, who years ago told me: "Anne, women aren't funny, but you are." And guess what, whenever I'm going through a comedy low I remember him saying it, and it makes me feel better. Deconstruct that yourself.
All I'm doing is pointing out some of the ways in which the meaning of being a woman on stage differs from being a man. Sometimes it's hard to be a woman, sometimes it's hard to be a man. Comedy is hard. Full stop. It's competitive and fraught for everyone, man or woman. And the uniqueness of being a woman in a male-dominated industry can, as O'Rourke says, be an advantage. One contemporary and massively successful Irish female comic, Deirdre O'Kane has played the only-Irish-female-comic card to great effect. A couple of years ago, when she was the only woman on the bill at a high-profile charity gig, her publicist noted not only the exoticism of her being a woman but also that "her material is not stereotypically female". A peculiar bird is the female comic, rare to the point of almost non- existence, yet potentially stereotypical. You can't win - or can you?
It is a man's world, but last November I had the privilege to be part of an all-female gig at Dublin's Comedy Cellar, in Dublin. It was a resounding success, and every woman on stage that night shone. Priscilla Robinson: "My father is a Baptist preacher. That's like being a Catholic priest, except you get to push the pram in public." Sue Collins as Stoneybatter superwoman Carmel: "That's not cellulite, I sat on a hairbrush." Pom Boyd, a.k.a Windy Lady: "Some of the buses have gone very small nowadays, haven't they? Ah, it's a rip off. They must think we're all eejits." Tara Flynn, wishing she could be her Cork self in voiceovers: "Kellogg's. Stay special, but don't get too up yourself, all right, you're not that good-looking." Kathleen O'Rourke: "I just came out of one of those, you know, really intense two-year relationships that lasted a week."
I compèred: "Hello, and welcome to Funny Girls." (It's the way I tell them.) We've gone on to promote this show independently around Dublin. Sisters, we're doing it for ourselves. I heard of one comedy whippersnapper who was disgusted by us promoting a show on the back of it being exclusively female. "Funny Girls," he said. "You wouldn't put on a show called Funny Men." That's exactly the point, sonny.
As for Kilkenny, what can I say? Every comic on the bill is world class. What am I advocating, positive discrimination? Yes, actually. The quality of the line-up would not be compromised by the inclusion of a few more females. And in an art form that involves such a dynamic and immediate commentary on life, politics and everything, hearing a fair proportion of female voices is essential.
It's a gift to be booked to play the Cat Laughs. There are many superb stand-ups in the world, and lots of them lobby hard to be part of the festival. Inevitably, there are disappointments. As my favourite Irish comic - let's just call him Hieronymous Anonymous - said to me: "I'm a bit disappointed I won't be in Kilkenny this year, because I wanted to play in the soccer match." Kilkenny, another one for the boys. Enjoy.
The Murphy's Cat Laughs Comedy Festival starts on June 3rd and runs until June 7th. See www.thecatlaughs.com
