Comic collector

How many women does it take to do a stand–up act? About the same as the number of men.

Five comedians walk into a bar. There’s me, Andrew Clay, Jeremy Elwood, Andrew (A.K.) Kovacevich and Roso, our MC and promoter. It is 2002 and we’re playing a gig at an Auckland suburban rugby club.

I remember the night for two reasons. It was one of the last gigs I did with AK before he died. Big burly bearded AK, who, along with the comedy, also played large godlike creatures in Xena and Hercules, was one of the boys who encouraged me to do stand-up 10 years before. His accidental death in May 2002 rocked all of us, and I still miss him.

The second reason I remember that night is also down to AK. Sizing the five of us up, the club manager looks hard at me and asks, “So which one of you is the stripper?” Stepping into his line of sight, AK looks quite hard back at him and growls, “I am.”

We’re a tight-knit bunch – hugely judgemental about comedy (our own and each other’s) but pretty accepting about everything else – age, gender, race, sexuality, disability, bad personal hygiene and general weirdness. If you make it work at the microphone, you’re in.

Although it is true that women are so rare in comedy that when you’re hanging about off-stage, first assumptions are that you’re either staff or someone’s girlfriend. And back in the early days of NZ stand-up, you could feel audiences tense up as a female comedian took that long walk from side-of-stage to the microphone. “Jeez, man-hating and period jokes? Or just lame?”

We’re over it, and they’re over it now. There are enough established and experienced women doing comedy for audiences to trust them to deliver – although with notable exceptions. I’ll note this one: a male comedian I work with overheard a conversation at a gig we were doing in a small Australian town: “Hey, it’s a chick,” one bloke observed as I walked to the mic. “Let’s watch the bitch die.” Then a few minutes later: “F**k, she’s really good.” Apparently, he sounded highly disappointed.

Women are often the harshest critics of women who do comedy. Sometimes I get: ‘I don’t usually like female comedians, but I like you.’ This is a tricky conversation starter - I get caught between wanting to defend the fabulous women I work with, and feeling honour-bound to thank the nice lady for what she meant as a compliment. Usually I go for: “You should see more live comedy – there are heaps of us around. Not exactly heaps, here or globally, but enough to make a show. To prove that, each year at the NZ International Comedy Festival in Auckland and Wellington, we put on a line-up show just with the women. Divas has been a hot ticket for a long time and we love doing it – it smells nicer backstage and it’s one of the rare times we get to share a bill.

Someone, somewhere decided that if a comedy show was a meal, women would be the carbohydrates and you could only serve one at a time – no rice or pasta with your mashed potato. Possibly, bookers still regard us a novelty act – one magician, one midget, one woman per show.

Or maybe we’re a risk because they once saw a female comedian who wasn’t good. Remarkably, they forget they’ve also seen one or two male comedians who weren’t up to snuff but don’t consider limiting the risk of putting too many of their sort on in one night in case it doesn’t fly.

Sometimes it’s just perception. As one of the regulars on TV3’s comedy show, 7 Days, I get rotated in as often as the boys in my pool – about every third show. But because there aren’t many women in the pool, and they want at least one for each episode, it’s easy to pop up looking like the token girl. Really, if you thought about it hard, you could also spot the token white guy with beard. (Though there are usually two of them per episode – they’re fairly thick on the ground.)

And sometimes, being a female comedian instead of just a comedian works in my favour. On the corporate circuit, there’s a particular male performer who seems to offend all the women at various annual functions. So the following year, I get the call. “The ladies say they’ll only come back this year if we book someone who will relate to them.” Bless him – I owe him a beer.
Michele A'Court