Stand Up and Sock It To them Sister (eBook)

Gwenno Dafydd (Autor)

eBook Download: EPUB

2024
450 Seiten
Parthian Books (Verlag)
978-1-910901-55-7 (ISBN)

Infos

'Funny is Funny' -- Joan Rivers But how do you make it in the world of comedy if you are a woman? With Stand Up and Sock It to Them Sister, writer, actress and performer Gwenno Dafydd looks at the genesis of female comedy from the time of music hall and supper clubs in Victorian London through to the excitement and challenge of the international world of stand-up from Edinburgh to Cape Town to Mumbai to New York and Los Angeles before finally returning to the comedy clubs of London. Stand Up and Sock It to Them Sister tells us in the words of the performers themselves what they had to face and overcome, in an often male-dominated and aggressively competitive world, to make it to the top in comedy. And why and how they do it. Stand Up and Sock It to Them Sister seeks to explain why the women chose comedy and what they have had to sacrifice to make it. It is an inspiring story of empowerment with a resonance for women everywhere trying to create, work and achieve in the modern world. With insightful interviews from over seventy performers and a concise and entertaining commentary this book offers a practical guide and invaluable advice on the practice and challenges of being a stand-up comedian through a unique section of Tips for the Top. Stand up and Sock it To Them Sister is the result of twenty years of extensive research with interviews with over seventy five comics working world-wide from the pioneering Joan Rivers, Jo Brand, Jenny Eclair, Helen Lederer, to newcomers such as Nina Conti, Shazia Mirzah, and Amy Schumer.

Gwenno Dafydd has been a professional broadcaster, singer and actress since 1980, when she began her performing career as a street singer in Belgium, after completing her Drama and Welsh Certificate in Education at Barry Teacher Training College. Since that time she has worked extensively in film, television, radio, theatre in education and cabaret. She has had numerous pieces of work and articles published. Stand Up and Sock It to Them Sister came about as part of her research for a Masters degree in Women's Studies which she began in 1994. It has been a labour of love and a long and fascinating journey.

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INTRODUCTION

When I was growing up I used to love comedy but could never find out an awful lot about funny women, there just weren’t any specific books about them. I loved to make people laugh and liked nothing better than to have a laugh and mess about but by the time I was a teenager in the seventies and had started to really question my place in society – it seemed to be men who were creating the funny on the telly and women were the ones being made fun of by the men. Very curious!

As I grew older and started working as a professional performer, there didn’t seem to be many funny roles for women (which was a big shame as I felt I’d be great at them) to apply for and when I did get those funny roles (see the Appendix for photos) I felt I had to wait an awful long time before the next opportunity arose. Now why was this and why was I constantly being told that women weren’t funny? I was funny. I made people laugh and I had loads of female friends who were also funny, so what was all that nonsense about?

When I got to my mid-thirties in the mid-nineties, my itinerant life as a professional performer did not fit in with being the mother of a brand new baby, although it didn’t deter me from making four programmes for S4C travelling 3,000 miles in six weeks around the continent on a motor bike!!!!! (Thanks to my Mam and Dad and ‘Papa’ for looking after the babe!) and I went to Cardiff University to do a Master’s Degree in Women’s Studies. For my thesis I chose to do a study about women working in a non-traditional working environment and, as I still had lots of unanswered questions and I wanted to link into one of my passions, I decided to study female stand-up comics and find out more about their lives.

The initial study consisted of five comics including three very well-known comics at the time, Jo Brand, Jenny Éclair and Donna McPhail, as well as young black comic Lorraine Benloss and Welsh comic Wendy Kane. It was very well received, I wanted to find out more, and this led me to continue to research the topic until I arrived in 2016 having spoken to and picked the brains of well over eighty people. An awful lot has happened to women’s participation in the comedy scene from when I began my master’s degree back in 1996, to when I finally put my pen down late 2016 when I amalgamated all my research into this comprehensive and definitive study of women’s stand-up comedy – ‘Stand Up & Sock it to them Sisters! Funny, Feisty Females’. In this book you will find out what these exciting developments are, how we can all learn so much from FSUCs (Female Stand Up Comics) and how we can integrate those feisty elements to make our own lives as empowering as possible, whether we are male or female. I learnt a heck of a lot and so could you!!

One of the most important things I found when researching, was how important other (female) Comic Role Models were to present FSUCs and also how invisible large chunks of women’s history had become. This is largely because publishing costs lots of money, and is not necessarily about reflecting a true account of events – it can be someone’s specific perspective of it and it is often about making money. Historically, publishing houses were usually run by men and they would be the ones making choices and decisions about what their customers wanted, what would and wouldn’t sell. This lost history, or ‘her’ story belongs rightfully to us as women, we can learn so much from those who came before us (if we only knew about them!) and with the advent of self-publishing and ebooks, we are no longer as dictated to by male whims and decisions as we were previously.

This book will do several things, the first one being to totally blow right out of the water the BIG MYTH that women are not funny. Secondly it will capture and reinvigorate for future generations, some of the phenomenally strong, determined and funky, feisty, funny females who have for the most part been lost from women’s history. These amazing women have historically given birth to the direct lineage of their fiery twenty first century offspring and it will be an honour to, thirdly, introduce you to the funny women surfing solidly on what I consider to be the emerging excitement of a new fourth wave of feminism.

And finally, if you can make it in the stand-up comedy world, one of the most emotionally challenging and misogynist environments to work in, then the barriers you will encounter in any other environments such as politics, banking, law or education etc. will seem comparatively easy. One of the findings that I had from my research, was that the glass ceiling can be shattered by the same tools no matter what the profession.

Throughout the book you will hear about various aspects of their lives: how they were brought up, their education, where they were able to flex their comedy muscles, who helped them, either practically or by inspiring them, what sort of environments they work in, including a patriarchal society with unspoken and invisible rules defined by men, and see how they have blasted their way through their own glass ceilings to make a success. I will also be backing up what they say by referring to other people’s research to really strengthen my case and putting in my own pennyworth.

The final chapter is called, ‘Tips for the Top – How to make it in a funny man and any man’s world’. ‘Tips for the Top’ will certainly give you some very useful advice directly from some incredible women and some very supportive men, not only those who are FSUCs, but also those who are involved in other aspects of comedy, in films, animation, comedy promoters and even some funny female politicians who have also found a space in society to verbalise their experience as FSUCs have done. I hope you will find this book both interesting and entertaining. There are a few jokes in places but to actually see my Interviewees in action and laugh your pants off – check out their websites, go and see them perform, check out Google, check out youtube and come to the same conclusion as I have, that women can be hilariously funny so let’s just accept that and move on!

It has taken me nearly twenty years to engage with all these women and men and all the advice they have given me has all come from them directly either through face to face interviews, phone to phone, Skype or email or Facebook messaging.

As this book has been growing progressively over the last twenty years all the interviews are just snapshots of a time when I spoke to a particular person. Their professional and personal circumstances may have changed dramatically since that time, so do bear this in mind. People marry, divorce, split-up, change partners, go to live in another country, have children etc. etc. All you need to bear in mind is that when I spoke to that person this is what they told me. I have tapes of their conversations and a note book full to the brim of things they told me and a lot of those things will never ever be disclosed!!

I have seen an awful lot of these female comics live and none of them have ‘bombed’ or ‘died’ whilst I have been in the audience. I am not making any judgements on any of their work, just presenting them to you so that you can make your own decisions. I feel highly privileged to have been able to connect with them all on a personal level and for them to trust me enough that I will not misrepresent them in any negative way. I have honoured that promise and thank them from the bottom of my heart.

They form a vast variety of individuals at various points in their careers, from Britain, America, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, Japan, India, Greece and South Africa. Some are at the top of their game such as Joan Rivers (RIP – she was alive when I met her!) and Amy Schumer and others taking the mike for their first few years such as Holly Burn and Fern Brady. I have interviewed some utterly AMAZING FSUCs. They include:

• The world’s oldest FSUC
• The world’s youngest FSUC
• The world’s first Muslim FSUC
• The first Black British FSUC
• The first Indian FSUC
• The first Greek FSUC
• The first British Asian FSUC
• The first Northern Irish FSUC
• Two pioneering Latina FSUCs
• An original British Alternative FSUC
• Two sets of New York based Mother and daughter FSUCs
• FSUCs who like to mask their talent
• FSUCs who bare their souls to the world
• One FSUC who reveals her nether regions on stage
• One FSUC who is very demure and dresses entirely in black.
• FSUCs who have...

Produkt-Details

• Erscheint lt. Verlag: 19.8.2024
• Sprache: englisch
• Themenwelt: Geisteswissenschaften ► Geschichte
• Schlagworte: Comedy • female comics • Gwenno Dafydd • history of comedy • Stand Up and Sock ito to them sister • women in comedy
• ISBN-10: 1-910901-55-5 / 1910901555
• ISBN-13: 978-1-910901-55-7 / 9781910901557