Lucie Guest's Never Better is one of the short films screening at this year's festival.

Females in Film | Film Festival & Event Profiles | Film Festivals | Massachusetts | New England

Women in Comedy Festival

A conversation with the founders of the Women in Comedy Festival

13 Apr , 2017  

Written by Emma Schlenoff | Posted by:

NewEnglandFilm.com and the co-producers of the Women in Comedy Festival talk diversity in media, smashing gender stereotypes, and the impressive line-up for the 2017 festival.

Michelle Barbera, Elyse Schuerman and Christine Cannavo are women on a mission. As co-producers of the 8th Annual Women in Comedy Festival (WICF), they are determined to flip the switch on diversity in media, provide the tools and space for women to tell their stories, and to put on a hilarious festival. NewEnglandFilm.com’s Emma Schlenoff jumped at the opportunity to chat about their intentions for the WICF organization, and share in their excitement for this year’s festival.

This year is set to be their biggest festival to date, with 89 events in 19 venues throughout Cambridge and Boston. The 2017 festival kicks off Wednesday, April 19th and runs through Sunday, April 23rd. The line-up includes: acclaimed comedians, improv, sketch and stand-up performances, musical acts, as well as two short film contests and multiple workshops led by industry experts. Highlights include an All-Star Improv show featuring Rachel Dratch, a workshop about crafting quality characters with Kelly Edwards of HBO, and The Rachel Bloom Comedy Short Challenge. 

Emma Schlenoff: What can we expect at this year’s festival?

Michelle Barbera: We are all thrilled with this year’s line-up. We have Rita Rudner headlining and receiving the WICF Award for Excellence for her contribution to comedy. Rachel Dratch, a local to Lexington, MA will be performing, as well as giving an in-depth interview. We also have Sasheer Zamata and her improv troop Doppelgänger, featuring Nicole Byer and Keisha Zollar. They premiered at the WICF in 2011. Since then, Sasheer’s gone on to SNL, Nicole Byer has her own show on MTV and Keisha Zollar has numerous TV and theater appearances. So, instead of having a 90-seat intimate show, we are having them kick off the whole festival at the Summerville Theater.

I’m really excited about the film portion of the festival. It was Elyse and Christine’s brainchild back in 2015. This year we got hundreds of submissions, and we added The Rachel Bloom Challenge. It’s another way for people to be inspired, and for us to spur people to make stuff!

ES: Can you elaborate on the film festival and your intentions behind it?

Elyse Schuerman: The area that I felt like needed the most work in representation was in film and television. In that industry, directors, producers and screenwriters are mostly men. In late night television, the writers are about 10 percent women. I felt like the best way for us to have an impact on that in our festival, was to push women to do more filmmaking. So, we started these two different short contests.

Rachel Bloom was so gracious to be the figurehead of this year’s challenge. I just love that fact that we got women and their allies to pick up a camera and make a short that had a female at the center. It was really inspiring to go through all of those films. Sometimes it looked like it was their first film, but just to have the impetus to do it is so important.

Christine Cannavo: One of the requirements was that a woman had to be a writer, director or producer on the film. Looking at the film crews, it was nice to see a 50/50 mix of directors, writers, producers and cinematographers. I once had a sitcom script that was accepted into a festival, and a casting agent from a big network said to me, ‘It’s not that we are catering to men, we just don’t want to alienate them from our programming.’ Basically she meant that to appeal to men, we have to make stuff that’s not too ‘girly.’ People still say that.

I want to smash that myth. It gets tiresome watching the same things over and over. You can see people being drawn to things they’ve never seen before, like Transparent. It’s easier for a man to reach down and grab for the hand of a man who looks just like him, but it’s really something when those cis, white males in positions of power reach down and grab a female or a non-binary person.

Barbera: I think an important thing with the film festival is that as women, we are so used to accepting male protagonists, and accepting that their experiences are universally felt in many ways. But, the reverse has not really sunk in for men. They’re not latching themselves onto women’s stories and accepting the universality and relatability the way that women have been forced to. My hope is that when we get our numbers up, men will no longer be seen as the default ‘every person,’ especially white men.

Schuerman: Growing up in the 80’s and 90’s, we were supposed to be the girl in glasses, pushing the funny man’s story along. We are underrepresented, and we need to be able to tell our stories through our eyes. We’ve seen ourselves on the screen for so many years as one way.  All of the sudden women are behind the camera, and in the writing room and we are finding a different way to see ourselves.

ES: Tell me about the workshops you have scheduled.

Barbera: On our kick off day, the Vice-President of Talent for HBO, Kelly Edwards is going to be teaching a workshop about developing and crafting your characters to go the distance—from your 20 minute pilot to 100 episodes. One things she mentioned is that they don’t get that many comedy scripts, so here’s another place where a lot of women could be increasing their numbers. The workshop is only $5, and all the proceeds go to the Geena Davis Institute on Gender in Media.

We also have Victor Varnado who is performing at the festival, but also works a lot in film and television. He’s going to be teaching a class on Saturday April 22nd in South Boston on how to make your your film or videos look great on a low budget. We’ve got a Podcasting 101 workshop taught by Chris Duffy, who is the host and creator of You’re the Expert on NPR, and Ken Reid who is the host of TV Guidance Counselor. They will being teaching the basics of the technical side of making a podcast.

Saturday at 12:00 pm is the Writers and Industry Panel. Erin Judge is hosting and will be joined by Jessica Pilot (comedy producer and talent scout at CBS), Elisa Bayne (comedy writer, producer and ghost writer for top comedians), Eliza Skinner (writer for James Corden), Naomi Ekperigin (writer for Broad City Difficult People), and Jenny Jaffe (Nikki and Sara Live, Big Hero 6). We will host two in-depth conversations, one with Lizz Winstead (the creator of The Daily Show,) and the other with Rachel Dratch (SNL).

ES: Besides making me laugh, why put on a festival?

Schuerman: I think one thing that stands out about our festival is that we are about getting our performers all that they need to further their careers. We bring talent scouts to our shows and help them with technology. Other festivals do that, but it’s become one of the most important parts about what we do and what our mission is.

Cannavo: The festival is a platform to allow people to gain access to decision makers, and allow them the opportunity to show what they can do. Years ago, I went to a panel with casting directors and people from Hollywood. The first words out of one of the casting director’s mouth was ‘my job is to keep you out,’ and I thought ‘what?!’ The panels that we’ve hosted at WICF have been filled with warmth and welcome. More than anything, we are about giving people access to grow and to be seen.

Barbera: One thing that really stands out about the WICF is that we are not exclusively women in comedy. It includes people across genders, and we did that because we wanted to flip the ratio that you see at most festivals, line-ups and comedy clubs. This year we have 89 percent women. It’s good for men to perform in this situation. It’s a really positive thing to see a lot of women perform, and I think it makes the men stronger allies by opening their eyes to what the comedy world is missing. And for us, it’s really important to not be exclusive.

This interview has been condensed and edited.

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