Summer is slowly approaching which means one thing: Festival season is almost upon us! Right now the festival everyone is talking about is V Festival.
Just in case the news has passed you by, V Festival is putting on some comedy, which is great! We love comedy! However, when the line-up of 25 acts was released a week or so ago it featured no women. Which is not great, because it means V Festival is missing out on some very funny comedians.
We were pleased to see that this didn't go unnoticed, and the Twitter-sphere has been alight with comment and speculation about the thinking (or lack of…) behind this.
Since the original line-up was released V Festival has now booked Dana Alexander and issued this statement: “We would like to point out that every effort has been made to ensure a balanced line-up at V Festival’s comedy tent. We have targeted numerous female comedians, 14 of which were unavailable including Jen Brister, Katherine Ryan and Suzi Ruffell. The line-up is not yet finalised, more offers are out, Dana Alexander is now confirmed (and was prior to this story breaking), upcoming additions will include both female and male comedians.”
But just one is still a little paltry, no? BBC Radio 4's Today Programme obviously thought so and invited comedians Fern Brady and Dave Fulton on to the airwaves this morning to discuss why comedy bookers struggle to find women stand-ups.
Fern kicked off the discussion to say that while we are all bemoaning the lack of women on the V Festival line up, she also didn't care for the positive discrimination of women comedians as proposed by the BBC’s Danny Cohen. Fern finds it very hard to believe, as we do, that there were no women available to come to V Festival.
Funny Women founder Lynne Parker echoes this: “How many men did they have to approach before they got their line up! We see hundreds of new female acts every year and the acts they approached are so good they are inevitably booked up months ahead. Try harder and book them earlier!”
An article in the Independent, which has documented this whole sorry business, goes on to explain that, “The comics at this year’s V Festival were booked by the agency Off the Kerb, whose acts are primarily men – of 49 acts listed on the company’s online artists’ page, just four are women. Last year four female comedians performed at Virgin’s weekend event; the year before, none did.”
Comedian Jen Brister commenting in the same article,said that the unbalanced line up was “a very small symptom of a much bigger problem.”
Lynne continues: “This is, sadly, old and tired news as well as a big problem. What has happened with V Fest is replicated day in day out in a comedy club near you, which is exactly why I set up Funny Women over 12 years ago. It is just that this time around the block somebody saw that the emperor isn’t wearing any clothes and shouted out to the media! What? No women, they cried!”
Meanwhile, back at the Today Programme, Dave Fulton went on to suggest that women weren't working the club circuit enough – which we are not convinced by, come and see one of our shows Dave! He did point out another issue with television bookers who appear to only choose very young comics for panel shows and sit coms, so that women in comedy are dealing with ageism as well as sexism.
Somebody on our Twitter feed commented that the bigger promoters are the worst culprits. There is some truth in this because they wait for acts and their agents to approach them rather than rely on their own talent scouting. They also watch to see which new acts come through the competitions like the Funny Women Awards, So You Think You’re Funny and Amused Moose. Even then, they want them to gain provenance on the circuit before they commit to booking them.
The culture has changed and everybody is very risk averse with venues having to compete with the fact that comedy is so readily accessible on television and online. Even the very commendable annual Channel 4 Comedy Gala for Great Ormond Street only booked three female acts this year. This is also booked by Off the Kerb, by the way. Just saying…
Yet comedy audiences are quite happy when we serve up new, interesting and (dare we say) female acts because we commit to our brand – within that we set the standard and gain their trust. What is so annoying is that the bookers at V Festival and other big events don’t look further than their noses. If they talked to producers like us we could easily recommend great female acts. It has never been easier to put together a rich and diverse range of comedy so it’s timely that they have been exposed.
We would be interested in your thoughts. Please comment below or catch us on Twitter @funnywomen.
