With the dark and rainy winter just around the corner, Leigh Anne Jasheway@@http://www.accidentalcomic.com/@@ wants to help people lighten up and have fun. She did just that at the sixth-annual Northwest Women’s Comedy Festival on Saturday night at the Wildish Community Theater in Springfield.@@http://www.willamalane.org/wildish/@@
Jasheway, a stand-up comedian who also teaches at the University and Lane Community College, started the event six years ago in order to offer a platform for female comedians.
“When I ask people in my classes to name comedians, it takes 20 people to get a woman,” she said. “I wanted to do something to recognize the women comedians in the Northwest.”
One of the classes Jasheway teaches is comedy@@comedic?@@ writing, which is how comedian Jennifer Kimball,@@http://poopinmyhair.wordpress.com/about/@@ a University graduate, got her start in stand-up.
“She’s an amazing teacher,” Kimball said. “She’s good at finding people’s strengths and drawing that out of them.”
Kimball’s set at the festival was based on her personal life as a single mother and her recent return to the world of dating. She took a three-year break from stand-up when she had kids but has been back for a year and a half.
“I’m a mom, but I’m also just a chick who likes to talk trash and swear and talk about sex,” she said. “Stand-up merges the two.”
She described the feeling she gets when she’s on stage as “a high like nothing else.” When new people approach her after the show and tell her their favorite jokes from her set, she said she feels a sort of validation.
“Everyone sits in front of the mirror and thinks they’re funny, so it’s nice to be told that sometimes,” she said.
Another of the 11 acts at the festival was Sarah Lowe, who placed fifth out of 21 acts at this year’s Eugene Laff-Off,@@http://www.accidentalcomic.com/@@ which Jasheway also organizes. Lowe graduated from the University this past spring with a degree in cinema studies. She said the festival offers female comedians a unique opportunity.
“It’s local, so it gives a lot of people in the area a venue, instead of fighting for two to three minutes at an open-mic,” she said. “I’ve done open-mics, and there are usually only two or three women.”
Lowe’s set included jokes on the dangerous similarities between some words in sign language, her personal passion for Martha Stewart and taking a class in a jail.
“I hope to get people to laugh,” she said, adding with a laugh, “And to be the funniest one here.”
All the comedians might be women, but Jasheway, Kimball and Lowe agreed that you don’t have to be a woman to appreciate female comedians’ humor. Jasheway said that some of the audience members are men who return year after year.
“The first year, maybe they were dragged, but they come back,” she said. “It’s just a different perspective. They have to be comfortable with women’s comedy, just like women have to be comfortable with men’s.”
Jasheway also commented on the uneven representation of women in comedy and her interest to see if there are differences between what men and women find funny.
“We’re 52 percent of the population, but there are so few women comics,” she said. “What do women find funny? That might be helpful for men.”
The festival also offered its guests a free piece of chocolate from Chocolate Decadence@@http://www.chocolatedecadence.com/@@ and a glass of wine from Sweet Cheeks Winery.@@http://www.sweetcheekswinery.com/@@ Jasheway said she’s never thought about having the event without some kind of sweet treat.
“Women and chocolate just go together,” she said. “If we had room, there’d be pedicures, too.”