Whether you’re a fan of clean comedy, musical comedy, or racy material, you’re bound to have lots of laughs at the Funny is Female Comedy Festival, Oct. 22-25, at Comedy Plex, 1128 Lake St., Oak Park.
More than 50 comics from around the country will be performing at the second annual festival. That includes two prominent comics as headliners — Marina Franklin and Ariel Elias.
Artistic director Angie McMahon reported that the festival started as a class at Comedy Plex.
“One of our students had requested that we do an all-female standup class,” McMahon said. “After a couple of terms, I said this should really be a festival.”
Last year’s festival was a huge success, McMahon said, so “of course, we’re doing it again this year.”
McMahon praised Comedy Plex as “the perfect venue” and described the owners of the club — Marz Timms, Sherman Edwards and Christopher Bell — as “the perfect partners.”
The most significant change this year is that they have more sponsors, McMahon said, supporting an event that gives exposure to women comics.
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“I do think there’s more opportunities now than there used to be” for female comics, McMahon said. “But I still don’t think there’s enough opportunities. There’s still plenty of evenings at local standup comedy clubs where the lineup is all men. Or there’s only one woman. It’s still a very much male-dominated field.”
The festival has plenty of opportunities for women to show off their skills or improve them. The schedule includes standup performances, industry panels and workshops.
Particularly helpful for the cause of promoting female comics is the Best of the Fest show on Sunday, which features nine comedians performing before show bookers. “They’ll get scouted by different talent scouts,” McMahon said.
“We’re going to kick things off with a showcase night on Thursday,” she said.
There will be two stages each featuring shows every night at 7 and 9:30.
Saturday, there will be workshops. At 10 a.m. the topic is “Social Media,” which will be sponsored by Up High Marketing. At noon, there will be “What’s Next for You?” “It’s going to be some producers and managers fielding questions about how to advance your career,” McMahon said.
Headliner Marina Franklin will perform at 7 p.m. on Friday.
Franklin was destined to make people laugh.
“When they asked me in kindergarten, what do you want to be when you grow up? I said a clown,” Franklin recalled. “Probably growing up in Highland Park and then moving to the South Side of Chicago helped. You don’t go from Highland Park to the South Side of Chicago and come out normal. My beginning material was based on how I became who I am today. That transition from different types of neighborhoods and how I dealt with it was funny.”
So funny that Franklin has become a highly-successful comic with numerous TV and film credits, including HBO’s “Last Week Tonight with John Oliver,” Comedy Central’s “Chappelle’s Show,” and the film, “Trainwreck.” She performs at festivals around the world.
Comedy is the right profession for her, Franklin indicated, because “I really like talking and telling stories onstage.”
Franklin praised Wanda Sykes as being the comedian that has most influenced her. “She was doing it the way I didn’t know you could do standup,” Franklin said. “The way she talks and the way her material was is different from what I had seen before. And she’s so funny.”
Franklin’s first major performance was at the Gotham Comedy Club in New York City. “It was the best feeling in the world,” she recalled.
Franklin believes that women have more opportunities in comedy now than they did when she started 25 years ago. She said earlier in her career she was often the only female comedian performing at a show.
Now, “Sometimes we’ll be going on back-to-back,” she said. “The guy comics have a boys’ club. Now there’s a girls’ club. There are so much more opportunities now but we have to keep going because there’s never enough.”
Fellow headliner Ariel Elias will perform at 7 p.m. on Saturday. The comic was named a New Face at the 2021 Just for Laughs Festival. Her debut special, “A Jewish Star,” is steaming on 800 Pound Gorilla’s You Tube channel.
Elias described “A Jewish Star” as “basically the culmination of over 13 years of doing standup and honing the jokes. It’s sort of an introduction to who I am, which is a Jewish girl who grew up in Kentucky.”
Elias reported that her set at Funny is Female won’t focus on that special. “I have a lot of new material that I’ve been working on since I put that out,” she explained. “So, if you’ve already seen that special, it’s not going to be completely redundant. It’s a little bit closer to who I am now. I’ve worked in New York for twelve years. I’m married. I’ve grown up in so many ways. I’ve toured the country and I’ve been to other countries.”
Elias said she became a comic because “nobody would hire me.” Turns out her degree in Spanish didn’t make her hirable, although she did work as a translator for a short time.
Comedy is an appropriate career for Elias because “Jews have their own oral tradition,” she explained. “We have a culture of humor.”
Elias indicated that it means a lot to her to headline the Funny is Female Comedy Festival. “A lot of clubs, if you look at their headliner and lineup, you’ll notice there’s usually not that many women. To get to headline a festival that really values women’s voices is special,” Elias said.
Tickets for the headliner shows are $20 in advance; $30 at the door. Showcase performances are $10. The All-You-Can Laugh Festival Pass is $30. Information and reservations are at comedyplex.com/fif-festival.
Myrna Petlicki is a freelance reporter for Pioneer Press.
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