Women Are Funny. Get Over It
Saturday 8th March 2014
At Sitcom Mission, we've stayed politically neutral because we're about developing and presenting what we consider to be the best comedy we can get our hands on. We don't care where it comes from.
In the past, we've showcased scripts from American, German and Australian authors as well as British ones. The winner in 2012 was Snez Naik with the very funny Yo Valet. Snez happens to be British Asian. In 2010, two writers from Brighton won with What Next? - Abigail Dooley and Emma Edwards happen to be women. Last year, Girlband was the winner, written by sketch group Those Three Girls who all happen to coincidentally be women.
The reason for this rant is because yesterday a stand-up comedian, Jenny Collier (pictured), who happens to be a woman, was refused to appear at a venue because there were too many women on the bill. Too many? Get over yourselves! What are you scared of?
If there's one thing that drives us up the wall at Sitcom Mission Towers, it's that female characters are underwritten. We want to see interesting, devilish, infuriating, childish, manipulative, confused, contradictory, ambitious, frustrating and playful male characters just as much as we want to see the same in their female counterparts. And yes, we did that on purpose. See this article by Christine Maddox on creating complex female characters. And then do it.
We don't have quotas but we do have open minds. We don't have our favourites but we do have four places at our showcase open to the best scripts and authors that we can work with. Some are men. Some are women. Some have slightly more melanin in their skin than others. We pride ourselves on being a meritocracy. If we're not, we won't exist in the future. When we've done things right in the past, it's because we've put the maxim "The Only Thing We Have To Trade On Is Quality" first. When we've done things wrong in the past, it's because we've tried to second guess what our customers want and tried to please too many conflicting groups of people at the same time.
We have two markets - writers and the industry. A lot of the first market is female. About 75% of the second market is female. Women are funny. Get over it.