Women in Comedy Festival 2014

This October sees the Women in Comedy Festival return for a second year and it's bigger and better than ever. Running in Greater Manchester from Saturday 11th until Sunday 26th October it features more than 80 shows across an incredible 16 venues. Already set for success, within days of being on sale over 250 tickets had been sold.

The festival is full to the brim with female comedic talent with over 125 acts confirmed including big names such as Jo Caulfield, Zoe Lyons, Janey Godley, Luisa Omielan, Felicity Ward, Jo Neary, Barbara Nice, Kate Smurthwaite, Tanyalee Davis, Dana Alexander and Jo Enright.

The festival launch night on Saturday 11th is compered by the deliciously straight-talking Glaswegian Janey Godley and features Edinburgh Comedy Award nominee Zoe Lyons, the 'as seen on BBC's Question Time' Kate Smurthwaite plus support from Jana Kennedy, Amy Vreeke, Ms B Haver and Lesley Kershaw.

There are a number of acts fresh from the festival performing their Edinburgh Fringe shows:
Zoe Lyons' 'Mustard Cutter', Barbara Nice's 'Squirrel Proof,' Hayley Ellis' 'We Need To Talk About Kevin', Wendy Wason's 'Hotel California', sketch trio Birthday Girls with 'Party Vibes' and Lou Conran's 'Subject Matter' amongst many others.

In addition there are solo shows from Laughing Cows' very own Kerry Leigh, the prolific TV writer Jo Caulfield, the star of 'The Job Lot' Jo Enright, Las Vegas' Tanyalee Davis, the brilliantly idiosyncratic Harriet Dyer, fab local act Kiri Pritchard McLean, formerly a star of The Sunday Show - Jenny Ross and the cerebral Iszi Lawrence plus many, many more.

Elsewhere in the festival there are open mic nights providing the opportunity for burgeoning talent to develop and for the punters to say, in years to come, that they were there at the beginning when a new telly star or award winning comic was performing their first gig. There are compilation shows such as the best of the North West, workshops, panel shows, comedic plays and sketch comedy. Plus there's Miranda Kane's fascinating one woman show about her adventures working as a prostitute 'The Coin Operated Girl.'

The festival was set up by Dulcet Sounds' Hazel O'Keefe as the natural progression to her successful female comedy clubs Laughing Cows, as she notes,

“My passion for this project arose from the need to show the vast number of women involved in the comedy scene and to encourage promoters and agents to attend the festival and scout for talent.

It’s been something I have wanted to do for several years, so it was a matter of timing. Over the past couple of years I feel that the comedy scene has changed for the better, I used to be able to confidently name most of the female acts in the UK. That’s not the case now. A festival in the UK to showcase and celebrate in this way was inevitable.”

Now in their 16th year Laughing Cows have opened clubs across the nation and expanded onto the continent playing host to a number of big name female comedy acts whilst also nurturing new talent.

The club began life in London in 1998 when founder Hazel O'Keefe took up the gauntlet thrown down by a well-established club promoter when he confessed that the reason he wouldn't book two female acts to play the same bill was that, 'I wouldn't take that risk'.

O'Keefe set out to prove that female comedians aren't some kind of bizarre specialist act or, the other common misconception, that all perform the same kind of material but in actual fact are as varied and as myriad performers as any comedian - regardless of gender. In addition, Laughing Cows set out to confound not just those mistaken promoters but some audience members who seem to think that they don't find women funny.

O'Keefe set up her first club within the bar she was then running in London. A few years later she returned to her native Manchester where she set up an additional club. Sixteen years on and with the addition of Maureen Younger on the team, there are clubs all over the country including Birmingham, Wolverhampton, Leicester and Reading as well as in Berlin. And now we have the Women in Comedy Festival too, the first of its kind.

Peep Show and Shameless star Isy Suttie is a patron of this year’s festival. “It surprises me how many audiences haven’t seen girls do comedy before, and some promoters are still very bad at booking women for their gigs,” she says. “Anything that works to get rid of that being an issue by putting on funny women is fantastic and the festival is a brilliant thing.”

The festival is co-ordinated by Dulcet Sounds CEO/founder Hazel O’Keefe with the support of the 2014 crew, Laughology, Ruby Star Associates, our supporters and advertisers.

For further information contact Marissa Burgess 07970 487936 or marissa@marissaburgess.co.uk.

THE BROCHURE CONTAINING THE FULL LINE UP CAN BE DOWNLOADED HERE - HTTP://WWW.WOMENINCOMEDY.CO.UK/2014

Published: 9-Oct-2014: (2634)