Magazine

The future of comedy is female

The future of comedy is female – as if we need to tell you! With fantastic names like Andi Osho, Katherine Ryan, Sarah Pascoe, Zoe Lyons, Kerry Godliman and Sarah Millican, who have all come through the Funny Women Awards over the last 10 years, now popping up regularly on television panel shows, sitcoms and starring in their own programmes, there’s nothing to prove.

After 10 years it’s fantastic that we are still attracting even more new talent to take to the stage with us in the Funny Women Awards. So who are the new kids on the block?

We’ve distilled down nearly 200 entrants into our top 60 and they will appear in our 10^th Anniversary semi-final tour over the next two months.

We have been genuinely overwhelmed by the variety and diversity of the acts we’ve seen and, with the respect that this engenders, we have ensured that the selection process has been quite detailed.

Over 15 heats in London, Brighton, Manchester, Edinburgh and Dublin, we’ve seen all the entrants in action and we’ve carefully reviewed and marked all the acts with the help of our industry contacts and a percentage of the audiences at each show. Our approach is qualitative rather than quantitative and we are really grateful to the audience members who play an important part in the judging process during the heats.

We are all about new talent and this is reflected in the number of women taking part who were on either their very first live gig or with only a handful of gigs under their belt. We have some provenance in this respect – Katy Wix (of Anna and Katy fame – soon to be seen in their news Channel 4 series) got through to the final after her first ever gig! And Suzy Bennett had only performed a few times as a stand-up and went on to win in 2006!

It is our privilege to provide a friendly supportive platform for some brand new acts this year and some of them are so extraordinarily original and fresh, we just had to include them in our semi-final selection as a true representation of what’s happening in female comedy today.

The age range is broader than ever – it’s fantastic to see so many women in their 20s through to their 60s taking to the stage with great comic ideas, confidence and skill. We’ve also expanded the comedy genre to include some wonderful burlesque, impressionists even more great sketch and character acts and, of course, smart sassy stand up.

Bring on those semi-final shows now!!! Please support us, our charity Women’s Aid, and the women taking to the stage. You will have a great night out and a chance to see the future of female comedy.

The first semi-final takes place this Saturday 23^rd June at the Music Palace Crouch End in partnership with Boom-Tish! Hosted by 2007 Funny Women Awards winner, Katherine Ryan, and the utterly unique and brilliant Bridget Christie. Not to be missed so BOOK NOW.

Pictured top to bottom: Sara Pascoe, Anna Crilly & Katy Wix, Suzy Bennett.