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Women and Comedy: History, Theory, Practice 1THE WORKSHOPIn most theories of comedy, from classic treatises by Sigmund Freud and Henri Bergson torecent polemics by Christopher Hitchens, women are figured as neither agents nor audiences ofcomedy, merely its targets. Only relatively recently have scholarly study and popular culturealike begun to recognize and historicize women’s active contributions to comedy.Women and Comedy: History, Theory, Practice brings together leading researchers fromCanada, the United States, and Europe in an interdisciplinary workshop format to highlight thebreadth of current scholarship on gender and comedy. This scholarship spans centuries of literaryand cultural production, a diversity of critical methodologies, and a range of popular and politicalapplications.The workshop has three primary objectives: to advance research in humor, gender,performance, film, rhetoric, communication, and literary criticism by way of participants’ sharedinterest in the topic of women and comedy; to develop out of the workshop presentations acollection of essays that will bring into productive dialogue the interdisciplinarity whichcharacterizes research on this subject; and to engage undergraduate and graduate studentsenrolled in cognate courses taught by members of the organizing committee in hands-onexperiential learning on the subject. In so doing, the workshop will address the followingresearch issues:1. It will respond to the historical marginalization and/or trivialization of both women andcomedy. Through a reconsideration of literary and cultural texts from the Classical periodto the present, the workshop will assert the importance of recognizing the role of womenand comedy in order to understand these texts and their historical contexts.2. It will analyze the topic of women and comedy through a diversity of theoretical andmethodological approaches. Given comedy’s unpredictable and irreverent character,these acts of analysis will allow for opportunities to reevaluate the theoretical approachesthemselves.3. It will ground these theoretical analyses in the actual practice of comedy, and in theexperiences of audiences encountering different genres of comedic texts andperformances. Acknowledging the performer’s role in this encounter, the workshop willconclude with a roundtable in which performers from different disciplines will shareaspects of their craft with the attending scholars. In this way, the workshop seeks tobridge research, performance, and reception.Generous financial support for this workshop has been provided by: the Social Sciences andHumanities Research Council of Canada; the Department of English, SFU; the Faculty of Artsand Social Sciences, SFU; and the Office of the Vice-President, Academic, SFU.Members of the workshop organizing committee include: Sarah Creel; Peter Dickinson; AlanaGerecke; Anne Higgins; Paul Matthew St. Pierre; Diana Solomon; and Sean Zwagerman.

Women and Comedy: History, Theory, Practice 3repeat this curious comedy, in representations of Joseph asleep at crucial moments, oridly drilling holes in his shop while Mary meets Gabriel in the central panel. If Joseph isalways a comic cuckold, then who is Mary? And how is she like the ordinary women ofthe late medieval audience?2. Lisa Perfetti, Whitman College: “Feminist Humor without Women: The Challenge ofReading (in) the Middle Ages”In my paper, I will draw from Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales and Boccaccio’s Decameron.Both authors pose the question “What would happen if women had the same access topublic discourse that men have? While in some sense their comic texts suggest that suchaccess is laughable, gender itself is also the butt of the humor. Focusing on momentswhere female protagonists specifically invoke gender categories before a public audience(“you men” and “we women”), I will consider how the female characters can be seen tobe highlighting the performative dimensions of gender. I will furthermore connect this tothe way in which both Boccaccio and Chaucer address the ethical dimensions of reading,to which I allude in the second part of my title, meant to suggest both the challenge for usof knowing what humor was like for women in the Middle Ages, but also questions thetexts themselves engage about authorial responsibility and readers’ roles in relation togender.12:45-1:45 pm Lunch1:45-3:15 pm Panel 3: Women Actors, Women’s Relations: New Approaches to EarlyModern Comedy1. Pamela Brown, University of Connecticut: “Have Wit Will Travel: Female Trickstersin the Italian Commedia dell'arte and English Comedy”Comedies with female tricksters appeared in Italy soon after women began to play incommedia dell'arte troupes in the mid-16c. The novella-derived comic trick, or beffa,showcased the actress's extemporal wit, timing, and skill at mimicry and disguise. InEngland, news of the female comici spread quickly, especially in the 1570s, when Italianplayers were brought to Elizabeth's court, stepping up interest in the Italian companiesjust as the new commercial theater was established. Rather than open their stages toactresses, playwrights from Lyly to Fletcher adapted the models made famous by theforeign stars. Shakespearean examples include Bianca of Taming of the Shrew, Rosalindof As You Like It, Maria of Twelfth Night and Portia of Merchant of Venice. My paperwill trace the early metamorphoses of the female trickster as the type traveled from pageto stage, from female to male bodies, and from Continental stages and audiences toEnglish ones.2. Julie Crawford, Columbia University: “Female Friendship, Marriage, and the Structuresof Shakespearean Comedy”

Women and Comedy: History, Theory, Practice 4It is a commonplace of Shakespeare criticism that the comedies end in marriage. It is alsosomething of a commonplace that marriage signals the end of women’s relationships,erotic or otherwise. Yet the formal claims that we make about Shakespearean comedies,most notably that they plot a heterosexual love story and they end in marriage, areintimately caught up with the formal and teleological expectations – the storylines – wehave about human sexuality and its workings. While same-sex bonds may punctuate, oreven help to structure, the story of a life, or a play, most critics insist, they are ultimatelysucceeded by marriage. In contrast, this essay seeks to reexamine what we think comedydoes by reexamining the relationships between women that so often serve as one of itskey structural principles. The women’s bonds that structure comedies like All’s Well ThatEnds Well, As You Like It, Twelfth Night, and, with some generic variation, The Merchantof Venice, are in many ways secured through rather than ended by marriage, and thestructures they facilitate, both generic and social, are much more complicated than wethink.3:15-3:45 pm Break3:45-5:15 pm Panel 4: The Transatlantic Contexts of 18 th - and 19 th -Century Women’sHumor1. Linda Morris, UC Davis: “Domestic Manners of the Americans: A TransatlanticEndeavor”When the Englishwoman Frances Trollope published The Domestic Manners of theAmericans in 1832, she outraged readers in the new republic, who nevertheless boughther book in record numbers. Women, especially, were the objects of her stingingcriticism. But if readers thought they could dismiss her satiric barbs as the work of anuninformed casual visitor to the US, they had no such excuse when native-born womenhumorists took on the domestic manners of their neighbors. Caroline Kirkland, in A NewHome—Who Will Follow?, and Frances M. Whitcher, in The Widow Bedott Sketches,both held their female neighbors up to ridicule in the two decades following thepublication of Domestic Manners. How did their criticisms differ from Trollope’s? Howdid their art differ? Should Trollope be considered the mother of American domestichumor, a strand of humor that extends down to our own day? These will be the questionsaddressed in this presentation.2. Diana Solomon, Simon Fraser University: “The Amazon and the Weakling: ComicFigures in Margaret Cavendish’s closet dramas”The mid-17th Century English writer Margaret Cavendish wrote prolifically, but facedgender and class-based resistance to going public with her work. Her texts contain severalelements that read as attempts both to resolve the anxiety of publishing and createsympathetic readers. I want to argue that Cavendish established her authority andnegotiated the process of publishing her dramatic writing in part by creating two comicfigures that appear in the prologues and epilogues of several of her plays. The first ofthese figures, the Amazon, wields the pen as a weapon and acts indifferent to her critical

Women and Comedy: History, Theory, Practice 5reception, while the second character, the weakling (both are my terms), is anemasculated male figure who fears the Amazon’s wrath. Through the charades of thesetwo characters, Cavendish courts audience approval in a metadrama that runs throughouther two volumes of plays. Cavendish is thus one of a number of early modern womenwriters for whom the ongoing project of recovery work needs to involve reading forcomedy as both an end in itself and as a strategic negotiation of the public.5:30-8 pm Reception and Performance by Margaret Leng Tan—Segal Centre (HC 1400)Day 2, Friday, August 5 th : Approaches, Texts, and Audiences—Terasen Cinema9-9:30 am Coffee and muffins9:30-11 am Panel 1: The Rhetoric of Women’s Political Humor1. Tarez Graban, Indiana University: “Humoring the Female Pol: Irony, Consciousness-Raising, and ‘Third-Culture’ Discourse”“Humoring the Female Pol” is a methodological project and the first step in a broadexamination of contemporary feminist diplomatic discourse. On the one hand, I articulatethe theoretical consciousness-raising that is made possible by considering ways ofmarking irony in the diplomatic discourse of contemporary political women. On the otherhand, I consider – in a corpus this broad – what can and should be the nature of thatmarking, especially when examining irony as a mode of civil engagement in transnationalor cross-cultural conflicts? While this paper focuses on selected texts by MadeleineAlbright, my target study extends from Golda Meier (1898-1978) to Ellen JohnsonSirleaf (b. 1938), and considers both humorous and non-humorous irony across thegenres that these writers tend to produce. Ultimately, I argue for irony’s place in theformulation and maintenance of what might be called their “third-culture” identities. Imake the base claim that their ironic discourse is rhetorical, of course, but that its greatestvalue is its rhetoricity, i.e., its ability or potential to be understood as having and givingrhetorical agency.2. Sean Zwagerman, Simon Fraser University: “A Cautionary Tale: Ann Coulter and theFailure of Humor”American conservative political commentator Ann Coulter uses biting, sarcastic humor toamplify both her arguments and her persona as the fearless and outrageous spokespersonfor the far Right. This paper looks at what Coulter’s humor does and does notaccomplish, and how these rhetorical actions and inactions are related to motive andideology. In brief, since Coulter’s humor serves her polemical motive and functionswithin her absolutely black-and-white ideology, humor cannot offer the sort of alteredperspectives and reframings that theorists of humor often claim are its unique, eveninevitable, rhetorical action. Coulter’s work thus cautions us against assuming humor’spower to transgress, “open up spaces,” etc. On the other hand, the shortcomings andfailings of Coulter’s rhetorical humor can serve a heuristic purpose, a negative example

Women and Comedy: History, Theory, Practice 6from which we can put forth some tentative suggestions for effectively using humor as arhetorical tool.11-11:30 am Break11:30-1 pm Panel 2: The Golden Age of Burlesque in London and New York, 1850-19501. Jacky Bratton, Royal Holloway, University of London: “Burlesque at the Strand Theatre”The history of burlesque before Lydia Thompson tends merely to mention HenryFielding’s Tom Thumb before focussing upon Eliza Vestris’s legs. My account is morecomplex, looking at the long success story of the Swanboroughs, mother and daughters,at the Strand Theatre 1858-1885, and the female clowns, comics, burlesque boys andsuccessful theatre managers they fostered there. The burlesque view of the world seen inthe plays they created, its emotional excess and its hilarious physical extremity, is the truedescendant of the exhilaration, the somatic and emotional release, of the Romanticmelodrama; the relationship between the two is a passionate intertheatrical game. Weunderstand it better by reference to French and Saunders than to Henry Fielding. Thepaper will focus on these women, whose managements contributed to the founding ofLondon’s West End, as well as on the genre of burlesque, the entertainment they fosteredand created for the Victorian middle class.2. Joanna Mansbridge, St. Francis Xavier University: “‘Chicks and Chuckles’: The Bodyand Voice of 20 th Century Burlesque”In 1869, burlesque was introduced to North American audiences as a theatrical form inwhich cross-dressing women satirized high culture, while imitating the acts and gesturesthat constitute femininity and masculinity. By the 1950s, however, the female burlesqueperformer was stripped of her humour and her voice, and reduced to a mute, gyratingbody. This relatively swift transformation suggests a culture uncomfortable with theincongruous meanings generated by a female performer who is both a speaking subjectand sexual object, both funny and sexy. What is at stake in keeping separate the voice ofthe female comic and the body of the stripper (both of whom are descendants of theclassic burlesque performer)? With Fanny Brice, Gypsy Rose Lee, and Lily St. Cyr as myprimary examples, I would like to suggest that the dissonant display of the sexualizedbody and comedic voice in classic burlesque offers a particularly potent challenge totenacious gendered categories—such as virgin/whore and idealized image/degradedbody—that continue to define femininity both on and off the stage.1-2 pm Lunch2-3:30 pm Panel 3: MF/FF: Gendered Double Acts in Film and on Stage1. Kay Young, UC Santa Barbara: “‘I’m Daphne’: The Pleasures of Metamorphosis”

Women and Comedy: History, Theory, Practice 7Cross-dressed and running from the mob of Chicago’s St. Valentine’s Day Massacre,Jack Lemmon refuses the agreed upon name change—“Jerry” to “Geraldine.” “‘I’mDaphne,’ he declares to the all-girls’ band in Billy Wilder’s 1959 Some Like It Hot. Inthis paper, I’ll explore what it means to “play dress-ups,” to “cross-dress” (to assume awoman’s appearance by wearing her clothes), what it means to adopt a woman’s identity(to assume a woman’s being by taking her name), and what it means to undergo ametamorphosis of gender in the moving from the assumption of appearance and name tothe experience of and identification with the object of play. My purpose, therefore, willbe to explore the activity of playing dress-ups/cross-dressing as the comic space ofinvention, play, and freedom which allows for the possibility of the pleasures ofmetamorphosis, which in the case of Some Like It Hot are the pleasures of making gendernegotiable.2. Paul St. Pierre, Simon Fraser University: “Elsie and Doris Waters and the FemaleDouble-Act in British Music Hall and Variety”Elsie Waters (1893-1990) and Doris Waters (1904-78) rivaled the finest British doubleactsof the 1920-1950s, mostly male or married couples. A rare female double-act, theywere not without competitors, like the Houston Sisters, Renée and Billie Gribbens, andEthel Revnell and Gracie West, “The Cockney Kids,” the direct rivals of the Waterses’Gert and Daisy. These performers negotiated women’s performance space, addressed theplasticity of gender, and articulated women’s voices onstage. This paper examines femalevocal displays in four Gert and Daisy songs: “Mrs Christopher Stone” (1932), “MrsStanley Holloway” (1934), “Mrs Flotsam and Jetsam” (1934), “Mrs Henry Hall” (1934).3:30-4 pm Break4-5:45 pm Panel 4: Comedy, Autobiography, and Female Performance1. Kirsty Johnston, University of British Columbia: “Disability, Comedy andAutobiographical Performance”Comedy has long turned on disability, from jokes about prostheses, stutters and mentalillness to sight gags involving physical difference and beyond. Disability performers ofthe past decades have challenged these traditions, moving from objects of comic derisionto comic agents. Disability theatre artist Ruth Bieber explains the impulse behind thiswork plainly: comedy allows artists to tackle difficult disability experiences withoutleaving audiences feeling so “guilt-ridden, oppressed and bewildered” that they willnever come back. Several other award-winning Canadian female disability theatreperformers (Alex Bulmer, Jan Derbyshire and Victoria Maxwell) have also reflected onthe role of comedy in their autobiographical work and in this paper I examine why andhow they engage audiences in this way. What are the costs and opportunities of laughingat personal disability experiences with audiences?2. Gilli Bush-Bailey, Royal Holloway, University of London: “Performing HerSelf”

Women and Comedy: History, Theory, Practice 8In what is probably one of the first one-woman shows, Frances Maria Kelly performs astartling array of comic female characters. Dramatic Recollections (1832) gives us anextraordinary example of female agency and theatrical innovation but, at a time whenfemininity was being described and catalogued for the new Victorian Britain, FannyKelly’s comic characters uncomfortably contribute to female stereotypes visible still incomedy today. Kelly’s comic representation of her patrons, from Miss Miffy, the‘genteel’ country lady to the overbearing horsewoman, M’Lady Savage open upquestions around the woman as (comic) actress and/or audience member and will beexplored in the context of contrasting attitudes to theatre in London and the touringcircuit of country theatres in first decades of the 19 th century.7-10 pm Banquet for Presenters and Guests—Shebeen Whisk(e)y House, 210 CarrallStreetFeaturing a special stand-up performance by Jan DerbyshireDay 3, Saturday, August 6 th : Comedic Topics, Theories, and Practices—Terasen Cinema9-9:30 am Coffee and Muffins9:30-11 am Panel 1: Comedic Subjects/Comic Identities1. Joanne Gilbert, Alma College: “Performing Marginality: Lesbian Stand-Up Comics andthe Politics of Laughter”This paper discusses lesbian comics as examples of queer performativity by first, locatinglesbian comics within the historical context of American female comedic traditions, next,examining the rhetoric of contemporary lesbian comics, and finally, exploring politicalimplications inherent in the performance of marginality. Like all marginal humor, thediscourse of lesbian comics is rhetorically subversive, allowing marginal individuals totranscend their social condition by calling hegemonic values into question. Rhetoricallyand economically empowered through this discourse, lesbian comics use humor todisarm the group in power, lampoon its members, and charge them a cover and twodrinkminimum for this opportunity.2. Shannon Hengen, Laurentian University: “A Canadian Naïf”The successful Canadian television program, Little Mosque on the Prairie, combineswhat have historically been central strengths of the genre of comedy in Canadian art andculture, the marginal figure and the techniques of the sketch. Moreover, this programwas given the 2007 Canada Award at the Geminis specifically for “programming thatreflects the racial and cultural diversity of Canada” (website), pointing towards whatmight be its singularity in the genre. This paper will address how the character of theteenaged daughter of a Muslim fundamentalist in small-town Saskatchewan, the characternamed Laya Siddiqi, attempts to find her own way and so renew both the form of sketchcomedy and the status of the marginal figure.

Women and Comedy: History, Theory, Practice 911-11:30 am Break11:30-1 pm Panel 2: Women and Comedy: Theory, Practice, Prospects1. Regina Barreca, University of Connecticut: “Sex is Funny (When Handled by Women)”The idea of sex captures our imagination as fully as desire captures our physical selves.Since the first pornographers scratched dirty pictures on cave walls, we’ve laughed at itsrepresentations. Sex is handled with oohs and ahhs, or giggles and snorts, as if the loveris either a magician or a maker of balloon animals. A source of misery, exploitation, andjoy, there is nothing to do with the naked truth except use it as the basis of comedy. I’lldiscuss humor of Margaret Atwood, Anita Loos, Hilary Mantel, and Jean Kerr—amongothers—and prove that sex is funny (and that funny is sexy) when handled by women.2. Lisa Colletta, American University of Rome: “Postmodernity and the Gendered Uses ofSatire”Satire has been defined as a mode that uses comic strategies to critique a perceived erroror fault, and historically, from Juvenal to Dr Johnson, women have been the objects ofattack for their perceived irrationality and lack of reason. In the twentieth century,feminist scholars have shown that women writers often used satire and its primaryweapon, irony, to attack patriarchal assaults on women. However, postmodernity (whichsome have argued killed irony), has complicated our understanding of satire and the waysin which women now use it. While fewer and fewer women currently self-identify as‘feminists,’ strong, funny women, such as Ellen DeGeneres, Sarah Silverman, and TinyFey are more popular than ever. The humor of these women attacks a larger irrationalitythat appears to define our postmodern world and therefore many women relate to it;however, their ironic attacks on the patriarchal structures that underpin that irrationalityoften go unnoticed. This paper will examine the ways contemporary women use ironyand satire to critique and expose hypocrisy and sexism, and it will argue that even thoughthe irony at the heart of feminist satire may often go undetected by audiences, it results inlaughter, which may be the best weapon we have against oppression and hypocrisy.1-2 pm Lunch2-3:30 pm Panel 3: Performers’ RoundtableGilli Bush-Bailey, Jan Derbyshire, Margaret Leng Tan3:30-4 pm Closing remarks and workshop wrap-up (Peter Dickinson)

Women and Comedy: History, Theory, Practice 10PARTICIPANT BIOSDeemed a “feminist humor maven” by Ms. Magazine, Regina Barreca is Professor of Englishand Feminist Theory at the University of Connecticut and the author, co-author, or editor ofmore than 20 books, most of them on the topic of women and humor. These include thebestselling They Used to Call Me Snow White But I Drifted: Women's Strategic Use of Humor(1991), “Untamed and Unabashed”: Essays on Women and Comedy in Literature (1993), ThePenguin Book of Women’s Humor (1996), and The Signet Book of American Humor (2 nd edition,2004); her books have been translated into several languages, including Chinese, Spanish,Japanese, and German. She has appeared on 20/20, 48 Hours, NPR, the BBC, The Today Show,CNN, Joy Behar, and Oprah to discuss gender, power, politics, and humor. Barreca also writesfor the "Brainstorm" section of The Chronicle of Higher Education, blogs for Psychology Today,and does a weekly column for The Hartford Courant.Jacky Bratton is Research Professor in the Department of Drama and Theatre at RoyalHolloway, University of London, where she specializes in the history of theatre and culture inBritain in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. She has written about melodrama onhorseback and blackface minstrelsy, as well as Henry Irving’s King Lear, dramatists from JaneScott to Arthur Wing Pinero, and music hall male impersonators like Vesta Tilley. In pursuit ofnew ways of reading the past of performance, she has drawn from feminist and culturalmaterialist histories, and has begun to collaborate with colleagues in practice-based research,developing a revival of Romantic melodrama and burletta. Her 2003 monograph, New Readingsin Theatre History, offers a revisionist historiography, arguing for a more organic, lessjudgmental and hierarchical understanding of the history of the British stage. Her latestbook, The Victorian Clown, looks at the roots of stand-up comedy in two unpublishedmanuscripts by Victorian comic men – a contortionist bottle-balancer and a circus clown.Pamela Allen Brown is Associate Professor of English at University of Connecticut, Stamford.Her publications include Better a Shrew than a Sheep: Women, Drama and the Culture of Jest inEarly Modern England (2003) and a volume co-edited with Peter Parolin, Women Players 1500-1660: Beyond the All-Male Stage (2005). At present she is at work on a book with the workingtitle Extravagant Stranger: The Foreign Actress in Shakespeare Drama, for which she received aNational Endowment for the Humanities Grant and a Francis Bacon Fellowship at theHuntington Library. She is also at work on As You Like It: Texts and Contexts, with Jean E.Howard.Gilli Bush-Bailey is Senior Lecturer in Drama and Theatre, Royal Holloway, University ofLondon. Performing Herself: AutoBiography & Fanny Kelly’s Dramatic Recollections (MUP2011) extends her published work on actresses and managers in nineteenth-century theatre. Herinterest in practice-based research in theatre history founded her collaborative work with JackyBratton, which includes the co-authored special edition of Nineteenth-Century Theatre & Film(2002). She has contributed chapters to The Performing Century: Theatre in Nineteenth-CenturyBritain (eds. Davis & Holland, Palgrave 2007), and to The Cambridge Companion to TheActress (eds. Gale & Stokes, CUP 2007), where she writes on seventeenth-century actresses andfemale playwrights, work begun in her first monograph, Treading the Bawds (MUP 2006). Herresearch and publication work follows on from her first career as a professional actress.

Women and Comedy: History, Theory, Practice 11Lisa Colletta is Associate Professor of English at the American University of Rome. Herresearch interests include the twentieth-century British novel, humor studies, travel literature andliterary history. She is the author of Dark Humor and Social Satire in the Modern British Novel,editor of Kathleen and Christopher: Christopher Isherwood's Letters to his Mother, and coeditorof Wild Colonial Girl: Essays on Edna O'Brien. Her work has appeared in numerousjournals and essay collections, and she has just completed a book manuscript on the life andwork of British novelists in Hollywood.Julie Crawford is Associate Professor of English and Comparative Literature at ColumbiaUniversity, where she teaches early modern English literature and culture. Her articles haveappeared in Studies in English Literature, English Literary History, Renaissance Drama,Huntington Library Quarterly, PMLA, and in a wide range of edited collections, including, mostrecently, The Oxford Companion to Popular Print Culture and The History of British Women’sWriting, 1500-1610. She is the author of a book on cheap print and the English Reformationentitled Marvelous Protestantism (2005), and is currently completing a book about women andthe production of coterie literature in early modern England.Sarah Creel is interested in women writers who have only recently been added to the canon ofthe long 18th century, especially the little known writer Eliza Haywood. Her work on Haywoodincludes a focus on print culture, specifically ideas of authorship and leadership. These topicsconverge in her dissertation, which will examine the ways in which Eliza Haywood's receptionand subsequent canonization by feminist scholars in the 1970s has affected the way we read hertoday, and will provide new ways to approach Haywood scholarship and pedagogy. Sarah haspresented her work internationally at major conferences in her field, and has most recentlyserved as co-chair of the 2011 SFU English Graduate Student Conference, Times Out of Joint.Jan Derbyshire is a performer, playwright, theatre maker, director and comedian. Her workinvolves solo performance, community and artists’ collaboration, traditional playwriting,experimental storytelling, video, words on paper, event creation and stand-up comedy. Hercreation companies are Squid Ink, Myth Universe and Human Writes. She is co-artistic directorof Theatre on Earth and an artistic associate of Stage Left in Calgary and the Playwrights TheatreCentre in Vancouver. Her plays have been produced at The Great Canadian Theatre Company inOttawa, Buddies in Bad Times in Toronto, The Belfry in Victoria, Solo Collective in Vancouver,and Quest Theatre in Calgary, among others. She has performed stand up on A&E and the CBC,and at Toronto’s People's Comedy Festival and The Vancouver International Comedy Festival.Her one-woman play Funny in the Head was performed as part of the 2010 Vancouver CulturalOlympiad, and most recently toured to the Dublin International Gay Theatre Festival. Her newestplay, Wabi Sabi, was workshopped in London in May 2011 with Julia McNamara’s VitalExposure Company.Peter Dickinson is Professor of English at Simon Fraser University, where he is also affiliatedwith the Department of Gender, Sexuality, and Women’s Studies and the School for theContemporary Arts. His teaching and research interests span performance studies, film studies,and gender studies. His most recent book is World Stages, Local Audiences: Essays onPerformance, Place, and Politics (Manchester University Press, 2010). His play, The Objecthoodof Chairs, premiered at SFU Woodward’s in September 2010.

Women and Comedy: History, Theory, Practice 12Alana Gerecke specializes in performance and dance studies. A professional dancer, she hasbeen recognized by federal and provincial arts councils and worked with numerous Canadiandance companies and choreographers, including Peter Bingham of EDAM, where she is acompany member. Alana is also co-founder of the interdisciplinary and site-specific performancegroup, Behind Open Doors Arts Collective (2004-present), a group that pursues bothprofessional and community-based performance projects in public spaces. Balancing her dancecareer with her interdisciplinary graduate studies, Alana's dissertation examines site-specificdance in North America in relation to theories of affect, the senses, urban topography, publics,and counterpublics. A 2011 Trudeau Scholar, Alana’s performance criticism has frequentlyappeared in The Dance Current, and she has an article forthcoming in Political Bodies/SocialMovements: Canadian Dance in the 1970s, eds. Allana C. Lindgren and Kaija Pepper (DanceCollection Danse).Joanne Gilbert, Charles A. Dana Professor of Communication at Alma College, teaches coursesin Gender and Communication, Intercultural Communication, Performance, Advocacy, Humor,and many other areas of the field. She is deeply committed to service learning and often includesstudent-community interaction in her classes. Dr. Gilbert’s book, Performing Marginality:Humor, Gender, and Cultural Critique (Wayne State University Press, 2004) has been featuredon WCMU Public Television, WGVU Public Radio, KZSC Public Radio, and in The Chronicleof Higher Education, and has led to invited presentations at colleges and universities across theUSA. Her scholarly work on gender and performance--focusing on the relationship betweenhumor and power, autobiographical and cultural performance, and the discourse of marginalizedgroups--has appeared in journals and edited volumes such as Text and Performance Quarterly,Women’s Studies in Communication, Outsiders Looking In, and others.Barbara Gold is the Edward North Professor of Classics at Hamilton College, where shespecializes in Greek and Roman literature, comparative literature, and women in antiquity. Herpublications include: Literary and Artistic Patronage in Ancient Rome, ed., (University of TexasPress, 1982); Literary Patronage in Greece and Rome (University of North Carolina Press,1987); Sex and Gender in Medieval and Renaissance Texts: The Latin Tradition, co-ed. withPaul Allen Miller and Charles Platter (SUNY Press, 1997); Vile Bodies: Roman Satire andCorporeal Discourse, co-ed. with Susanna Braund; and Roman Dining, co-ed. with JohnDonahue (Johns Hopkins University Press, 2005).Tarez Samra Graban is Assistant Professor of English at Indiana University, where she teachesrhetoric, writing, public discourse, and women's studies at both graduate and undergraduatelevels. She also coordinates multilingual writing and has been developing a first-yearcomposition curriculum in "developing textual identities" for students whose core educationalbackgrounds occurred in languages other than English. Additionally, she occasionally teaches forthe Hutton Honors program and regularly serves on the faculty committee of the IndividualizedMajor Program. At present, she is completing Irony's Resource: Critical Agency in FeministDiscourse, in which she argues for irony as a feminist paradigm in the historical recovery andreevaluation of women's texts prior to 1900. She has also begun a new project entitled "BeyondRecovery," which is the prototype for a proposed knowledge base that can help historiographersand archival researchers to keep track of and visually locate feminist texts.

Women and Comedy: History, Theory, Practice 13Awarded four consecutive Laurentian University Research Fund grants for her scholarship,Shannon Hengen is one of the foremost authorities on feminist comedy in Canada. She is alsothe editor of a major academic study in the field, Performing Gender and Comedy: Theories,Texts, and Contexts (1998). More recently, she has edited two volumes entitled Comedy’s Edgefor Playwrights Canada Press, as has authored numerous articles on the topic of women’s literaryhumor. An expert on Margaret Atwood’s feminist comic writing, Hengen’s recent research hasfocused on Aboriginal theatre and comedy, performance theory, and Canadian popular culture.Trained in Medieval Studies, Anne Higgins takes an interdisciplinary approach to works in earlypopular drama, from the guild plays through Shakespeare, Chaucer and his contemporaries, andmedieval popular culture. She has published on questions of guild affiliation and dramaticresponsibilities, and on the guild plays as part of the contestation for dominance in the new urbancommunity after the Black Death. She has also published on medieval theories of time, TheLegend of Good Women, Spenser’s appropriations of Chaucer, and Shakespeare’s Antony andCleopatra. Completing a book about the guild drama as a cultural consequence of the plague inconstituting a new urban community, she has begun the groundwork for a new study, to be calledMary’s Body, on the obsession with Mary’s physical body in literature, art, and devotional worksof the late Middle Ages.Kirsty Johnston researches intersections between theatre and health, with particular interests in20th century theatre and performance. She has published on illness representations andreceptions in theatre, intercultural theatre, disability theatre, contemporary Canadian dramaturgy,and disability arts festivals. Her work has appeared in such journals as Modern Drama, Text andPerformance Quarterly, Theatre Topics, Theatre Research in Canada, Journal of CanadianStudies, and Canadian Theatre Review. Her current SSHRC-funded research project concernsthe development and practice of disability theatre in Canada.Joanna Mansbridge recently completed her Ph.D. at The Graduate Center, CUNY, and iscurrently Assistant Professor in the English Department at St. Francis Xavier University. Hermonograph on American playwright Paula Vogel (forthcoming from the University of MichiganPress) uses camp and burlesque as both theoretical and historical frameworks to look at the waysVogel’s plays respond to and revise canonical texts. Among her current research projects are astudy of North American burlesque and a more expansive examination of various canonicalrevisions in the work of four American playwrights. Mansbridge’s research interests includetwentieth-century theatre, film, popular culture, and intersections among gender studies, socialhistory, and performance theory. She has published articles in Modern Drama and West CoastLine.Linda A. Morris is Professor Emerita of English at UC Davis. Her current research is on genderplay in the works of Mark Twain. Her earlier published work focused primarily on women'shumor in nineteenth-century America, and her books include: Women's Vernacular Humorists inNineteenth-Century America: Ann Stephens, Frances Whitcher, and Marietta Holley (GarlandPress, 1988); Women's Humor in the Age of Gentility: The Life and Works of Frances MiriamWhitcher (Syracuse University Press, 1992); American Women Humorists: Critical Essays(Garland Press, 1993); and Gender Play in Mark Twain: Cross-Dressing and Transgression (Uof Missouri Press, 2007).

Women and Comedy: History, Theory, Practice 14Laurie (Dolores) O’Higgins trained at Trinity College, Dublin, and earned her graduate degreesat Cornell. She is the Euterpe B. Dukakis Professor of Classical and Medieval Studies at BatesCollege, Maine. Her interests include tracing the voices of non-elites; thus she has written onWomen and Humour in Classical Greece (CUP 2003), and currently is working on the receptionof Classics by the poor and underprivileged in 18 th century Ireland. She teaches a class onancient comedy and satire, and, as she tells her students, it helps to have a capacious andunsophisticated sense of humour (as she does) to get the most out of this material!Lisa Perfetti has just taken up a new appointment as Associate Dean for Faculty Development atWhitman College, where she is also Professor of French and English. Before that she wasAssociate Professor of French and Director of the Faculty Center for Teaching at MuhlenbergCollege. She received her Ph.D. in Comparative Literature from the University of North Carolinaat Chapel Hill. She teaches courses in French language and literature, Francophone Cultures ofAfrica and the Caribbean, and medieval literature. Her publications on women in medievalculture include two books: Women and Laughter in Medieval Comic Literature (University ofMichigan Press, 2003), which received an honorable mention as best first book by the Societyfor Medieval Feminist Scholarship; and the edited collection, The Representation of Women’sEmotions in Medieval and Early Modern Culture (University Press of Florida, 2005). She hasalso published several articles on medieval humor, including, most recently, "The Lewd and theLudic: Female Pleasures in the Fabliaux," in Comic Provocations: Exposing the Corpus of OldFrench Fabliaux, ed. Holly A. Crocker (Palgrave Macmillan, 2006), and published entries on“Laughter” and “Women in the Audience” in Women and Gender in Medieval Europe: AnEncyclopedia, edited by Margaret C. Schaus (Routledge Press, 2006).Diana Solomon, Assistant Professor of English at Simon Fraser University, specializes inRestoration and eighteenth-century theatre, comedy, performance studies, and print culture. Hercurrent book project is entitled Bawdy Language: Actresses’ Prologues and Epilogues inLondon, 1660-1713, and she has published on actresses, genre hybridity, and theatre music. Shehas held fellowships at the Clark, Folger, Huntington, and Noel Libraries, and spent two years asa Mellon Fellow at Duke.Paul Matthew St. Pierre is Professor of English at Simon Fraser University. His publicationsinclude four monographs: Song and Sketch Transcripts of British Music Hall Performers Elsieand Doris Waters (2003); A Portrait of the Artist as Australian: L’Oeuvre bizarre de BarryHumphries (2004); Music Hall Mimesis in British Film, 1895-1960; and E.A. Dupont and HisContribution to British Film. He has also edited two volumes of the Dictionary of LiteraryBiography: on Twentieth-Century British Humorists (2010); and Canadian Literary Humorists(2011). His forthcoming book is Janet Frame: Semiotics and Biosemiotics in Her Early Fiction(2011).Born in Singapore, Margaret Leng Tan was the first woman to earn a doctorate from Julliard,where she studied classical piano. However, her artistic drive and intellectual curiosity soon ledher to the avant-garde, exploring connections between traditional Asian music and Westernexperimental sound. Out of this grew a decade-long collaboration with John Cage, during whichtime Tan earned recognition as the foremost interpreter of the composer’s music. Her Cagerecordings include, for New Albion, Daughters of the Lonesome Isle and The Perilous

Women and Comedy: History, Theory, Practice 15Night/Four Walls, and two volumes for Mode Records’ Complete John Cage Edition: Works forPiano 4 and Works for Piano 7. After Cage’s death in 1992, she was chosen as the featuredperformer in a tribute to his memory at the 45th Venice Biennale; Tan has also edited the fourthvolume of Cage’s piano music for C.F. Peters, premiered Cage’s newly discovered 1944 workChess Pieces in 2006 (which she also edited for publication), and prepared a DVD of his Sonatasand Interludes. Like Cage, Tan has always taken a lively interest in the musical potential ofunconventional sounds and unlikely instruments, and in 1997 her groundbreaking CD, The Art ofthe Toy Piano (Point Music/Universal Classics), established her as the world’s first professionaltoy piano virtuoso. She Herself Alone: The Art of the Toy Piano 2, Ms. Tan’s latest toyinstrumental album and DVD (Mode), has been called “one of [2010’s] finest treasures of newmusic” (Downtown Music Gallery). Tan favors music that confronts and defies the establishedboundaries of the piano and her toy instruments, and has collaborated with composers such asSomei Satoh, Tan Dun, Michael Nyman, Julia Wolfe, Toby Twining and Ge Gan-ru; she is also afavorite of composer George Crumb. In performance, Tan’s musical virtuosity is matched by hertheatrical expressivity and her comic wit, and she is regularly in demand at major internationalfestivals. She has also appeared on American public television, and at Lincoln Center andCarnegie Hall. Evans Chan’s feature documentary, Sorceress of the New Piano: The Artistry ofMargaret Leng Tan, has screened at numerous international film festivals, including Vancouverand Melbourne, and on AFI/Discovery Channel’s SILVERDOCS, where it was nominated forBest Music Documentary. In 2011, Tan was awarded an Honorary Doctor of Fine Arts by SUNYCortland.Kay Young is Professor of English and Co-Director of the Literature and Mind Initiative at UC,Santa Barbara. As well, she is an Academic Research Fellow at the Institute of ContemporaryPsychoanalysis, Los Angeles. She writes on internal states of being. Her first book—OrdinaryPleasures: Couples, Conversation, and Comedy—addresses the narrative pleasures of couples’play, intimacy, and happiness. Her second book—Imagining Minds: The Neuro-Aesthetics ofAusten, Eliot, and Hardy—uncovers how the novel writes an aesthetics of mind. And her currentproject, tentatively called—Metaphor/Metamorphosis: On Longing and the TransformationalObject—explores how objects function as potential spaces for the imagining and workingthrough of the longing to change in narrative art.Sean Zwagerman is Associate Professor in the Department of English at Simon FraserUniversity, where he writes and teaches primarily in the areas of rhetoric and language, withparticular interests in speech-act and performativity theories, issues of motive and intentionality,the rhetoric of humour, and pedagogy. His book, Wit’s End: Women’s Humor as Rhetorical andPerformative Strategy (U of Pittsburgh P, 2010), has recently appeared.

Women and Comedy: History, Theory, Practice 16ADDITIONAL INFORMATIONContact Telephone NumbersPeter’s cell: 604-908-0993Days Inn Hotel Reception: 604-681-4335SFU Harbour Centre Switchboard: 778-782-5000SFU Department of English: 778-782-3136Workshop VenueThe workshop will take place at Harbour Centre, Simon Fraser University’s main downtowncampus site. It is located at 515 West Hastings Street, on the north side between Seymour andRichards Streets, and hard to miss as it is beneath Vancouver’s lookout tower and revolvingrestaurant (see map below). On the first day of the workshop we are in Labatt Hall; for thesecond and third days, we will be in Terasen Cinema. Please follow the signage posted in themain lobby.HotelRooms for out-of town presenters have been booked at the Days Inn Vancouver Downtown, 921West Pender Street, just four blocks west of SFU Harbour Centre (again, see map below). Thenights covered by the workshop (Aug 3-6 inclusive) have been pre-paid. Those who haveindicated they are arriving earlier or staying later have been extended the discounted workshoprate ($140 CAD + taxes). The hotel’s General Manager, Ish Awan, has a list of all arrival anddeparture dates, as well as contact emails. His own email is ish@daysinnvancouver.com. Pleaseconsult the hotel website (www.daysinnvancouver.com) for more information on facilities,parking, nearby attractions, etc.Transportation to and from YVRThe Canada Line, Vancouver’s newest light-rail link, will whisk you from the airport to itsdowntown terminus, Waterfront Station, in approximately 25 minutes. From Waterfront, it is justone block south on Granville to Pender, and then two blocks west on Pender (between Hornbyand Burrard) to the Days Inn Hotel. The adult fare from the airport is $8.75 ($3.75 for two zonesplus a $5 airport surcharge), $7.50 after 6:30 pm and on weekends. (Single adult transit fareswithin Vancouver are $2.50.)Alternatively, you can grab a cab at the airport, which will cost approximately $40 with tip.If you are driving, follow Highway 99 north, which will eventually turn into Granville Street.Once over False Creek and the Granville Street Bridge, exit onto Seymour Street. Turn left(west) at Pender Street, and follow this for three blocks, until you reach the hotel.Depending on traffic, it can take between 30-40 minutes to get from the airport to downtown.

Women and Comedy: History, Theory, Practice 17Sites and AttractionsFor those who have a chance to explore Vancouver, here are a few recommendations, along withsome additional commentary from Peter:1. Gastown and Chinatown: Two of the city’s most historic neighbourhoods are just a short strollfrom our conference venue. Travel east on Pender Street to reach the heart of Chinatown, whereamong other things you can visit the Dr. Sun Yat Sen Classical Chinese Garden(www.vancouverchinesegarden.com). Every Friday, Saturday, and Sunday evening from 6:30-11pm between June and September, Chinatown also hosts a night market in the 100-200 block ofKeefer Street (for details of the bigger rival Chinese night market in Richmond, see below).Follow Water Street for the shops, restaurants, and brick facades of Gastown. Both spaces alsoadjoin Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside, one of the poorest inner-city neighbourhoods in all ofCanada, but also an equally vibrant community whose residents just happen to include membersof the street homeless population, sex workers, injection drug users, mental health patients,working artists, activists, and a growing number of gentrifiers. While it may not look like it atfirst glance, the area is extremely safe and the people friendly and very funny. The newdowntown home of SFU’s School for the Contemporary Arts, SFU Woodward’s, also happens tobe smack in the middle of this area; enter via the Cordova Street courtyard and check out localartist Stan Douglas’ large double-sided photographic mural along the way. SFU Woodward’s hasa very fine small gallery, The Audain, on the ground floor, as well as various state-of-the-art liveperformance venues and a 300-seat surround sound cinema. Check our www.sfuwoodwards.cafor a listing of events.2. Canada Place and Jack Poole Plaza: If you walk north along Hornby Street from the hotel tothe waterfront (only a few short blocks), you will come to Canada Place, site of Vancouver’s old(the one designed like a white cruise ship) and new (the one with the green roof) conventioncentres. Between them is Jack Poole Plaza, where the famously malfunctioning (and rathermonolithic) cauldron from the 2010 Winter Olympics remains (sigh). More inspiring is the viewof Burrard Inlet and the North Shore Mountains beyond.3. Stanley Park: You can follow the seawall (a divided pedestrian and bike path) west fromCanada Place, through Coal Harbour, to Stanley Park (http://vancouver.ca/parks/parks/stanley/),Vancouver’s justifiably famous oasis of green. There’s lots to do in the park (an aquarium, apetting zoo, cricket pitches, tennis courts, golf greens, picnic areas and playgrounds, a pool,various lookout points, restaurants and food concessions, and miles of well-signed trails throughancient old growth forest right in the city limits). Alternatively, you can follow the seawall all theway around the park, pausing at the various beaches along the way. If you make it all the way toEnglish Bay, and depending on the night (Aug 3 rd and 6 th , I believe), you may wish to stickaround for the fireworks displays that take over the city’s west end at this time of year (mostlocals flee). Or you may just wish to repair to the historic Sylvia Hotel (www.sylviahotel.com)for a well-deserved drink. Finally, every summer Stanley Park’s Malkin Bowl is home to TheatreUnder the Stars (www.tuts.ca), the city’s annual open-air musical theatre venue. While mostly anamateur enterprise, the performances are exceptionally good and the backdrop magical. Thisyear’s offerings are Bye Bye Birdie and Anything Goes. Bring insect repellent, warm clothing,and an umbrella; performances are held rain or shine.

Women and Comedy: History, Theory, Practice 184. Vancouver Art Gallery and Robson Street: The VAG (www.vanartgallery.bc.ca) occupies acity block between Howe and Hornby Streets east and west, and Robson and Georgia Streetsnorth and south. Enter off Hornby Street. This summer’s shows include an investigation of time,movement, and memory in the work of Jim Campbell, Chris Marker, and Eadweard Muybridge;a comprehensive survey of surrealist art called “The Colour of My Dreams”; a retrospective ofKen Lum, an acclaimed local conceptualist; and a show from the permanent collection called“Unreal.” On their top floor, the gallery maintains a (yawn) permanent display of Emily Carr’spaintings. Continue west along Robson Street to explore the city’s main shopping drag.5. Granville Island: Just across False Creek from downtown, Granville Island(www.granvilleisland.com) is home to one of the largest and most delectable public markets inwestern Canada, featuring an abundance of fresh local produce and seafood, but also many otherspecialty shops. And there’s much more than just the food: artists studios and craft stores; severaltheatres and performance spaces; an indoor toy market and outdoor water park for kids; and theCharles H. Scott Gallery at the Emily Carr University of Art and Design. Vancouver’sTheatreSports Comedy Improv League also has its home on Granville Island, at 1502 DuranleauSt. (check www.vtsl.com for the August schedule). For an extra bit of fun, pretend you’re vonAschenbach and approach the island via one of the little blue ferries that prowl False Creek, andavailable for embarking at the foot of Hornby Street, or at the Aquatic Centre, or in Yaletown(www.granvilleislandferries.bc.ca).6. The Museum of Anthropology and Wreck Beach at UBC: My one nod to our institutional rivalsin Point Grey will be to recommend the world-class Museum of Anthropology on the UBCcampus (www.moa.ubc.ca). Housed in an iconic, and newly-renovated and expanded, buildingdesigned by Arthur Erickson, MOA’s historical and contemporary collections of First Nations artand artifacts are extraordinary both for what they contain and the cultural and communitysensitivity with which the material is displayed. The museum is also home to a major collectionof ceramics, and regularly hosts locally curated and touring exhibitions from around the world.Depending on the weather and your own sense of adventurousness, you may wish to combineyour visit to MOA with a trip to Wreck Beach, at the westernmost tip of UBC, and Vancouver’sonly clothing-optional beach. If you do go, bring lots of sunscreen, and consider staying for thesunset, which prompts regular applause from its audience.7. The North Shore: A short bus ride across the Lion’s Gate Bridge, or seabus trip across BurrardInlet, brings you to the bedroom communities of West and North Vancouver, respectively. In theformer, you can partake of the final days of the Harmony Arts Festival in Ambleside Park(harmonyarts.ca). In the latter, you can cross the Capilano Suspension Bridge(www.capbridge.com), or take a gondola to the top of Grouse Mountain(www.grousemountain.com).8. Richmond Summer Night Market: Just south of Vancouver, where the airport is, liesRichmond, which is now the main home of the city’s ethnic Chinese community. Among otherthings, various local and international authorities have pronounced Richmond as having, afterHong Kong, the largest and best concentration of Chinese restaurants outside of mainland China.The suburb also hosts a Summer Night Market (www.summernightmarket.com) every Friday,

Women and Comedy: History, Theory, Practice 19Saturday, and Sunday evening at 12631 Vulcan Way, featuring more than 200 vendors sellingamazing food and unique merchandise. There are also free exhibitions and performances.Restaurants (a thoroughly subjective list of recommendations in the downtown core)Bao Bei Chinese Brasserie (163 Keefer St.; www.bao-bei.ca; 604-688-0876): a fusion not just ofeast and west, but of pan-Chinese cuisine, this recently opened boîte has scooped several localand national best new restaurant awards. No reservations.Cibo (900 Seymour St.; www.cibotrattoria.com; 604-602-9570): perhaps the finest Italianrestaurant in the city is also one of the most innovative and unusual, not just in terms ofingredients and flavours, but also presentation. Choose from a set menu or order à la carte.Nicli Antica Pizzeria (62 East Cordova St; nicli-antica-pizzeria.ca; 604-669-6985): authenticNeapolitan pizzas cooked for 90 seconds in a wood-burning oven kept at 900°. No reservations.Nuba (207-B West Hastings @ Columbia; www.nuba.ca; 604-688-1655): just down the streetfrom Harbour Centre, this Lebanese tapas joint serve fresh, flavourful food perfect for sharing,and at ridiculously low prices.Raincity Grill (1193 Denman St.; www.raincitygrill.com; 604-685-7337): around the cornerfrom the Sylvia Hotel, this stalwart in the West End helped to define Pacific Northwest cuisine inthe city, with a matching wine list full of BC, Washington, Oregon, and California vintages.Current chef Jennifer Peters offers diners the option of a 100-mile menu.Salt (Blood Alley; www.salttastingroom.com; 604-633-1912): one of Sean Heather’s manyGastown ventures (our workshop banquet will be in a private room attached to his Irish HeatherGastropub), this restaurant specializes solely in artisanal cheeses, specialty charcuterie, andaccompanying condiments. There’s also an extensive wine list, and diners share long galleytables. If it’s full, try The Judas Goat, also owned by Heather, and just down the street.Wild Rice (117 West Pender; www.wildricevancouver.com; 604-642-2882): another greatmodern Chinese restaurant, featuring bite-size dim sum items, small plates, and larger sharingplates. The wild mushroom and smoked tofu ravioli is vegetarian heaven.Yew (791 West Georgia St.; www.yewrestaurant.com; 604-692-4939) located in the FourSeasons, this excellent hotel restaurant features weekly themed menus and each Sunday everybottle on its wine list is half price. Every bottle! Including champagne!!EntertainmentIn addition to some of the theatre suggestions listed above, Vancouver’s annual Shakespearefestival, Bard on the Beach (www.bardonthebeach.org), will be ongoing in August.Performances take place underneath tents in Vanier Park. This year’s offerings include As YouLike It, The Merchant of Venice, The War of the Roses (an amalgam of the three parts of HenryVI by UBC theatre professor emeritus Errol Durbach), and Richard III.

Women and Comedy: History, Theory, Practice 20MusicFest Vancouver, the city’s annual international festival of classical, jazz, and world musicalso begins the first week of August, with performances at eight different locales(www.musicfestvancouver.ca).If you wish to check out Greater Vancouver’s comedy clubs, the main ones are as follows: YukYuk’s (relocating to Hotel Indigo at 2837 Cambie St. this summer; www.yukyuks.com);Lafflines (26 4 th Street, New Westminster, right by the Columbia Skytrain stop;www.lafflines.com); The Comedy Mix (in The Century Plaza Hotel, 1015 Burrard St.;www.thecomedymix.com); and, as noted above, TheatreSports Comedy Improv League onGranville Island (www.vtsl.com).Finally, for a full and up-to-date listing of theatre, music, dance, film, stand-up, and otherentertainment options in the city during the month of August, pick up a copy of The GeorgiaStraight, Vancouver’s free weekly, when you arrive. They also have an on-line version with upto-datereviews at www.straight.com.After the WorkshopIf you are sticking around after the workshop and would like further suggestions about things todo, or recommendations about getaways further afield (e.g. Vancouver Island, the Gulf Islands,Whistler and the Sunshine Coast, Okanagan wine country, etc.), please do not hesitate to ask.THANK YOUIn addition to all of the presenters and participants in the workshop, as well as our amazingGraduate Assistants, the faculty members of the Women and Comedy organizing committeewish to thank: Ish Awan, Maureen Curtin, Leith Davis, Rachel Jones, Michelle Levy, LinneaMcNally, Robert Payne, Betty Schellenberg, Shawn Swanson, and the students of ENGL 376,ENGL 468W, and ENGL 832.