No ghettoes

[Jastroch]

Whatever.

danke.

[Mo Daviau]

I'm not terribly concerned about the all-female block in and of itself. What sucked was that we were opposite the headliners and the big rap battle. I think it's kind of rude to put ANYONE opposite the big show.

[shando]

Whatever.

danke.

Hey Jastroch, get bent.

[York99]

I liken this to the discussion of the last night of OoB this year being only male: I didn't notice at all.

I know that this will ruffle some feathers, but I believe that intentionally putting groups of one thing together and/or calling it out when it happens unintentionally, hurts rather than helps the goal of erasing those lines. To this end, I don't believe in BET, the Latin Grammies, or (sorry ladies) the upcoming LAF Festival.

[shando]

So I've been thinking about this, and here's a more eloquent way of putting my initial concern. Some groups, by certain self-imposed criteria, either of group composition or style, make certain claims on an audience's preconceptions. A solo or duo show has some specific parameters in which they work. Same for a group that, say, is a Harold team or a group that does only musicals, or what have you. It makes a certain sense to expect something because of those constraints. Solo and duo shows can be totally different in style and execution, but it's reasonable to want to view them together to see how, say, WierDass and BassProv handle similar formal demands.

Being a group composed off all one thing or another (female, black, 3 Tenors, Latin Grammy winners) doesn't exactly automatically convey that same level of infomation. It might, but might not. For some all-female troupes, their all-femaleness is part of the identity they want to convey in advance of what you see--take for instance GGG or Bridgeport Women's or SuperOvum, whose names themselves give you that information. And having that be part of the identity is fine in my book. But for other shows who happen to be composed of all one group, that compositional identity isn't as integral to what they're selling. Kaci and Jill's show, for instance, of Clifford and Kidd. What bothers me is an automatic lumping of the latter with the former. And maybe that doesn't bother other people, but it seems lazy to me.

[York99]

Shannon, I think you put what I meant into better words. Still, having "all sketch night" is compartmentalizing by interest/activity/etc. Having "all girls night" or The Latin Grammies connotes to me the idea that they would have no voice in a general arena.

Take sports as a counter-example. Seperating genders is ok because there is scientific proof of physical differences between men and women that differentiate performance ability very distinctly. Seperating races is wrong.

[arclight]

"Don't blame on malice which is easily explainable by piano"

Ahem.

I agree with Shannon that if a group self-identifies with a very specific form or composition, putting like groups together makes good sense. Example: if OoB were to include stand-up, then a stand-up track would be appropriate.

OTOH, I'm sort of a bastard when it comes to the audience. Mix it up. We shouldn't necessarily cater to the audience's demand for a homogenous product. Show people the spectrum of what improv can be. Give me short-form, Harold teams, narrative, genre, solo work in one block. Force the Harold/narrative/short-form-lovers to sit through something different for a change. If that's not marketable, don't do it. But in Austin for a mostly unsophisticated audience (those who can't/don't differentiate between different forms), give them a sampler.

Mix the chocolate and the peanut butter.

[ratliff]

It's definitely true that groups who self-identify as a certain genre or gender have less room to complain when they get lumped in together. To speak to Shannon's point, there weren't any accidentally female troupes on our bill at DSI: They were all very clearly and intentionally wimmen-only. We can complain about our slot because it was up against the big draws, but somebody had to play then. Unless we're suggesting that the all-women troupes should have been given extra-special consideration, it might as well have been us.

[shando]

To speak to Shannon's point, there weren't any accidentally female troupes on our bill at DSI: They were all very clearly and intentionally wimmen-only.

And let me take this opportunity to say none of my posts are meant to be a slight to DSI in any way, a festival about which I know next to nothing and with whom I can sympathize in all of the scheduling hurdles festivals face. Their line-up merely sparked the thoughts most recently posted, thoughts I've been carrying around in some unarticulated way for some time.

[Jessica]

Take sports as a counter-example. Seperating genders is ok because there is scientific proof of physical differences between men and women that differentiate performance ability very distinctly. Seperating races is wrong.

I know this is off topic, but genders are seperated in sports for political/cultural reasons, not scientific. There have been many instances of women doing quite well at a sport (for example: football) but when they tried to play they get booed off the field, harassed, or raped until they quit. It is in every sport and I have more examples if you want them. If you don't like it you can smell my hairy armpits!

[vine311]

...raped until they quit.

That's the exact reason I quit my synchronized swimming team.

[arclight]

We can complain about our slot because it was up against the big draws, but somebody had to play then.

Is that really true? OoB didn't schedule anyone opposite their headliners this past year. Again, not to turn this into a OoB vs DSI thing, but IMO it's kinda rude (to headliners, to audience, to the performers who have to play to a small crowd and can't watch the headliners) to schedule anything but the headliners in that slot.

[shando]

Well, the whole set-up as I can tell is different between the two festivals, so it's probably not that productive to compare. We've only really got one venue, last year was our first time bringing in 'headliners', we play over a long weekend so we could add a big show on an off night without competing with ourselves, (a format Jeremy and I didn't even figure out until about the time the State flooded), yadda yadda.

More important to me is headliners play SXSW and there are tons of shows scheduled at the same time. We need to work to make ensemble comedy even 5% as popular as live music to the general public.

[York99]

There have been many instances of women doing quite well at a sport (for example: football) but when they tried to play they get booed off the field, harassed, or raped until they quit. It is in every sport and I have more examples if you want them. If you don't like it you can smell my hairy armpits!

I would LOVE examples. I'm a moderate watcher of sports, and I've never heard of women getting raped until they quit. I had no idea that that was the reason that in golf the LPGA exists alongside the PGA. It doesn't, however, explain why the ladies use the tee boxes closer to the hole. Perhaps it is so that if they see Tiger Woods lurking in the shadows about to rape them out of the game, they have a shorter distance to run.

[andrea]

there's this book i read (its my friend's; i forget the title, but i sent him an email to ask) about gender differences in sports. the conjecture is that men and women's sports are set up to be different, so that men and women don't ever have to compete. the example i remember clearly was women's basketball vs men's basketball. you will know more than me, but apparently the wnba uses smaller balls and has shorter baskets and periods than the nba. women are trained their whole athletic lives to play the "easier" game. so how can one adequately judge whether women and men can compete if they haven't had the same athletic experiences? this also goes for those presidential fitness tests in grade school. in elementary schools, boys and girls perform the same tests. then arbitrarily (this book would argue) in 6th grade, boys are held to much higher standards. is this scientifically accurate or a self-fulfilling prophecy?

seriously i'll post the title of the book. its real. and a good read.