Empower Women in Comedy

Thanks for checking out our Funny Ladies Power Hour  GoFundMe campaign!  Cynthia Overton and Melanie Calabrese are leading this effort. We help empower women in comedy while helping people stay safe at home. Here’s a bit about our work...

WHAT WE DO
We host FREE live comedy shows via Zoom featuring comedians who identify as women or non-binary every Wednesday at 8:00 pm Pacific / 11:00 pm Eastern. 

WHY WE DO IT
The underrepresentation of women in comedy coupled with the increase in pressure and isolation that has come during a time of social isolation inspired us to create this project. 

Benefits to Comedians...
-Performing: Comedy clubs are closed,  making it hard for comedians to work. We help keep comedians performing. 
-Support: We offer a supportive environment for women-identifying and nonbinary comedians to perform in a field that often difficult for this population.
-Promotion: We promote, promote, promote the work of our comedians to encourage future bookings.

Benefits to the Audience...
-Free comedy shows:  Financial situations have changed for many folks since March 2020. We don’t want anyone who is struggling to even think about the price of a ticket
-Social connections: Social isolation can be tough. We provide a fun way for folks to engage with others and meet new people while having fun! 
-Staying home: We do our part to help slow the spread by giving folks a reason to stay home.

WHAT FOLKS ARE SAYING

“I'm so glad that we tuned in and I want to thank all of you for putting this on. As I was watching it, I thought of how this whole year has been just so crazy and how much of a nice break this was from all of this craziness. The moment to have a little bit of something special in this period where there's so much crap going on...it really was a nice break for me.”

“Just seeing a live performance of something, real people performing in real-time, was a joy.”

“Thank you all for putting this on! We’ll be back next Wednesday
.”

HOW WE SPEND FUNDS
1) Our priority for funds is to book comedians for our Showcase performances.
2) Next, we’ll use funds to offset operating expenses that we’re paying out of pocket (website hosting and upgrades, Zoom subscription and upgraded plan, equipment to run the show, captioning, etc).
3) When operating expenses are under control, we'll offer workshops led by professionals that help advance women in comedy.

A LABOR OF LOVE AND LAUGHTER
We (Mel Michele and Cynthia Annette–show creators, hosts, producers, talent scouts, booking agents, website developers, DJs, etc), do not receive financial compensation for this initiative. But we do get to laugh a lot!