Femprov, the Bay Area's longest running improvisational comedy group, play tonight in Pleasanton.

Femprov all female all funny 

by Sally Tockey • San Ramon Valley Herald

The jokes are on them. That's what makes Femprov what they are: five funny females who stand up to laughs wherever, whenever, however.

Don't misunderstand. Femprov's hardly a quintet of feminists waiting to snatch a chuckle, a cheer or a crowing with a routine about men. "We're just funny women who are out for the laughs,” says Terry Sand spokesman for the comediennes “Someone else can burn our bras.” Femprov, instead, relies on improvisation — a think-fast act-fast extemporaneous performing art. 

It works this way. 

Someone in the audience yells out a suggestion for a scene: two people meeting at an airport and they're angry or they're depressed or they’re…

"The audience keeps throwing out more emotions and we go from there …well, it's hard to explain the game," says Terry who met her comedic counterparts at an improvisational workshop in the City.

They —Terry, Susan Healy and Teresa Roberts —became Femprov when the Holy City Zoo nightclub started offering Women's Nights for both novice and established laugh collectors.

Now four years old and two members stronger, the quintet book regularly many Wednesdays at Cobb's pub in San Francisco's Marina District. Their resume also shows performances at the Venetian room in the Fairmont Hotel, the Great American Music Hall, the Women's Building, the San Francisco Jewish Community Center, Allen's Alley at the Boarding House.

Such television credits as the KGO Channel 7 Cerebral Palsy Telethon, Cable six presentation of “Women of the 80s" and “Womanvision,” a pilot project filmed by Alan Springer Associates, also greatly please their groupies. "I call them from Femprov junkies," reports Terry. "They've got to get their laughs in." 

She says the female funnies, who all live in the City, always present a family-hour show sans the four-letter words widely practiced by others.

Their props—glasses, hats and facial expressions—simply supplement the routines practiced by the five, who are all close friends as well as coworkers. 

Terry laughs when questioned about their income. 

"Oh sure, we've made enough to put several illegitimate children through college… but we also all have to supplement our income with comedy."

Choosing a comedy career has other drawbacks, too. 

Late nights, shows on the road, the constant demand to "say something funny" may slow Femprov down a titch, but not for long. And there's always something humorous in those situations.

Like the time they played in Ukiah on the promise of room and board plus money. "Well, we thought we were going to be staying at the Holiday Inn or something like that," Terry relates. "But no, they took us to a nice place with an area for meditation and we slept there on couches. 

“The next morning when we walked outside we saw women and kids doing tai chi —naked. The place was a nudist colony."

Luckily, Femprov faces few worries about comedians block, when witty words disappear. They support one another with a line, and expression, something that breaks through the dreaded total blank.

"And will probably be performing till were 90 years old or 70 or 60 with people saying 'poor women! Why don't they stop!"

Femprov, an all-woman improvisation group consists of Debbie Durst, Terry Sand (with fish)
Pat Daniels (with fan) and Jeannene Hansen (hat). Denise Schultz is not pictured.

A woman's touch: 
all female improvisational group one-of-a-kind 

by Lynn Carey • Contra Costa Times 

It's pathos, compassion and pity. It's joy, sadness and lust. And it's all experienced within a matter of seconds on any stage you find Femprov.

The only all woman improvisational group in Northern California, Femprov began out of frustration in 1979. Very few females were used in comedy groups at the time, and Susan Healy, Teresa Roberts and Terry Sand who met in an improvisational comedy workshop decided to form Femprov after San Francisco's Holy City Zoo began "women's nights".
"Women's Night" didn't last, but Femprov did. Other members joined, some left, and the group now consists of five women in their early 30s who perform weekly together —without problems.

The name of the group was a problem at first. "We always figured people would think we were castrating bitches, or gay women's comedy," said Jeannene Hansen who is a four year veteran of Femprov. "We thought of changing the name to Broad Humor or something, but now we’ve got some momentum with the name so will keep it."

Other current members of the group our founding member Terry Sand, who also teaches improvisational comedy at the Jewish Community Center (she was also the first miss Haight  Ashbury); Pat Daniels, the only member of the group who has a “real” daytime job, as a cytologist (she used to run a joke writing service with then-husband John Cantu); Denise Schultz, who is also a waitress in the Financial District and a member of Comedy Underground, an improv group that performs at the Punchline; and Debi Durst also a member of Comedy Underground. The wife of Will Durst, who won the 1983 San Francisco international Stand-up Comedy Competition, Debi is the only Femprovette who is currently married. 

Since all the women in the group are attractive, witty and obviously extremely intelligent, it would be assumed that man lineup outside the stage door after a performance.
"Would that it were true," sighed Hansen with a chuckle. "Sometimes the guys that do come backstage try to be funnier than us. It isn't effective and I'm sure they feel like jerks."
Hansen got her first taste of comedy when she attended a workshop with a friend. "I was so frightened of performing onstage, though I had a few drama classes in high school. But I got up and said something, it got a laugh and I was hooked."

Hansen supports her Femprov habit with photography and stand-up comedy (she appears solo at the Other Café the Holy City Zoo and the Punchline) "I want to be a really strong standup comic, but from my point of view it's not as rewarding as improv. There's a real bond in creating something out of nothing. You can look at the person who's performing with you in the eye and signal ‘yes, let's go with it.’ There's a real freedom in that."

Femprov does about 10 sketches based on ideas from the audience. For example, at Cobb's Pub in the Marina a few weeks ago, they were asked to be sisters vacationing in Tahiti, and the audience kept suggesting a new emotion for them to play. During another skit, the two characters onstage kept freezing while the audience yelled out another movie director.

"Femprov is the warmest, most personable improv group in the city."

Flashes and flops: improv lives on 

by Steven Winn • SF Chronicle

A Monday night, several weeks later, 9:30 PM. Femprov, the Bay Area's only all-women improv troupe, is doing a set at Cobb's Pub on Chestnut Street. Formed in 1979 out of a frustration with the subservient roles women were assigned in earlier improv troupes, the group was popular initially as a novelty. Now the following is widespread, and deservedly so. Femprov is the warmest, most personable improv group in the city. 

The connection between the members is evident, in the responsiveness to each other's drift —or grammatical miscues —in a bit.  Ego seems to be nonexistent.

A movie trailer parody for "Nice Girls After Dark," is apt and droll. There's a gooey, loopy love-song number addressed to a male member of the audience, rich in a kind of mad cap hyper-sexuality "What I love is that women are supporting each other," one member drawls satirically in another bit. "Sexist" or "feminist" behavior, by conventional definition, is adopted by the members and shrugged off at the same time. Wit fails at times, but the bond to the audience is strong.

"When I did standup," says member Pat Daniels, "I did jokes about not getting dates. A lot of men, and women for that matter, think you have to compromise your femininity in order to be funny. Improv lets you get away from that. We can do a scene where four other women are actually supporting what you're doing instead of competing with each other —and the audience —to run themselves down."

Adds Terry Sand, "What a lot of actors are doing is 'indicating' emotions. In improv, you don't have time to get set to do that. Whatever comes up, that's what you have to go with."

"Femprov simply performs good comedy."

They'll be a Ha time in the old town … 

Lively Arts • July 1981 • by R. L. Paer

It may surprise you, but it is an indisputable fact that San Francisco and it's surrounding areas have the best combination of amateur, semi-professional and professional comedy in the country. There are dozens of cafés to which literally hundreds of young, imaginative comedians from all the United States gravitate to entertain and be discovered. Why San Francisco and not New York or Los Angeles? Mike Pritchard, a well-known face on the San Francisco comedy circuit who has appeared on "Taxi" and "The Tonight Show" explains it this way,  "In San Francisco you can experiment. Anybody can get on stage and test out their material. By the time you reach Los Angeles you have to have a reputation. Somebody has to say 'Oh I heard he's funny." So, San Francisco is great for people just starting out."

The open door policy of the Bay Area comedy circuit all allows for a wide variety of comedy styles and material. Solo acts, teams of two, and entire groups numbering as many as six people perform everything from Chaplinesque slapstick to satires of Shakespeare. Recently, I had the pleasure of tagging along with several comedians. What I encountered were dedicated, hard-working, talented, underpaid individuals presenting some of the finest comedy an audience would ever hope to witness.

[ The longer article featured Barry Sobel—solo act and Fran and Jan—teams of two ]

Improvisation is a very popular form of comedy in the Bay Area. Many groups exist whose members are extremely talented. One of the hottest groups is Femprov.  Femprov is different from other improvisational teams in that it is made up entirely of women. And unlike most female comedians, Femprov's five members, Pat Daniels, Jeannene Hansen, Susan Healy, Carol Roberts and Terry Sand, do not get bogged down with strictly female humor, which inhibits the universality of many comediennes. Femprov simply performs good comedy.

Unlike typical standup comedy, improvisation relies on audience participation. The members of the improvisational group will ask the audience to call out different situations. For example, the audience may be asked to name a place and an occupation, and then the group has to ad lib an entire, hopefully funny, skit based on those suggestions. Yes, Virginia there are easier ways of making a living.

Since improvisation depends so heavily on interaction with the audience it works best in a small, cozy setting. There are a number of clubs in the Bay Area where improvisation goes over well and the Holy City Zoo is one of them. The Zoo offers top-notch comedy, and Femprov appears there often.

Femprov opens with one of the few rehearsed pieces in there act, a song sung to the tune of "Can't Hurry Love," which welcomes you to the show. Upon finishing the song they catapult into the audience for ideas. It boggles the mind as to how these five people can, on the spur of the moment, produce one funny skit after another.

The truly interesting aspect of improvisation is that because it is based on audience suggestion the show can never be the same twice. But there is something that never changes — Femprov is consistently excellent.

So, the next time you're sitting at home complaining that you've done it all, pick yourself up and check out one of the Bay Area comedy houses. Treat yourself to an evening of hilarity that exists in your own backyard.

• • •  • • •  • • •

Note: Imagine our excitement when we were told we were to grace the cover of Lively Arts magazine! The photographer, Bob Oshetsky, took the group photo immediately after an evening's performance at The Other Cafe. High on another successful night, we did not factor in our 'glistening' and adrenaline-pumped look after our 2 hour show. A month or so later when the magazine was published and numerous copies were forwarded to us, our excitement dissolved into horror. The color cast was oddly pink and green, and except for Pat, we all looked as if we had been through the wringer, sweaty, flushed, wild-eyed, and over-mugging for the camera. Absolute.Horror.Show! The apt cover caption: Femprov— One of the hottest improvisational groups in the Bay Area. We were hot alright, Decathlon in Death Valley hot. We decided then and there, we would not include this image in future Press Kits, much less speak of it again. The show was great, as the writer attests, but the cover photo was an anomaly in the catalog of Femprov imagery. After all these years, we still remember it as "That Cover", and shudder a little. It is re-imagined here only to serve as historical proof of our first and only 'cover girl' experience. 

A likely bunch of coconuts

Femprov: A High-Class Act 

by E. J. McLaughlin 

Question: What do you get when you put a dance instructor, a gerontologist, a city planner, a photographer, and a cytologist together on stage?
Answer: A dynamic evening of improvisational comedy by the popular Bay Area group known as Femprov.

Femprov began in December 1979 when Susan Healy, Terry Sand, and Teresa Roberts decided to form an all-woman improvisational comedy troupe. Based wholly on audience suggestion, improvisational theater has a long history in San Francisco, with such groups as the Committee, Spaghetti Jam, and Papaya Juice.

Femprov, becoming well-known in San Francisco because of the publicity given to their unique "all woman " status, prefers not to capitalize on that fact. They deliver a high level of comedy and creativity, attributable to the diverse backgrounds of its members.

All of Femprov’s material is extremely creative. From there take off on “Beat Poets" in the North Beach scene, to interviewing off-the-wall applicants in an unemployment office, to their cable TV shows of “The Creative Cook" and “The Gay Dating Game" not to forget the ingenious "Alien Fashion Show". They also do a scene called “Dedication" in which they very adeptly satirize Frank Sinatra. With overcoats slung casually on their shoulders, they take turns singing seductive goodbyes to an unfortunate(?) male audience member.

Femprov agrees that comedy is on the verge of becoming the rock and roll of the 80s adding “It is also a very good time for women starting out since existing comediennes are being taken out of live performing and placed into more marketable fields such as film television and directing." They offer this advice to aspiring comediennes “…be yourself, don't do self-deprecation material, you'll get laughs but it won't help any of us… the hard way is better."

Femprov has a promising future in the Bay Area and the West Coast. They perform Sunday nights at the Old Spaghetti Factory in San Francisco, with other engagements announced weekly. So for an evening of stimulating musical/comedy improv is truly a high class act.