By Lesley Goldberg
Bridget McManus, Cat Davis, Gloria Bigelow, Jennie McNulty and Liz Feldman have a lot in common. In addition to being openly gay, the funny ladies are regulars on the stand-up comedy stage and well-known video bloggers for the Logo-owned lesbian website AfterEllen.com.
And now, thanks to lesbian event producer extraordinaire Andrea Meyerson, the five have yet another thing in common: They’ll all be sharing the stage at January’s AfterEllen.com’s One Night Stand Up in Long Beach, Calif.
Meyerson, who has been a producer of lesbian stand-up events, TV specials and films supporting the lesbian stand-up world, has worked with three of the five comics before and pitched the concept of a night based around the ladies of AfterEllen to Logo.
“I asked Logo what they thought about bringing the vloggers that are lesbian comics and doing a comedy show dedicated to them and they loved it,” says Meyerson, whose 2003 “Laughing Matters” documentary first put the spotlight on out comics Suzanne Westenhoefer, Kate Clinton, Marga Gomez and Karen Williams.
The event producer/writer/director first had the idea to put the spotlight on the lesbian comedy sector after Ellen DeGeneres and, later, Rosie O’Donnell came out.
“I’d been working with comics that had been out from Day 1, from the first day they stepped on stage at the risk of jeopardizing the level of celebrity status they would ever gain,” Meyerson says. “They would never have the opportunities that Ellen and Rosie had — even though they’re just as talented — because they were out. So I decided to make a movie to pay tribute to them.”
“I was paying tribute to comics who had been doing comedy as out lesbians for between 15 and 20 years at the time I made the movie,” she says. “They never lied, they never hid, they were never closeted in their comedy career.”
After the success of “Laughing Matters” — it won the audience award at Outfest in Los Angeles in 2003 as well as many other film festival awards, was acquired by Here TV and distributed on DVD by Wolfe video. Meyerson “got the bug” and decided to produce a follow-up film, “Laughing Matters More.”
“With the first group, I felt I covered the pioneers of lesbian comedy, and the second film, ‘Laughing Matters More,’ was about the group of women that this first group opened doors for,” she recalls.
Meyerson’s second film was eventually sold to Logo, marking the beginning of a long relationship with the nation’s leading LGBT TV network.
“(Working with Logo) was something I visualized when it launched,” says Meyerson, noting that Logo didn’t exist at the time of her first film. “It was very important to sell my second film to them. I really wanted to work with them.”
Now, after having produced and directed four films, a series of TV specials for Logo — “One Night Stand Up,” which has already aired seven episodes that unite LGBT comics for a one-night event — as well as solo specials on comics including Kate Clinton, Suzanne Westenhoefer, Vickie Shaw, Karen Williams, Jessica Kirson and Alec Mapa, Meyerson, is turning the spotlight to AfterEllen’s stars.
Meyerson has already worked with McManus and Bigelow — each were featured in “Laughing Matters Next Gen” as well as McNulty, who was featured in the first One Night Stand Up in 2007 and looks forward to working with these two extremely talented newbies,” she jokes.
“All of these vloggers each have a very big following,” Meyerson says.
That they do. McManus’ “Brunch With Bridget,” Davis’ “Cat on the Prowl,” McNulty’s “Walking Funny With,” Feldman’s “This Just Out” and Bigelow’s “Cherry Bomb” are all hits with AfterEllen readers and have catapulted each to the “celesbian” status.
As for Meyerson, who also is the creator of lesbian networking group Women on a Roll, she’s achieved her goals — and more.
“It was my goal to create a situation where everybody would win,” she says. “The lesbian community would have a night of entertainment that spoke to them: Their artists, speaking their lives, sharing their stories.”
AfterEllen.com’s One Night Stand Up will be held Jan. 30 at the Long Beach Performing Arts Center, which seats 800. Tickets for the event, which will be filmed and air on Logo in April, go on sale via Ticketmaster on Dec. 28 or at the Long Beach Performing Arts Center’s boxoffice at (562.436.3661) and range from $15and $25. Advance ticket sales are currently available via WomenOnARoll.com or (310)578.8888.
To keep tabs on what Meyerson has planned for 2010 — more Logo productions and the 15th anniversary of Women on a Roll — go to AllOutFilms.com. Also, check out Meyerson’s own video blog on afterellen.com: All Access Pass: Up Close & Personal with Women in the Biz.
