Melissa Nunez
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Canadian sketch comedy show “Women Fully Clothed” will come to the Alex and Faye Spanos Theatre on April 14.
The cast is comprised of “Saturday Night Live’s” Robin Duke, “My Big Fat Greek Wedding’s” Jayne Eastwood, “Whose Line Is It Anyway’s” Kathryn Greenwood and “The Jane Show’s” Teresa Pavlinek.
The show has been running since 2003 and began in Canada. Since then, they have entertained audiences across North America and Europe.
The four comedians were part of The Second City in Toronto, an improvisational comedy company. The Second City asked Duke to put together a group of women for a show to perform at a charity fundraiser for a woman’s organization.
“We had a great chemistry,” Duke said. “We would rehearse — well, mostly we would laugh and eat, tell what was going on in our days and then rehearse for half an hour.”
After the charity performance, a theatre manager in the audience suggested they make a show. Duke pushed the idea of writing a show together.
Greenwood was unsure of taking it on because she had young children at the time. Duke persuaded Greenwood to go over to her house to eat, talk and laugh, which kept the chemistry flowing.
“I got really good food and hung out with the ladies,” Greenwood said. “After a couple of months of this, it kind of convinced me that it was kind of therapeutic for me as a young mom. We would do everything women do when they got together — laugh and eat. Except the only difference was we would take things we would laugh about, our daily lives, and each go home and start writing about those things.”
They eventually came up with a show and called the theatre manger who immediately booked them. Their first show had an audience of 700 people.
“We got a standing ovation and we have never looked back,” Greenwood said.
Their sketches and comedy songs cover topics that relate to being a woman — whether that’s being a mom or businesswoman. Each of the performers are from different age groups, which gives the show a variety of topics. Pavlinek is the youngest of the four.
“Some of my material deals with actually trying to be in the moment in our technology-fueled world,” Pavlinek said. “I have a scene that’s actually based on something that happened to me in real life. I was at a funeral and there was this woman on her phone texting. I thought, ‘Wow, we have really lost touch.'”
Every one of their sketches and songs comes from their every day lives, which women can relate to.
“I wrote a song about what to make for dinner because every mother has that question every day of their life,” Greenwood said. “Basically, I think it’s almost harder to do that than to run a country. It’s to come up with dinner every night of your life.”
The show mainly attracts a female audience from the ages of 30 and 60, but has also been popular with male comedians. Though, they have found that a lot of women come back with their husbands.
“The men love our show as much as the women,” Greenwood said. “It’s not male bashing; it’s not just for women. It’s their lives too, which they see on stage.”
Duke, a “Saturday Night Live” veteran, finds that the on-stage sketches have to be very well-written and come from different points of view and humor within one scene.
Audience members don’t have to be in the same age range to laugh at the humor in the sketches and songs, either.
“We just did a show in Ontario and there was a 12-year-old girl who came backstage laughing her head off with her 16-year-old sister and I said to them, ‘Did you really have a good time?’” Greenwood said. “They said, ‘You know, we had such a good time, it killed me.’ It’s totally for all ages. If you like to laugh, this is it.”
The show begins at 7:30 p.m. Tickets can be purchased at pacslo.org.