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The Daily Inter Lake, Sunday, June 24, 1990Creative impulsesComedy team expresses them with humorWHEN FRIENDS KATH Althen,, Judie Overbeek and 'Asta Bowen gather, it isn't for golf or bndge, it’s to refine their comedy routine. It’s their form of fun and relaxation, and on several memorable occasions, they’ve gone public. (Inter Lake photo by Karen Nichols)By ANNE CLARK The Dally Inter LakeSome women get together, enjoy one another's company and play golf; three Kalispell women get together and refine their comedy routine.They entertain, but they don’t label themselves entertainers:Kath Althen, a computer expert, is an arbitration and economics consultant; Judie Overbeek is a publisher and associate editor of Northern Rockies Business Review; and ‘Asta Bowen is an author and columnist for Seattle Post-Intelligencer, and this year will teach writing in the schools.But they leave their professional lives far behind when they get on stage.“How many adult women do you know who will go on stage and say the pledge in a Donald Duck voice while juggling?” says Overbeek.The first time I saw a video of us, I covered my eyes,” she added. “I couldn’t believe we had actually done that in front of people.”But the audience laughed, they laughed. Most important, they had a good time.They began their hobby-enterprise several years ago after their attempts had failed to nail down a big-name act for a meeting of the Women’s Network. They put themselves on the program as the ‘Wan Kady Bawdas” players.The meaning of the name escapes even them.“It means something like We are not kidding and don’t you breathe a word to a soul,’ “ Bowen said.They weren’t kidding about doing comedy, however, and they watched movies, videos and the Prairie Home Companion to find what good comedy is. They decided that Lily Tomlin, Steve Martin, Robin Williams and Whoopie Goldberg know.They sought to define “women’s comedy,” or “women comedians,” but found it easier to say what it is not, what they are noL“A lot of humor is abusive, down-putting, violent,” said Bowen. That has never made me laugh. And slapstick — it's something, but it’s not for me. I have a hunch that what’s funny to us is funny to other women. Does it make US laugh? If it has us rolling, we put it in.”They tailor-make their comedy for the group they’re entertaining. So far, the groups have been overwhelmingly female, but they don’t want to characterize themselves as “for women only.”For Secretary’s Day, food was their topic. They sang “What aFriend We Have in Cheeses, a take-off on the hymn by a similar name, and did a skit about a salad bar eating disorder.They re-enacted a scene that■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■Imost women have experienced — hearing bawdy comments as they walk by a construction job. They gave it a twist that puts the blush on the burly male worker.They choreographed the song, “King Tut,” and ended with “While Rap,” a stylized greeting-and-response done as a commentary on meaningless conversation between acquaintances. In between were short sketches, poems and songs.This time, however, they were not the Wan Kady bunch, they were the Mother Lode.“We planned a retreat, a weekend of practice, and at the end of a long hike on a nice spring day — we were the Mother Lode, says Overbeek.The name evokes images of therichness of Montana, pioneer heritage and women’s contributions they said, and then their serious vein panned ouL “You can also spell that Mother Load,” said OverDeek.They thought about promoting their act for conventions, but decided there were too many demands in their other lives to do thatThey have standards, though. They’ve never done it for free.“We decided to charge by the hundred weight of feeder cattle on the commodity market, said Bowen. “Maybe we’d double or triple it each time. It would be sort of a comedy futures market We’d bring a scale and weigh in before the performance.”That might have its drawbacks, they admitted. Their clients might not let them eat until after they perform Figuring imaginative pay scalesand developing new routines occupy their times together, and they get intense about it when they go into rehearsal.They’ve found that humor is a very fragile thing, and that an audience trusts performers to amuse them but not to offend them or make them uncomfortable. It's okay to gently tweak taboos, and to do social commentary as long as it’s not laid on too thick.They have spent hours learning to juggle fit helps to do it to the beat of Michael Jackson’s “Bad”), learned not to trust technology too much, and to use only simple costuming devices such as hats.But most of all, they’ve learned not to be afraid of making fools of themselves while they explore a new and limitless frontier.“There’s no such thing as laughing too much,” said Bowen.‘The first time I saw a video of us ,1 covered my eyes. I couldn't believe we had actually done that in front of people.'Judie Overbeek
Newspaper Details
Kalispell Daily Inter Lake
Kalispell, Montana, US
Sun, Jun 24, 1990
Page 29
Full Page
Clipped by
Ryan O.
USA 03 Jan 2024
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