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• 1 media/fart-1-1.png 2015-12-02T14:26:25-08:00 Bawdy Women: Female Comics in Burlesque 18 plain 2015-12-06T18:13:43-08:00 Making an audience laugh means that you have a degree of control over them. Making them laugh by exhibiting bodily excess, skewed gender construction, and sex was early burlesque. From the advent of burlesque, humor has been a leading way that performers connect with their audiences. Some performers told jokes as a part of their act, while others joked directly, often pointedly, with the audience. These women could be raunchy funny because they operated under the radar of bourgeois culture (Mizejewski 18).
  
  Female vaudevillians of the late 19th and early 20th centuries such as May Irwin and Eva Tanguay, both of whom reached considerable fame, discovered that the combination of a sexualized body and a comic voice was an enormous crowd pleaser. Burlesquers of the time adopted these techniques as well. Unfortunately, progressive reformers and social censors “were determined to remove the comic voice from female performers, and, by the 1920s, burlesque turned into nothing more than elaborate striptease acts, and comic vaudevillians were considered female “grotesques”—aberrations of femininity” (DesRochers 129).
  
  Ann Corio, a burlesque performer in the 1940s-1970s, was known for engaging with her audiences directly by telling jokes. A New York Times Article from 1999 quotes her saying of her famous show This Was Burlesque, '''We emphasize comedy,' she said one day in 1976 as she discussed her show."  In this clip, Corio appears onstage at the beginning of show to warm the audience up with some jokes. While in McCagy Collection here at tOSU, I got to read some of the scripts from This Was Burlesque. Here is a classic comedy scene that demonstrates the type of humor present on the burlesque stage of the 1970s: 
  This particular skit is entitled "Violin Lessons"
  “Hel: Now you stroke your bow…did you ever stroke your bow?
  Har: not since I was a little boy
  Hel: Now Ill show you how to play it..you take hold of it by its neck and lay it on its back
  Har: Well that’s usually the position
  Hel: Then you finger the G string
  Har: any certain finger
  Hel: Sometime you finger it with all fingers”
  
  With the return of neo-burlesque a lot of that humor is being reclaimed by burlesque artists. Many performers use musical humor in their acts. One performer who does this is Miss Jane Neo who was Miss Burlesque Australia in 2013. In this particular video, she acts surprised at loud bursts in the music and responds by stumbling out of her clothes. This triggers laughter from her audience. 
  
  
  
   

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  Works Cited:

  DesRochers, Rick. The New Humor in the Progressive Era: Americanization and the Vaudeville Comedian. Palgrave Macmillan, 2014. Web. 24 Oct 2015.
  
  Mizejewski, Linda. Pretty/funny: Women Comedians and Body Politics. Austin: University of Texas Press, 2014. Print.
  
  Van Gelder, Lawrence. "Ann Corio, a Burlesque Queen on Broadway, Is Dead." The New York Times 9 March 1999. Web. 3 Dec 2015.

• 1 2015-11-23T01:43:08-08:00 Woman Critics 12 plain 2015-12-12T08:12:54-08:00 Ann Corio mentioned the following 3 names as the lead critics for burlesque during the revival period in an interview with the Los Angeles Times in 1967: Edith Oliver of The New Yorker, Judith Crist of the Old Herald Tribune, and Frances Herridge of the Post. These critics stated in differing articles that they were never encouraged to go to burlesque shows as youth but now they know what they were missing.  They were unaware that burlesque performers could appeal to both women and men. 
   
  Judith Crist applauds Corio's ability in This Was Burlesque to create an all-inclusive show that pairs strip-teasers with humor in a flawless manner. Majority of the article touches on the male members of the cast. Women are briefly mentioned with respect to their "lovely legs" and undressing ability. Christ also challenges the name of Corio's show This Was Burlesque. She discusses that burlesque is no longer something of the past but something succeeding in the present. 
   
  Women reviews are rare but very helpful in changing the audience demographic. When women can read another woman's opinion on a burlesque show they are going to feel more comfortable attending themselves. Also when a woman reads the women critics' work, there is a level of trust the reader feels. Corio knew that female writers were a great form of publicity and were able to give the shows and business a positive boost. She often name dropped women critics in interviews in order to steer women readers to their reviews. 
  
  
  
   

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  Works Cited

  Crist, J. “’This was burlesque' still is, despite move.” Rev. of This Was Burlesque, by Ann Corio. Los Angeles Times (1923-Current File) 18 Mar. 1965. ProQuest. Web. 2 Dec. 2015.

  Coe, R. L. “Ann, burlesque---stripped for action.” Los Angeles Times (1923-Current File) 19 Dec. 1967. ProQuest. Web. 2 Dec. 2015.