The Very Beginning

Pat Daniels, Teresa Roberts, Terry Sand and Susan Healy perform at the Holy City Zoo as Femprov.

Sometime in late 1979, John Cantu started booking a Women's Night at the The Holy City Zoo. A Wednesday night that featured the handful of women performing stand-up and those practicing the dark arts of improvisation. In the tradition of finding a need and filling it… Femprov was born. But that's just part of the story…

Footnote: Years later John Cantu, the booker of the Holy City Zoo explained the short 3-month run of these Women's Nights… pinning the blame on what he considered women comic's inability to stretch, unlike their male counterparts.

Two decades later, he credited the insights of Valerie E. Young, Ed. D. related to Imposter Syndrome to this puzzling difference in the sexes. Latching on to her theories concerning women's inability to bullshit was likely the satisfying reason that vexed him for years.