Linda Hill: Quirky Kansan Turns Top Comic

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…using part of her meager wages to take an improvisation workshop at the Old Spaghetti Factory in North Beach. The Spaghetti Jam improv group, which ran the workshop, recognized the appeal of Hill’s wacky humor, accented by her red hair, toothy grin and booming voice.

By the summer of 1981,, Hill’s guest appearances with Spaghetti Jam were gaining wider notice, and she was invited to join other improv groups, including Femprov, The Comedy Underground, and the National Theatre of the Deranged. Hill was soon performing five nights a week, while holding on to her day job downtown. 

In May of 1982, she went solo at an open mike at the Other Cafe. Stand-up comedy was new and shaky. “In improvisation,” notes Hill, “you don’t get scared, because if you get in trouble you know you’ve got the whole group who’ll save you.”

~Jeff Kaliss • SF Datebook

Chronicle Comedy Day Celebration 1986

The reports estimated the crowds at 40,000 folks filling the Concourse from the Bandshell in Golden Gate Park to brimming. An uncharacteristic San Francisco Saturday, brought overcast skies for the 80 odd comics supplying laughs, every 6.4 seconds, according to the SF Chronicle's count. They sponsored this 6th year and gave it maximum coverage in their papers.

Playing big to a large crowd

Trampolines, Pom Poms, Letter Sweaters

Lots of movement to dazzle the crowd

Bouncing for the 40,000 in attendance

Raising the roofless roof

And a maypole for good measure

San Francisco's Femprov plays O.T. Price's Sunday night.

Femprov Comedy troupe relies on improvisation 

by Jamie S. Cackler • Santa Cruz Sentinel

"We very seldom let the audience get the best of us," says Jeannene Hansen of Femprov. The six-member, all-female improvisational comedy troupe plays the dangerous improv game of letting the audience call the shots.

They get a skit going then ask the audience to name a situation, an emotion or some unlikely twist for the plot to take. "We ask them to name a position, and there's always some bozo who thinks he's really funny and yells out 'missionary,'" Hansen said. "So one of us will drop down and start praying." 

After nearly seven years, it's probably as much experience as quick thinking that rescues the band of women from such audience-generated jams.
Femprov, which performs at O.T. Price's Comedy Night Sunday, began in 1979 when San Francisco's Holy City Zoo began its "Women's Comedy Night." The threesome of Susan Healy, Teresa Roberts and Terry Sand soon grew to six. After a few personnel changes the group stabilized with six members, now including cofounder Sand, Pat Daniels, Debi Durst, Hansen, Denise Schultz and Barbara Scott a former member of the popular Screaming Memes.

Though all female, "we never intended to be a feminist or separatist —believe me," Scott said.
"It's female humor just because it's females doing it. It's just an image when we walk on stage," said Hansen adding "We thought about adding a token guy, but then we'd have to change our name."

Still Hansen said, members of the audience see what they want to see. "We get women who want us to be right-on sisters. They take that away from the show. They get what they want out of it." On the other hand, she said, "Some guys come to see T&A, see some girls jumpin' around on the stage. Everyone interprets it differently."
Occasionally, Scott said they run into groups of people who make very wrong assumptions. "For instance, at one show there was this group of men who assumed that we were all lesbians, because we were all women working together," Scott said.
"Which is totally incorrect," chimed in Debi Durst, the wife of SF comic Will Durst.
"We asked the audience to name character relationships for a game and the men called out "Two women loving each other," Scott said. "You can always get a laugh out of a dirty joke or sexual reference, but we try to put ourselves beyond that."

Although there are six of them, a typical show includes only four at a time. "It's better that way, because we can accept more gigs, and each member gets more stage time. And every time you see the show it's different," Scott said.
The women claim there is no real leader among the revolving cast. "It's ensemble work —we each think everyone of us is funny," Scott said.
"That's what's so fun about watching us perform. If you get tired of watching one of us, you can just switch channels," Hansen added.

The flow of the show is influenced as much by who's in it as it is by the collective intellectual makeup of the audience and by what mood the performers are in.
"If the audience gives us dorky suggestions, they get a dorky show," Hansen said. "Sometimes, in a place like Santa Cruz, we get a sophisticated audience that wants a lot of political stuff. Others want a real dorky show. We can go either way."

While the nature of the act is flexible, there are some places it doesn't work as well. Television and northern Germany, for instance. 
Hansen said Femprov has appeared on some local television spots, and on a broadcast benefit telethon. Not a raving success, though. "Improv doesn't translate well on television. You can't see what's really going on. It's like magic —that doesn't work well on TV either," Hansen said.

As for Germany, Scott and Hansen toured Europe last year and managed to book a couple of shows in a Northern German town. "Jeannene and I took a couple of chances. It was very interesting, but we had to talk very slowly, it's slowed us down and that's not the nature of improv," Scott said.
And there were problems other than language. "We do this thing called an emo freeze," Hansen said "We freeze in the middle of a scene and ask the audience for an emotion. We found out that the people in northern Germany don't talk about their emotions, and that part of the act got dropped rather quickly."

O.T, Price's Entertainment roster • August 13, 1986

We opened with LA Tag at O.T. Price's. Watch the show in its entirety.

Queen for a Day, Haight-Ashbury Style

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Contestants determine for themselves what evening gown, bathing suit and talent mean. 

In the past: 

Talent has been interpreted as meaning curing athlete's foot, imitating castanets, mixing martinis in a vibrating chair, reciting "all of 'Gone With the Wind' in 3 minutes", demonstrating a snake bit kit and playing Beethoven on the recorder with one's nose.

Swimsuit winners have paraded with a fish taped to one leg (1982 Queen Terry Sand), wearing a shark tank (1984 Queen Barbara Scott) and in a wetsuit and pearls (Patterson).

~Robert S. Wieder • SF Datebook

Comedy Day 1985

Femprov appears at the 5th Comedy Day in San Francisco's Golden Gate Park Bandshell. Our Blues number, and shameless hawking of our t-shirts, was created on the spot from a suggestion of "rainy day" as the skies miraculously cleared, avoiding a cancellation of this annual free SF comedy institution. This rare snippet ends abruptly before Debi Durst has a chance to bring it all home.

SF Chronicle sponsors Comedy Celebration Day with an infusion of cash and balloons.

Stage time includes hawking red T-shirts @ 8 bucks a pop… such a deal.

Joshua "Righteous Raoul" Brody onstage for the musical assist.

Despite the rain we performed under a rainbow of balloons

The fifth year saw increasing numbers flocking to the park. 35,000 comedy lovers filled the 'orchestra seating' benches in the grove of trees, and created standing room beyond. 

Comedy Day 1984

1984 in Golden Gate Park, adding a bit of funny as counterpoint to the Democratic National Convention in town for a visit.

On the move, perpetually.

Denise Schultz, Pat Daniels, J'nene Hansen and Barbara Scott charm the facts

Interviewed by Tom Scheuber for a long-lost PR moment

Femprov, the Bay Area's longest running improvisational comedy group, play tonight in Pleasanton.

Femprov all female all funny 

by Sally Tockey • San Ramon Valley Herald

The jokes are on them. That's what makes Femprov what they are: five funny females who stand up to laughs wherever, whenever, however.

Don't misunderstand. Femprov's hardly a quintet of feminists waiting to snatch a chuckle, a cheer or a crowing with a routine about men. "We're just funny women who are out for the laughs,” says Terry Sand spokesman for the comediennes “Someone else can burn our bras.” Femprov, instead, relies on improvisation — a think-fast act-fast extemporaneous performing art. 

It works this way. 

Someone in the audience yells out a suggestion for a scene: two people meeting at an airport and they're angry or they're depressed or they’re…

"The audience keeps throwing out more emotions and we go from there …well, it's hard to explain the game," says Terry who met her comedic counterparts at an improvisational workshop in the City.

They —Terry, Susan Healy and Teresa Roberts —became Femprov when the Holy City Zoo nightclub started offering Women's Nights for both novice and established laugh collectors.

Now four years old and two members stronger, the quintet book regularly many Wednesdays at Cobb's pub in San Francisco's Marina District. Their resume also shows performances at the Venetian room in the Fairmont Hotel, the Great American Music Hall, the Women's Building, the San Francisco Jewish Community Center, Allen's Alley at the Boarding House.

Such television credits as the KGO Channel 7 Cerebral Palsy Telethon, Cable six presentation of “Women of the 80s" and “Womanvision,” a pilot project filmed by Alan Springer Associates, also greatly please their groupies. "I call them from Femprov junkies," reports Terry. "They've got to get their laughs in." 

She says the female funnies, who all live in the City, always present a family-hour show sans the four-letter words widely practiced by others.

Their props—glasses, hats and facial expressions—simply supplement the routines practiced by the five, who are all close friends as well as coworkers. 

Terry laughs when questioned about their income. 

"Oh sure, we've made enough to put several illegitimate children through college… but we also all have to supplement our income with comedy."

Choosing a comedy career has other drawbacks, too. 

Late nights, shows on the road, the constant demand to "say something funny" may slow Femprov down a titch, but not for long. And there's always something humorous in those situations.

Like the time they played in Ukiah on the promise of room and board plus money. "Well, we thought we were going to be staying at the Holiday Inn or something like that," Terry relates. "But no, they took us to a nice place with an area for meditation and we slept there on couches. 

“The next morning when we walked outside we saw women and kids doing tai chi —naked. The place was a nudist colony."

Luckily, Femprov faces few worries about comedians block, when witty words disappear. They support one another with a line, and expression, something that breaks through the dreaded total blank.

"And will probably be performing till were 90 years old or 70 or 60 with people saying 'poor women! Why don't they stop!"