Local comedian Doreen Collins has some celebrating to do. This month marks the tenth anniversary of The Ladies Room, her annual night of standup and drag.
The March 28 event, which features women performers, women sponsors, and supports non-profit organizations run by women, will be held at the Courthouse Center for the Arts in South Kingstown.
“Men give us a bad rap,” said Collins, who lives in Warwick with her husband Frank. “Contrary to popular belief, women just really want to support one another.”
According to her website, every year she produces a show that’s all about the ladies, bringing new meaning to girls night out. “The Ladies Room promotes and supports my fellow funny females by combining women just starting their comedic journey, with ladies with national recognition,” she notes on the site.
Collins has lived in Rhode Island for the past 25 years and was the first women inducted into the Rhode Island Comedy Hall of Fame. Most of her work now is with Aging Disgracefully, a variety show she performs around the state with comedian Charlie Hall. Hall also contributes weekly editorial cartoons to this publication.
Collins and Hall bring Aging Disgracefully to the Courthouse Center for the Arts a few times each year. The venue is mostly known for the cover bands that perform there–in the next month alone you can see tributes to Mötley Crüe, The Doors, Creed, Led Zeppelin, Styx, Boston, and Jackson Browne.
“When it’s not live music it has a really intimate theater feel. It’s also definitely haunted,” she laughs. “I haven’t experienced anything myself, but it’s totally haunted.”
Other comedians at The Ladies Room this year include Boston-based headliner Stacy Kendro, who has performed at the event several times before, as well as Aimee Schwab and Steph White. The three will be joined by drag performers LaDiva Jonz, Haley Star, and Jacqueline DiMera of Drag RI.
The audience is almost entirely made up of women. “There’s Frank,” she says, pointing to her husband, “and there’s Charlie [Hall], and the occasional man who doesn’t know what he’s walking into.” Audiences familiar with Collins might already know about Frank, a frequent subject of her comedy.
Collins likes to keep the night light and not too raunchy. “The performers can be as risqué as they want to be, but I’m not looking for the kind of acts that drop the f-bomb every other word.”
One challenge for Collins as the organizer is that it takes time to wrangle the talent and the sponsors and so she doesn’t spend a lot of time preparing her own routine.
“I kind of like the spontaneity,” she said. “My background is in musical theater where you rehearse, rehearse, rehearse. You know your lines, you hit your marks. I’m too nervous to go in totally cold. I at least need an idea in my head of what I want it to be about.”
Collins is no stranger to being on camera. She’s a regular on WPRI’s The Rhode Show, where she hosts a segment called Senior Moments, and previously wrote, produced, and hosted the late-night series Rhode Bytes on Channel 10. But she is not a big fan of her live shows being recorded.
“People will video me at a show,” she said. “I end every show with a number, and people who have seen me before know that’s when the phones come out. I’m not going to stop the show to say anything about it, but I wonder if it’s going to end up somewhere online and what I actually sound like. Sometimes things are really great in the moment and don’t really work at all when you rewatch them later. Charlie recently posted a video with two other guys doing karaoke, and not one of them was hitting the notes. I said what are you doing? Take that down!”
As an emcee, Collins also has some thoughts about the role of the host and the role of the interviewer. “I love Kelly Ripa. She’s smart, she’s funny, and she’s a great interviewer. Is she the nicest person off camera? I don’t know. Maybe, maybe not. But Mark [Consuelos, her co-host] needs to stay home and do the dishes. He talks over the guests, he reads questions from note cards, he gets picky with Kelly, he’s terrible. When you’re interviewing somebody your job is to make them the focus, you get them to talk about whatever they’re promoting. You let them have the spotlight.” Collins pauses. “I go off on these tangents, I’m sorry.”
“I don’t think I’m really funny,” she adds. “I’m amusing.”
Each year Collins donates a portion of proceeds from the event to a different charitable cause, and this year she decided to support Courthouse Center for the Arts, which is under the direction of Mariann Almonte.
In addition to being a music and comedy venue, the center provides opportunities for children of all abilities. According to its website, the center “provides theater, music, art, and child development programs for children of all ages and abilities, with inclusion programs for what we call differently-abled children.” Summer and year-round arts camps increase cognitive learning skills, self-esteem, and speaking abilities in the youth.
“I like supporting smaller charities,” Collins says, “because they need the money more and every dollar goes farther.”
This year show sponsors include Lisa Altieri, owner of Dante’s Kitchen in East Greenwich, Christina Rondeau of Rondeau’s Kick Boxing in Johnston, Jackie Judd of The Experience, Robin Kall of Reading with Robin, Ashley Bove of Artisan Bites RI, Nancy DiGiglio of Anyplace Travel in Johnston, Jessica Braza of The Dance Floor in Cranston, and Rebecca Minutelli of Mane Hair in Cranston.
The Ladies Room begins at 7:30pm on Friday, March 28. Tickets are $25 and can be purchased at http://courthousearts.org.
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