It’s no wonder these ladies are such a success. Recent research, reported in Psychology Today, finds that people in a lighter mood experience more “eureka!” moments and greater inspiration. In other words, humor is important when it comes to encouraging creativity and problem solving.
Spend even a couple of hours with the five women of Rochester’s sketch comedy troupe EstroFest and you’ll understand what the research means — if you can stop laughing long enough. The five women — Allison Roberts, Freyda Schneider, Dresden Engle, Norma Holland, and Andrea Holland — not only perform in EstroFest, but also write, direct, and produce their own shows.
They certainly live full and busy lives. Some might be bowled over by all they do. Four of the five women are married with children, and four of them operate their own businesses.
“But this (EstroFest) is my release from reality,” Norma said.
“It’s what I do for fun … our creative outlet,” echoed her sister, Andrea.
See for yourself during the Rochester Fringe Festival in September, as EstroFest returns to the Geva Theatre stage. They will be doing five one-hour shows they’ve titled “EstroFest Comedy: Cinderella, Sci-Fi & Drones.”
You might say EstroFest is their hobby, though all of the troupe members have multiple interests and talents.Doing comedy creates a lens for each of them in living their lives, Freyda said.
Allison recalled when she went to school to study visual arts and writing — before also taking up acting at 30 — a professor finally told her she had to choose from among the disciplines. She asked him, “Why?”
“Some people think they have to focus on just one thing,” Allison said. “My career and life have been proof that you can do many things that make you happy.”
Balancing Family and Funny
And a shared goal of the EstroFest ladies is simple: To make people laugh. But that isn’t always easy.
“We’re judged all the time,” Dresden said. “People say you shouldn’t be doing this or that when you have kids.”
“But we’re teaching our kids to embrace things they love and care about,” Allison said. Allison is an actress, writer, visual artist, and trainer. She is co-founder of Impact Interactive, a theater-based training company. She has a daughter, Story, age 23, and is married to Eric Cady.
Freyda is the artistic director and co-founder of TYKEs (Theater Young Kids Enjoy), now in its 14th season and based at the Jewish Community Center. She and husband, Chuck Schneider, have two children: Macey, 14, and Hayden, 12.
Dresden — who apparently doesn’t sleep — not only is founder and director of Dresden Public Relations Inc. but also is managing editor (a relatively new role) of Roc Parent/She Rocs magazine, and also teaches public relations at area colleges.
She continues to work on extending her original play The Cougar and the Cabana Boy into a full-length musical, which she created with composer J. Daniel Lauritz-son. She and husband, Paul Olcott, have two daughters: Aria, 11, and Aurora, 10.
Norma is perhaps best known as an early-morning TV news anchor and reporter on 13WHAM and Fox Rochester. She and her husband, Matthew, have one daughter.
Andrea is the youngest in the troupe, which ranges in age from their late 30s to early 50s. She is owner of Holland Communications, where she serves as a public speaking and media coach to executives and entrepreneurs. When she’s not coaching, she brings her creative vibe to local radio commercials as a voice-over artist.
Twenty Years of Laughs
The Holland sisters are the newest members of the EstroFest troupe, which will mark its 20th hilarious year in March 2018.
EstroFest was Allison’s brainchild – and you can thank a traffic jam in Fairport for being the inspiration.
“I was stuck in traffic and I looked over and saw these women walking along the street just losing it (laughing) over something,” she said.
At the time she was in a co-ed improv comedy troupe called Sketchy Details, and she recalled thinking, “There is no all-female comedy troupe around.”
She got home and called Schneider and Adele Fico, with whom she had appeared in “Joey and Maria’s Comedy Wedding,” and they started brainstorming and thinking about casting.
By coincidence of timing, Dresden attended a birthday party Freyda was hosting and Allison was attending. “And Dresden was wicked funny,” Freyda recalled, so they invited her to join them in the new venture.
Fico remained with the troupe for a few years, departing to create and perform her own one-woman show. Kate McLean performed with the troupe for more than a decade, and when she moved to the Southern Tier, the Holland sisters were invited to audition seven years ago.
“We’re living room performers … we always have done shows and skits for our family,” Andrea said. Now they have a much bigger “family.”
The troupe performed in the Toronto Fringe Festival in 2002 — where they were listed among the top 10 shows “not to miss” by The Toronto Sun — and made their Off-Broadway debut the following year at the 55 Bleecker Street Theatre. But their home base is Rochester, where they play to full houses.
“But it’s not just hometown people – or just women – who support us,” Andrea said.
They all have stories of people, from every walk of life, coming up to them in restaurants, on airplanes — wherever — and laughing about a sketch they remember.
All the members write sketches, either solo or in teams. One collaborator is Brian Steblen of Fairport, who has written several sketches and has shot and edited many of their videos. Another collaborator is long-time stage manager Kate Sweeney, who they call MacGyver.
But where do these sketches originate?
“Our sick minds … and also all the people we know,” Freyda quipped. “So if you see a character on stage who seems familiar, it just may be you.”
Their brains do become attuned to find-ing humor in everything. They’ll each hear something and think, “That’s a sketch; I’ve got to write that down,” Andrea said.
Letting their onstage silliness bleed into their lives is “healthy and necessary,” Norma added.
By way of example, Dresden recalls that when her daughters were younger and she was reading them the Mother Goose tales, she was struck by the brutality of some of the rhymes (such as “beat them all soundly and put them to bed” and “grind your bones to make my bread”).
That sparked the question: What can we do to show the insanity of these original fairy tales? The characters Mother Moose and her sidekick, Johnny Hoecake, were born, and the troupe was off and running, taking the characters and the sketch to lofty levels for laughs.
The troupe’s shows are composed of a cleverly woven mix of live skits and projected videos. The upcoming Fringe shows, which are one-hour shows by nature, will include six live sketches and eight videos.
“Usually what we can’t put on a stage becomes a video,” Dresden explained, noting that a number of local actors join them in their videos.
Using their own houses for many of the video shoots, they do wonder what their neighbors think. Take, for instance, the video that required a whole SWAT team to move in on Dresden’s neighborhood, to stop a woman from forcing her neighbors to sing Christmas carols. One can only imagine the over-the-fence gossip that incident stirred up.
Yes, of course they have more material than makes it to the stage or screen. They vote democratically for the sketches and videos that are the funniest, what the audience ultimately will find the funniest.
“It’s the show that’s the star,” Dresden said.
“We always choose what is best for the show, egos aside,” Norma agreed.
They each bring their own life experience and knowledge. “We work together on multiple levels, including the performance level and incorporating each person’s business expertise,” Freyda explained.
It’s not only the running of the troupe that has sorted itself out; it’s also the casting in various sketches. “We usually instantly know who will do a particular role,” Andrea said, with Allison noting that they work to ensure all have a range of roles per show.
Asked about their comedic inspiration, Allison and Freyda both mention Lily Tomlin, and the time they got to meet her after having front-row seats to her show in New York. Dresden said she honed her comedic skills doing Gilda Radner impersonations on the cheerleading bus in high school.
“I think my comedy comes from watching cartoons as a kid,” Andrea said. “I guess I’m a big fan of inanimate objects coming to life.”
Norma said her sense of humor is more dry, rather than slapstick. She remembers being mesmerized by seeing a live show featuring Bill Cosby, but she also liked seeing Elaine Stritch on Broadway and thinking she was “wickedly funny and bawdy.”
“I love insightful, accurate humor,” Freyda said.
Truthfully, they feel honored to watch each other perform. And they agree that sticking with “smart” humor is the only way they’ll go.“
There’s no way we’d jeopardize who we are professionally,” Dresden said.
“We try to be more clever and intelligent,” with their humor, Freyda added.
“It doesn’t take a lot of brain power to be crass,” Norma pointed out.
Perhaps because each one of the troupe members is equally accomplished, “that depth of experience makes the comedy that much sweeter,” Andrea said.
They trust each other, their friendship and their professionalism. “I’ve never found a group of women I feel so at home with,” Norma reflected. “There’s no competition or jealousy. It’s just about making people laugh – and that’s awesome.”
Freyda sums it up in a few words: “I think this works because we all genuinely like each other.”
You likely will, too. Be sure to put EstroFest on your “to do” list in September!
EstroFest Live at the Rochester Fringe Festival
What: EstroFest Comedy: Cinderella, Sci-Fi & Drones
When:
- 9 p.m. Friday, Sept. 15
- 5:30 p.m. Saturday, Sept. 16
- 2:30 p.m. Sunday, Sept. 17
- 5:30 p.m. Friday, Sept. 22
- 8 p.m. Saturday, Sept. 23
Where: Geva Theatre Center’s Fielding Stage, 75 Woodbury Blvd., Rochester
Tickets: $18. Order online at rochesterfringe.com
EstroFest Answers Silly Questions
The members of EstroFest can be off-the-cuff funny, not to mention insightful, too. We asked a few “silly” questions, just to see what they’d say:
What do you think about when you’re alone in your car?
Freyda: Pizza. Often I’m really hungry and just thinking about what to put on my pizza.
Dresden: Two things, actually. First, all the freaking phone calls I need to make … so I just tuck my phone in my bra and start calling. Second, I’m deciding whether to play the ‘80s or Broadway channel on Sirius radio.
Allison: How angry Rochester drivers are!
Andrea: Oh, I ponder the depth of life … when I’m not one of those angry drivers.
Norma: how sleepy I am … but then I remember, “I chose this.” (She has to report for work by 4 a.m.)
What’s the funniest thing that has happened to you recently?
Andrea: I was opening a water bottle on an airplane, and apparently because of the change in pressure, I sprayed someone behind me in the face.
Norma: Life has been sort of serious lately, but when I do laugh, it’s often at my daughter and her burgeoning sense of humor; the fact that she does things to make us laugh. Hopefully, she’ll end up just as zany as me!
Dresden: I recently got together with some high school friends at my mom’s cottage and for three days we laughed ‘til we cried!
Freyda: this was some years back, but as a present, I was sent this enormous — live — lobster. It was shocking. We could hear something moving in the box and didn’t know what to do with it, so we took it upstairs and put it in the bathtub.
Allison: My husband is very good at sound effects and we do weird dances to them.
If you could be any animal, what would you be?
Allison: A cat. They’re great — and they just do what they want.
Andrea: My dog, because I take such good care of her.
Freyda: I was going to say my dog, too. We feed her this fancy food. On any given day, I think she may eat better than we do!
Norma: A bird — because I could soar above all the mess.
Dresden: A unicorn (the others all agree: “You win.” She does have a full-size painted [by Allison], carousel-style horse-turned-unicorn in her office.)
If you had a superpower, what would it be?
Andrea: I want the ability to “edit undo” – an infinite number of times. Flying would be cool, too … but then people would want rides.
Freyda: I’d desperately like the ability to know what my dog is thinking.
Allison: I’d like to move into one of these mansions (on Rochester’s East Avenue) and not be questioned.
Norma: I actually have a super power: it’s putting on all my makeup in record time — say, less than 10 minutes. And this is TV makeup, I’m talkin’. Don’t ask (how) … I’m just that good!
Dresden: Compartmentalizing. It’s the only way to stay focused on the good things.
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