Women, token man in stand-up comedy ‘The Resistance Is Fertile’

Article here. Excerpt:

'By the time Monday night’s comedy show had begun, a crowd had formed just inside the front door of the Rite Spot, a Folsom Street bar and restaurant with a really good vertical neon light illuminating the sidewalk in front. All of the seats at the bar and the restaurant were pretty much taken, and comedy fans craned their necks in search of an open spot. Few found space. “The Resistance Is Fertile” is a wildly popular comedy show for a very good reason:

It features only women.

Actually, “The Resistance Is Fertile” regularly permits one token male performer. That inclusive gesture is a nod — payback, some might say — for the countless times a lone female comic has been included in a comedy lineup because the show’s producers “needed a woman.” And the show’s gender table-turning doesn’t stop there.

“We pass around their tip bucket during their set,” said Brooke Heinichen. That disruptive move is apparently standard when a woman takes the stage. After all, in the old-school male-dominated world of stand-up comedy, a woman’s time on stage is when the audience is expected to take a break, to stop paying attention and riffle through their wallets.

Heinichen, Nicole Calasich and Shelbi Evans co-produce and perform in “The Resistance Is Fertile,” San Francisco’s only free all-female and gender nonconforming comedy show. And unlike so many other stand-up shows around town, these ladies are packing the house.'