Slumber party takes stage

Comics Klein and Gehring bring childhood diaries - and adult angst - to life in Avenue Theater show

By Lisa Bornstein, Rocky Mountain News (Contact)

Monday, January 14, 2008

Photos By A.C.E. Entertainment

"Up With Puberty" is among the segments included in Girls Only, a show by comedians Barbara Gehring, left, and Linda Klein.

If you've ever been an 11-year-old girl and kept a diary, you'll probably get what Linda Klein and Barbara Gehring are going for with Girls Only.

The women, two-thirds of the local comedy troupe A.C.E., have found comedy and warmth in a new show about growing up female.

The show was born three years ago when their troupe-mate, Matthew Taylor, left town for a month. Left to their own devices, Klein and Gehring pulled out their childhood musings.

"We sat there in my kitchen reading these diaries and we laughed till we cried," Klein says.

"We were a little overwhelmed," Gehring says, "but we were looking at each other like, 'We have something here.' "

There was comedy in those pages.

"You're talking for one second about hot dog day and then your lover," Gehring says. "You obviously didn't know what the word lover meant."

"The ideas that came up in my diary have echoed through my entire life," Klein adds. "I thought it had something to do with secrets and my secret club. I got voted vice president."

Yes, in her own, one-girl, secret club, she got second-best.

The diaries became the cornerstone of their show, which played the Winnipeg Fringe Festival but has its first extended run at the Avenue Theater. Girls Only is a serious name for a comedy show: No boys allowed. At all.

"We didn't do this as some marketing ploy," Gehring says. "It's not about man-bashing; it has nothing to do with men."

Rather, they say, it's about the slumber-party atmosphere that occurs with just women.

"The audience is intimate because you're there with your girlfriends," Gehring says. "The great thing is, there are two bathrooms because the men's one isn't being used."

The show covers a wide range of women's experiences, beginning with a state of undress.

"We start off the show in our underwear and our bras," Gehring says, "and it really represents us baring ourselves."

OK, so if it's all about being real and down with the girls, what kind of underwear are we talking about? That mismatched, stretched-out bra and panties lurking at the back of the drawer?

"Boy shorts," Klein says. "It's kind of company underwear, I guess."

The show includes a Kotex Kraft Korner, to give menopausal women decorative projects for their unused sanitary napkins, and ends with a "pantyhose ballet." Also expect bits of improv, as well as a historical perspective on femininity told through shadow puppets.

It's pretty clean material, but "we would like women to be women," Gehring says.

"If a girl's gotten her period, she can probably come to the show," Klein adds.

The activities in the production take place in a girl's bedroom, where Gehring and Klein act up.

"Barbara and I didn't know each other when we were growing up, but I feel like we should have," Klein says. "And if we did, this is the kind of show we would have done: Charge your folks a quarter, in the bedroom."

In Winnipeg, Manitoba, women showed up with their own diaries in tow, Klein says. "Everybody just wants to tell their story."

bornsteinl@RockyMountainNews.com or 303-954-5101

Girls Only

* When and where: Opens Friday; 8 p.m. Thursdays through Saturdays, 2 p.m. Sundays, through Feb. 24, Avenue Theater, 417 E. 17th Ave.

* Cost: $20

* Information: 303-321-5925