Gilda’s Club Greater Toronto

Imagine A PLACE…

Where you and your family and friends can gather to explore the journey of cancer in a relaxed, home-like setting.

That place is Gilda’s Club Greater Toronto.

Together, members SHARE their experiences, FEEL the empowerment of social interaction, and REJOICE in the renewed energy that community brings.

Gilda’s Club Greater Toronto is a place where women, men, teens and children with cancer, their families and friends, can join with others to build social and emotional support as a supplement to one’s treatment of choice.

Whether you’re looking for an understanding ear, a chance to laugh, or an informational resource, Gilda’s Club is the place to learn how to live with cancer, whatever the outcome.

Gilda’s Club also welcomes long-term cancer survivors and those who have lost someone to cancer. Our philosophy is based on the belief that a diagnosis of cancer affects the whole family, as well as friends, and that no one should have to face cancer alone.

Gilda’s Club Greater Toronto is a non-profit, registered charitable organization. We are funded by donations from individuals, foundations and corporations.

There are many ways to give. You can make a donation online, be part of our monthly giving program, donate a single sum in celebration or in memory of a loved one, or leave a bequest in your will – every gift helps.

You may also wish to donate your time, participate in one of our fundraising events, or organize your own fundraiser for us. Gilda’s Club Greater Toronto provides many meaningful ways for you to get involved.

Gilda Radner

Gilda’s Club, named for comedienne Gilda Radner of Saturday Night Live fame, was created because of Gilda’s wish that no one should face cancer alone. After Gilda’s death from ovarian cancer in 1989, co-founders Joanna Bull and Gene Wilder began the process of launching the first Gilda’s Club in New York City in 1995. Gilda’s Club Greater Toronto opened its doors in October 2001.

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For more information about Gilda’s Club, or to make a donation, please call
Gilda’s Club Greater Toronto : (416)214-9898 x 504
http://www.gildasclubtoronto.org/

StandUp Write Up at WOMAN.ca

By Si Si Penaloza, Editorial Director, WOMAN.ca

On January 27 2009, some of Toronto’s funniest new “chicks with shticks” present StandUp For Your Sisters, a benefit for Gilda’s Club Greater Toronto. This inventive night of stand-up features a dozen female comics making a name for themselves on the stages of Toronto’s comedy scene. Hosted by one of Canada’s funniest women, Elvira Kurt (popcultured, The Tonight Show), and headlined by Dawn Whitwell (Girl School, The Jon Dore Show), the event promises a night of great comedy.

WOMAN.ca is already standing by with the applause-o-meter. We love that, despite the sheer plucky gut it takes to stand up in front of an audience – much less try to make them laugh – this group of comic kamikazis …

Read the full article at WOMAN.ca.

StandUp Sisters in The Bloor West Villager

“Real women. A real cause. Real funny.”

Comediennes, daughters, sisters, wives, girlfriends, mothers and survivors – some of the city’s funniest “chicks” – are joining forces to raise funds for Gilda’s Club Greater Toronto.

StandUp For Your Sisters, taking place at Hugh’s Room Jan. 27, features 12 comics who are making a name for themselves in Toronto’s comedy scene. The show is hosted by Elvira Kurt of popcultured and The Tonight Show fame and is headlined by Dawn Whitwell, known for Girl School and The Jon Dore Show. Not only is it for a great cause, but it’s also a great way to chase away the winter blues, said organizer and up-and-coming comic Daniela Saioni, a Lansdowne Avenue and Bloor Street West area resident.

Read the full article at Toronto Community News.

StandUp For Your Sisters ’09 Event Press Release

Event Press Release

Inaugural comedy event raises more than $7,000 for Gilda’s Club

StandUp For Your Sisters a standout success amid recession, cold weather

Toronto, ON – If laughter is the best medicine, the crowd at Hugh’s Room found the cure for the winter blues on January 27, 2009.

StandUp For Your Sisters, a benefit for Gilda’s Club Greater Toronto, drew more than 200 comedy fans to the Roncesvalles-area bar on a cold Tuesday evening. The sold-out inaugural event raised $7,396.17 from ticket sales, silent auction bids and cash donations.

Hosted by Elvira Kurt and headlined by Dawn Whitwell, StandUp For Your Sisters was created as a showcase for the talents of a group of burgeoning female comedians.

“The evening was a huge success,” says Daniela Saioni, who not only organized the event but also performed. “The biggest lesson learned was that Toronto does welcome new talent and laughter is recession-proof.”

Despite their limited experiences on the comedy stage, the budding comics received an uproarious response from the crowd.

“It’s been way too long since I’ve laughed like that,” said crown criminal lawyer Lisa Joyal, who was in the audience. “Comics make a real difference in our lives and I think that message really hit home for me last night.”

Elana Shapiro, Development Associate of Gilda’s Club, was very impressed with the calibre of the event.

“The comics were talented, the enthusiasm and excitement in the room was incredible and people gave with their hearts,” said Shapiro. “The money raised from this event will help Gilda’s Club accept more families and continue to offer the extensive program of support and networking groups, lectures and workshops and our social activities.”

With the rapturous reviews and huge outpouring of charity, the StandUp Sisters have already started making plans for their second annual event.

“We are pumped to put on an even better show next year,” said Saioni.

About Gilda’s Club

The mission of Gilda’s Club is to provide a meeting place where men, women, teens and children living with cancer, as well as their families and friends, can join with others to build social and emotional support as a supplement to their treatment of choice. Gilda’s Club is a non-profit organization where membership is free. For more information about Gilda’s Club, please visit their website at www.gildasclubtoronto.org.

For more information or to schedule an interview, contact Bonnie Dean at media@standupforyoursisters.com or 647-377-4317.

We’ve Come a Long Way, Baby!

It’s hard to believe a whole year has passed since we made the pyramid formation in our press kit photo and began selling tickets for our first Gilda’s Club fundraiser without knowing if anyone would actually show up. Although we had a stellar celebrity MC, Elvira Kurt and our teacher, Dawn Whitwell, to stand up with us, most of the original nine SUFYS had less than six months’ experience under our belts at the time, and we were selling an all-girl comedy show to an audience that didn’t frequent comedy clubs.

It was a gamble, but those of you who came to the January 27, 2009 StandUp For Your Sisters show know how it all turned out. Many of us did our best sets, and it was an incredible night of comedy that a lot of the performers will remember for a long time. And the audience apparently will, too: people stop me in the street to this day and say, “That Gilda’ Club event was such a great show! Will you girls be doing it again next year?”. Is there any other answer but “Yes! Yes, yes, YES!”?

We sold out weeks early for that one, and we hope to do the same again, especially since the comics now have another full year of stage time under our belts.

And what a year it’s been!

[link2post id="47"]Shelley Kidwell[/link2post], who some of you will remember as the sassy Texan in the red dress, has opened for Shelley Marshall and performed at various clubs in Southern Ontario – all while raising three kids and finishing school at The Second City conservatory.

[link2post id="60"]Lianne Mauladin[/link2post], the blonde rocker who did that killer set in act one, played venues all over Southern Ontario and down the coast of California. She won a tough competition in Toronto called StandUp Showdown, and came in second at two separate Great Canadian Laugh-off contests in Barrie and Hamilton. She surpassed the efforts of some pro comics, and continues to rock her career in stand-up. She’s highly inspiring.

[link2post id="44"]Marilla Wex[/link2post], the cheeky Brit who probably sold you a raffle ticket at last year’s show, beat out over 60 other comics this summer to come in third in the Toronto Comedy Brawl. She has become a fixture on comedy stages around Toronto and on your TV as well, as her acting gigs also continue to climb.

[link2post id="53"]Becky Bays[/link2post] was chosen to take part in a CBC taping of Barack jokes with the killer Obama bit you’ll remember from last year’s show. She continues to bring her highly original take on life and news to stages in and around Toronto, including Eton House, Spirits, AltDot Comedy and Absolute Comedy, where she opened for headliner Steve Levine.

[link2post id="57"]Laura Salvas[/link2post], the reluctant Liza Minelli lookalike, came in fourth at the Toronto Comedy Brawl, and continues to make great strides on the improvisation front.

[link2post id="39"]Muniza Rauf[/link2post] quit comedy two more times last year, but came back to play gigs at Spirits, West End Girls and this show. She also has a new boyfriend, and a whole pile of new material to go along with that.

I haven’t won any contests [link2post id="49"]myself[/link2post], but I’ve performed in four provinces now, with some killer sets in Montreal and St. John’s which keep me pumped to continue in this wonderfully challenging and fulfilling profession. I also spend a lot of time on film sets and writing, and the stand-up has definitely informed my other jobs. Like some of the girls, I now sometimes get paid for my comedy, which is a great feeling.

Maia Mitchell has stopped doing stand-up, at least for the time being, so we invited [link2post id="855"]Rhiannon Archer[/link2post] to join SUFYS this year. Although she’s also a relative newcomer, she can be found performing in or hosting shows across Ontario on any given night. She’s a dynamo, and quite hilarious!

Marjorie Malpass, our special guest last year, has taken a few months off to have a baby (congratulations!).

When I saw how well the SUFYS and other female comics around town were doing, and noted that many comedy rooms in Toronto were still programming “old school” (which is one token female per show), this past September I created a monthly show at Poor John’s in Parkdale called West End Girls. It’s an all girl stand-up room (with one token boy) and the room is always filled to capacity with an all-ages crowd of enthusiastic comedy fans of both genders.

[link2post id="35"]Heidi Mole[/link2post], who you might remember as last year’s liturgical dance maven, is a crowd favourite at West End Girls, and, I’m proud to say, is now producing this year’s Gilda’s Club show with me and Becky Bays. Her background in film production has made her a natural at fundraising and organizing, and she’s pulled off some major miracles.

Elvira rocked the house so well last year that it took us a long time to come up with a celebrity MC to match her level of skill and funny, but we did it. When [link2post id="947"]Martha Chaves[/link2post] said yes to hosting The ‘C’ Word, we jumped for joy. If you’ve never seen her work, you’ll know what we mean when you see the show. And [link2post id="1068"]Jo-Anna Downey[/link2post] – beloved host of Spirits – and [link2post id="134"]Sandra Battaglin[/link2post]i – who did the best-ever set so far at West End Girls – are sure to slay you.

How could The ‘C’ Word possibly get any better? Well, the legendary Cylla Von Tiedemann did a photo shoot with us this year outside the famous red doors of Gilda’s Club, and we were honoured to have such an incredible artist lensing us at such an iconic location.

It was touching to be photographed in front of the clubhouse, which is also where Gilda got her comedic training. This show is our small way of honouring the late, great Gilda Radner, a pioneering woman in comedy and the wellness community, and our inspiration.

We hope you will enjoy the show as much as we enjoyed putting it together for you.

The Little Comedy Show That Could

It takes balls to put on an all-female standup comedy show, especially when nine of the 12 comics have less than six months’ experience. Charge a ticket fee of $20 in tough economic times with full confidence that you’ll pack the house, raise money for charity and get solid laughs? It’s so crazy it just might work!

For our first blog, I wanted to share with you the story of how our show, “StandUp For Your Sisters: A Benefit for Gilda’s Club”, came to be.

All of the non-feature performers on this show met each other just this summer at stand-up comedy classes with Dawn Whitwell at the Second City Training Centre and Bad Dog Theatre. For many of us, it was a life-changing process. We are all over 25 (some of us well over) and come from a variety of life experiences,  the kinds of experiences which could lead one to either drinking or stand-up.   In some walks of life, aging is seen as a liability, but in comedy, age ain’t nothin’ but a bonus. If you’ve been paying attention, the older you are, the more likely you are to recognize and admit to your individual demons.

Following our mentor’s sage advice to tell the truth about life as we see it, we soon learned that we had no shortage of material to draw from. After weeks of working hard to develop our first five-minute sets, our student shows were packed to the rafters and echoed with encouraging laughs (no small feat when you consider that the Second City Mainstage seats over 300).

We got a surge of confidence to keep going, until some of us started hitting the open mic nights and reality hit – we soon realized that stage time is hard to come by. Especially, it seems, for new female comics. On any given amateur night at the mainstream clubs, you’re lucky to see 10% female comics in the line-up, yet women often make up at least half the audience.  If there were so many of us out there, why were we the exception rather than the rule?  We decided to put on our own show, and bring the audience to us.

It’s no secret that women travel in packs and can “bring the crowd”, in comedy parlance. Unlike the average twenty-something guy telling jokes at open mics, as women of a certain age we all have contacts in the various professional worlds we walk in. We knew from experience that we could fill a 200-seat venue like Hugh’s Room.  So when one of the comics, Leanne Mladen, said, “We should do this for charity… let’s call it StandUp For Your Sisters,” we were immediately energized to make it happen. We brainstormed various causes, and Gilda’s Club soon became the clear contender; we had all been touched by cancer in some way, and we had all been inspired to get on stage in the first place by female comedians like Gilda Radner. We were nothing short of honoured when Gilda’s Club said yes to our offbeat idea for a fundraiser.

We’re not hiding the fact that most of us are new comics – we’re banking on it.  We are hoping the curiosity factor of it all will pique a ticket buyer’s interest. When we asked Dawn Whitwell to headline and Elvira Kurt to host, and both agreed (with full knowledge of our material), we knew we definitely had a show worth seeing.

Shelley Kidwell Eckert kicked in two Raptors floor seats behind the visitors bench with full bar and dinner service, on the sole condition that we auction, rather than raffle, them off, and the Silent Auction portion of the evening was born.  Donations from other companies started coming in and the momentum hasn’t stopped.  Heidi Mole secured a generous donation from TPH for our printing costs, raising our potential proceeds, and Becky Bays stepped up to produce the Silent Auction full-time.

I’ve since taken a tour of Gilda’s Club and was able to see first-hand the wonderful work they do.  I was saddened to hear that the Montreal branch was closed down due to lack of funds; my heart started beating hard at the thought that this could ever happen to Gllda’s Club in Toronto.  We hope in some small way that our show is able to help keep Gilda’s dream alive: that no one should ever have to face cancer alone.

We hope you enjoy the show as much as we are enjoying putting it together, and we hope to do Gilda’s legacy proud.