When the all-women comedy troupe, Granny Cart Gangstas, invited me to be part of their theater show, I was both honored and ecstatic. Granny Cart Gangstas is a group of creative, talented, not to mention hilarious, women who write, produce, and perform sketch comedy on stage and on screen. One of their works was a hilarious parody of Beyonce’s “Run the World” music video.
Granny Cart Gangstas’ show, “Rise of the Red Dawn” was held at Bindlestiff Studio in San Francisco last September 30th. For my contribution, I performed short comedy skits with my sister as well as sang and danced in a parody of another Beyonce song, “Single Ladies”, which we renamed to “Pregnant Ladies”.
I also produced and starred in a video called “30 Something“, which was my satirical take on women in their 30s (or people in their 30s in general) who feel stuck between trying to figure out their passions in life and facing the pressures of starting a family. I’ve uploaded the video on the RCE Studios YouTube channel, let me know what you think:
The concept of “30 Something” crossed my mind after watching an episode of 30 Rock. Inspired by the sitcom’s humor, lines of dialogue between a couple in their 30s poured in my head; I had to grab a laptop to type it down before I lose the moment! After writing the draft, I had my writer friend extraordinaire, Gayle Romasanta at Bonnie magazine to critique my script. I wouldn’t say the final script followed her entire critique which, in retrospect, I really should have followed it religiously. Oh well, all the more to make room for improvement in future projects.
Filming the video took the whole day, from 9am until about 4pm including equipment setup and a lunch break. I consider myself extremely lucky that I have talented film friends to believe in this project. Not to mention, they already have the equipment so I didn’t have to spend money on renting or buying video equipment. The funnest part of the shoot was having our film crew also act as the YouTube stars described in the video: our production assistant, Ava Tong, as “Shanaynay” in “Shanaynay’s Makeup Tips” and our director of photography, Willis Lai, as “Bruno” in “Bruno’s Cooking for Half”.
The final edit was screened at the Granny Cart Gangsta show. Honestly, I was nervous that people might not get the jokes, or worse, think the story is irrelevant. But after the show, a friend came up to me and jokingly accused me of basing the script on his and his wife’s life! He said that my portrayal was right on point describing his wife. Learning that the story resonated to someone was the greatest compliment I could ever receive about”30 Something”!
Richgail Enriquez 