Fighting for a Good Cause: Ending date rape
Women's Health
By Emma Johnson
Funny Business -- Gail Stern, 37
Why we admire her: Entering stage left, a guy walks up to Stern at a fraternity party and says, "You must be from Tennessee..." The audience roars at the embarrassingly familiar pickup line. "...because you're the only 10 I see."
Stern smiles. Before long, they're back at his place, and the guy is coaxing her to do things she'd rather not. The audience goes silent, and the lights fade to black. Within seconds, the lights are up again and Stern and the guy are on a talk show discussing date rape. "Yeah, she said no," he says. "But it was a whisper."
This is a typical performance of Sex Signals by Catharsis Productions, a program co-created by Stern in 2000 to raise awareness of sexual assault on U.S. college campuses.
How she got started: Stern is not a victim of date rape, but she encountered many while serving on the student government of the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign in the late '80s. "Once I was aware of the problem, I was required to do something about it," Stern says.
In 1992, she founded the University of Illinois at Chicago's first sexual assault crisis center and, drawing on her passion for comedy, developed a workshop to teach local police officers how to discuss touchy topics, like date rape, with college kids. "Police and students have similar levels of cynicism and defensiveness- one group is just more heavily armed than the other," she says. In 1998, Stern met Christian Murphy, now 36, at a stand-up competition. They joined comic forces and revamped the police training session to include a theater act. Two years later, at a local playwriting workshop, the two debuted a show that would later become Sex Signals.
What she's accomplished: In the past 6 years Sex Signals has grown to five two-actor teams that tour the country 9 months a year. Nearly 500 campuses have funded more than 1,000 shows nationwide. "I've had people come up to me after a show to tell me they just realized they were victims of sexual assault," says Stern, who no longer acts but writes and produces shows when she's not studying humor for her doctorate in education at the University of Wisconsin at Madison. So far, she's found that humor helps the brain retain information and be more receptive to new ideas. "If you make people laugh, it's hard for them to hate you," she says. "Even if you're challenging their beliefs, they're bound to think about what you've said."
What's next: Stern and Murphy are writing a new comedy on sexual harassment in the workplace that they hope to perform for companies nationwide next spring.
For more on Gail Stern, visit catharsisproductions.com.
THE VITALS
Hometown: Chicago
Homelife: Stern and husband Ari are expecting their first baby in February.
Favorite comedienne: Janeane Garofalo
One her bookshelf: Princess Bride and Male Chauvinist Pigs
© Rodale/Emma Johnson