NESPA Winner: Feature story, 2023

The Newtonite, Newton North High School, Newtonville, MA

Students in Theatre Ink’s sketch comedy show Nitrous Oxide have been focusing on increasing gender equality in comedy performances.

Over the last several years, directors of Nitrous Oxide, a sketch comedy show written by students, have increased roles given to female identifying cast members. This is an attempt to level the playing field in an industry that tends to give males the lead.

“What’s really important, especially in the comedy groups, but in all groups, is that you do have gender equality,” said Theatre Ink director Adam Brown. “This is not a new thing. If you look at the past four to six years, we have really made a conscious effort to improve.”

Although progress has been made, disparities still persist.

“The gender inequity is just an expression of a larger issue that we wanted to try to address, which was that only a few people were getting a lot of the roles and those people happened to be men,” said senior Zoe Kritzer, a director of this year’s Nitrous Oxide.

Read the full story here.