WORKSHOP: Alberta Women Working in Comedy
Panelists: Joleen Ballendine, Jana O’Connor, Carolyn Bridget Kennedy
Moderator: Blair Brown
Joleen Ballendine is a mainstage cast member of Rapid Fire Theatre, Canada’s third oldest improv company. She is also the co-director of the Sphinxes Outreach Program which aims to empower and employ female, trans, and non-binary improvisors by giving them the tools to teach improv and then deliver the workshops to other marginalized voices. Joleen performs weekly in Theatresports, Maestro, and other long-form shows. Notable shows include Improvised Dungeons and Dragons directed by Edmonton’s Mark Meer, Colin Mochrie and friends in the Edmonton Fringe Festival. She’s an original cast member of the hit show Off Book the Improvised Musical. Teaching and performing improv has taken Joleen all over Canada, the US, and Europe. She tours regularly with comedy partner Amy Shostak in their high energy, risk-taking improv duo Rä Power. Improv isn’t Joleen’s only passion, she also writes and acts. She is a two-time Canadian Screen Awards nominee for both her performance and writing in the Canadian sketch comedy show Caution: May Contain Nuts on APTN. Alongside writing partners Gordie and Joey Lucius, Joleen was selected for the NSI Totally Television program in 2020 for their half-hour comedy, Lupita. The series is in development and hopefully will be available to a wide audience soon. The team of three is also working on a new half-hour sketch comedy show called thirtyONE which is also in development. She has written plays, musicals, sketch comedy, web series, and sitcoms. She thrives at telling stories whether it’s on the stage, on television, or verbally to anyone who will listen. Joleen is a proud Edmonton-based artist juggling life in the gig economy with a five-month old baby in tow.
Carolyn Bridget Kennedy is an award-winning actor (SAG-AFTRA, ACTRA) and filmmaker living in Los Angeles and Calgary. As a filmmaker she has created web series and short films that have collectively garnered over 115 film festival laurels around the globe. Carolyn is an improv maven having completed, in Los Angeles, Advanced Improv at The Groundlings, Upright Citizens Brigade, and Second City Hollywood conservatory program. She performs stand up at comedy clubs in LA. She has trained in sketch comedy writing at The Groundlings, as well as private coaching with a former showrunner for MadTV, resulting in her creating a spec Saturday Night Live sketch packet and a late-night television comedy packet. At Second City Hollywood, she co-wrote and performed in a one-hour sketch comedy show. In 2020, Carolyn created and co-wrote a pilot script for a half-hour comedy series, “InFirm”. It was a Quarterfinalist at the Oscar®-Qualifying HollyShorts Film Festival, the prestigious CineStory Foundation 2021 TV Retreat & Fellowship Competition, as well as placing in several other notable festivals. Carolyn has trained with Larry Moss in his Master Class, and studies acting in Los Angeles in the Advanced Class at the Beverly Hills Playhouse, Margie Haber Studios, and with Lesly Kahn. She has been cast in numerous projects, including with American Film Institute, UCLA and USC. Carolyn is an active member of the Television Academy (Los Angeles), Women in Film (Los Angeles), Raindance Los Angeles, Film Independent (Los Angeles), SAG-AFTRA, ACTRA, the Academy of Canadian Cinema & Television, AMPIA, WIFT Alberta (where she is also on the Board), WIFT Vancouver as well as Calgary Society of Independent Filmmakers.
Jana O’Connor is a Canadian performer, producer, improviser, voice actor, and writer. She is nationally known as a core cast member/writer for CBC Radio’s long-running sketch comedy series, The Irrelevant Show, and as a writer and core cast member on season five of APTN’s sketch comedy series Caution: May Contain Nuts (Mosaic Entertainment), which received AMPIA nominations for Best Screenwriter (Drama under 30 minutes), and Best Musical, Comedy or Variety Program or Series. Jana is now a regular contributor to CBC Radio’s Because News and her first screenplay, Picture It, is in post-production with GIFT: Girls in Film and Television. Jana is proud to have also been an instructor for GIFT, teaching screenwriting to young women and non-binary youth across the province. Since earlier this year, Jana has been working with Carter Ryan Productions as a writer on a number of their upcoming projects. As a playwright, Jana has enjoyed numerous successful productions of her work, and has received several Elizabeth Sterling Haynes Award nominations for her work. In 2010, she was awarded the Lieutenant Governor of Alberta Emerging Arts Award, and in 2015 Jana was the recipient of the Edmonton Artists’ Trust Fund Award.
Blair Brown is an entrepreneur and an advocate for those who are marginalized, disenfranchised and vulnerable. She is the CoFounder/Executive Director of the Global Merit & Essence Awards Network (GMEAN), a Not For Profit, non-partisan charitable organization committed to affecting global changes within vulnerable & marginalized communities. Blair is also the Executive Director of the Women of Essence Global Awards, a recognition program produced by GMEAN. After graduating from the Radio & TV Arts program at the Northern Alberta Institute of Technology (NAIT) in Edmonton, Alberta, Blair moved to Toronto to pursue her career in broadcasting. Since returning to her hometown of Edmonton, Blair has founded Women in Bloom International with current chapters in Edmonton Alberta, Toronto Ontario, Phoenix Arizona, and Lusaka Zambia. Blair recently collaborated to create 16Days Bloom Hope, a movement that is raising awareness and creating change to fight Gender Based Violence Against Women & Girls. Blair, a busy mom to a 9-year-old son, was a core member of the newly archived Facebook group YEG Response to COVID-19: a safe place for members in the community to request and receive support with their needs. Blair recently completed her tenure on the Edmonton Public School’s Multiculturalism and Cultural Diversity Policy Review Advisory Committee. She currently sits on the Women in Film & Television Alberta Diversity Board where her focus is to advocate for a fair and equal representation of Black Women and Women of Colour in television and film.
