A comedic duo called “The Ladies” are taking their performances on a new venture

“The Ladies” is a local comedy duo that’s started a new venture involving performances in out of the box places, working closely with local artists, performers and businesses. We learned more from Leanne Schmidt, the founder of “The Ladies,” and performance-artist Steve Wilcox.

“‘The Ladies’ produce, immersive, fun, off the wall performances in unexpected places and during ‘Ladies in the Headlights’ we actually had our audience members come and view our shows from the comfort of their car and interacting with us by using their headlights, their windshield wipers, their horns. We even had them yelling out the window,” Schmidt said.

Wilcox recently performed with “The Ladies” at a film bar. Wilcox has constructed a character known as the “world’s most sociable man, he’s inviting the audience into his personal lounge…to have a perfectly pleasant party,” Wilcox said.

COVID has certainly made people want to find entertainment in different ways.

In response to this, “The Ladies” started taking their performances outside which is, “a natural extension of the work we’ve been doing for the last few years, taking performance into unconventional spaces and creating these experiences that people are engaged in…it’s really inviting the audience into the performance in a very fun way,” Wilcox said.

“We’ve been producing work like this since 2016, and in fact, my other lady, Marlene Strang and I decided to start our own nonprofit company called, ‘Yes And Productions’ and so our goal is to create fun, immersive, one of a kind performances in unexpected places. So it truly is a one of a kind experience,” Schmidt said.

Audiences are finding this to be, “a hoot actually. Everybody has such a great time at our shows, in fact we’ve really gone and broken the rules of theater…we ask our audience to talk to one another during our performances. We encourage them to post live on social media…everyone is growing to know who we are and what we do in our community,” Schmidt said.