Outright Speakers & Talent Bureau [Comedy: Standup]

Karen Ripley has been performing stand up comedy for two decades and is going stronger than ever before. With impeccable timing and deadpan delivery, Karen is a headliner the must not be missed. As a founding member of the improvisation group "Over Our Heads", spontaneity is a large part of her performance. Her more serious material is based upon her experience with substance abuse and sobriety. Karen has to be heard to be believed, but if you ask why she performs gay and lesbian humor, it's "because I don't want my career to go anywhere". However, "queer humor may change the world and that's really what it's all about".

Known as the "mother of gay comedy", Tom Ammiano first started performing over fifteen years ago as one of the of the nation's first openly gay comics. Tom is President of the San Francisco Board of Supervisors and came in second in the last mayoral election for San Francisco. Having been a high school teacher and political activist for over twenty years. Tom's stand up comedy is a non-stop jaunt of his experience as a teenager, gay father, and elected official, targeting homophobia, politics, and the social agenda.

Suzy Berger has been described as "comic perfection" by the San Francisco Chronicle. She performs hysterically funny stand-up and improv and is a featured in two comedy anthologies, Revolutionary Laughter and A Funny Time to be Gay and has a CD Gay From Las Vegas. Suzy also does a solo AIDS education play "The Talking Cure". Critics have raved "it is both side-splitting funny and heart-breakingly affecting" and "Berger works wonders with the spectrum of emotions in a witty insightful catharsis". Suzy performs comedy from Las Vegas to the U.K. and as one of the first out lesbian comics, she has truly been a ground breaker.

Humor with a Southern flair, comic Paul J. Williams has hilarious views of growing up gay in the South. From his being a creative child in a conservative Southern Baptist home to his experiences as a single gay male, his Texas-style humor has brought rave reviews from all over the country. His newest work is a one-man show, "Left Out.....And Not Right", an hour of comic monologues about his life as the best little homo in Texas. Witty, cerebral, and always just a little warped, Paul is "out" to make you laugh.

Gail Hand is a professional speaker, author and humorist. Since Gail started her stand-up career in 1989 in San Francisco, she's toured over 100 Universities & Colleges in the U.S. & Canada, with a humorous look on Coming-Out as well as an upbeat, fun filled diversity training for Residence Life, Orientations & Staff. Gail has performed a one-woman show "Lottie's Legacy" for several years, inspired by her larger than life small Bronx matriarch, Grandma Lottie Hand. In her new book: The Power of Laughter: Seven Secrets to Living and Laughing in a Stressful World, Gail shares her humor with the world on using laughter to deal with stressful situations offering her antics on living in a body cast for a year while in high school. Gail's programs are humorous, and offer a compelling look at overcoming adversity with a smile. Great for comedy shows, keynotes or dynamite diversity training's, Gail is sure to leave your campus laughing and thinking about celebrating our differences!!

Scott Capurro is a stand up comic, actor, playwright and author. He has performed comedy in all English speaking countries, including San Francisco , from where he hails, and Scotland, where English is barely spoken, and where he won the prestigious Perrier Award at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival. His style of severely gay jokes has coined the word 'homoneurotic', which is now listed in the Oxford English dictionary. Scott has also appeared in several films, including Star Wars; Phantom Menace, playing one head of a two-headed monster; and Mrs. Doubtfire, playing Harvey Fierstein's lover and Robin Williams' make up artist. He is also the author of Fowl Play, a very well received and hilarious novel about, what else, dating. Scott is a contributing writer to several newspapers and magazines, including Gay Times and Attitude and teaches a course at the Harvey Milk Institute in San Francisco on how to create and produce a one-person show. Oh, and one other thing: He lives on friends’ couches.

In a world where "going mainstream" has become the end of the rainbow for many performers, Lynn Lavner happily remains a minority of one. "My songs and humor are drawn", she says, "from my own experience as a short. left-handed, Jewish, lesbian from New York". The quick-witted Lavner, clad in black leather and who stands five feet tall, plays the piano, sings and tells hilarious comic monologues. Billed as "America's most politically - incorrect entertainer", she has taken her original brand of music and comedy to 41 states and 7 foreign countries, bowling over audiences and critics alike. While her act is gay in content, her appearance is aimed at playful parody of stereotypes with a universal appeal to anyone with a sense of humor. Truly a crossover act, Lavner has performed at events as diverse as the 25th Anniversary GALA for the National Organization for Women to pride celebrations and college campuses nationwide.

Bob Smith is the author of the best-selling books Openly Bob, winner of the 1998 Lambda Literary Award and Way To Go Smith. He is the first openly gay comedian to appear on The Tonight Show with Jay Leno, appear on Politically Incorrect with Bill Mahr, as well as to star in his own HBO Comedy Special. Bob has written for The Advocate, OUT, and the Los Angeles Times Magazine. He has also written for the MTV Video Awards, among numerous other shows for television such as Mad-TV. Bob sets out not to only to make us laugh, but to make us feel. He offers insight into his own life and the world around him -- family, relationships, and other problems that we all can relate to.