Name: YWCA NENY Presents: Comedy for a Cause
Start: 2025-10-30T19:00:00-04:00
End: 2025-10-30T21:00:00-04:00
Location: 108 State St, Schenectady, NY 12305-1717, United States

Get ready to laugh for a powerful purpose!
Comedy for a Cause is a special evening of stand-up, storytelling, and solidarity — all to support our life-changing mission work in preventing domestic violence and empowering survivors.
Join us for a night of comedy that brings awareness to serious issues in a meaningful, uplifting way. This event raises vital funds to support YWCA NENY’s domestic violence programs, shelter services, and outreach efforts across our community.
Featuring performances from Dee Watson, Erin Harkes and Jaye McBride! Hosted by Jen McMullen!
About Our Performers
Dee Watson is friendly, relatable, and funny! She brings a unique point of view has crowds laughing along as she explores life through the lens of mother, wife, daughter and observer of humanity, all with hilarious results she has performed throughout the Northeast like the Funny Bone comedy clubs, the Comedy Works, Baltimore Comedy Festival and as a finalist in the Ladies of Laughter competition at the Turning Stone Casino, Turnpike Comedy Festival now showing on Amazon, Laffin Matterz, DC Comedy Festival, Proctor’s Theater and the North Carolina Comedy Festival in Greensboro, and recently opened for Paul Reiser at the Comedy Connection in Rhode Island.
Local entertainer Erin Harkes has been called the busiest woman in show biz (NYS Music). She is regularly voted Best Singer/Songwriter, Solo Musician and Comedian in the Capital Region by the Times Union Reader’s Poll and The Alt. She took home the 2020 Thomas Edison Award for Best Solo/Duo Artist of the Year. Adding to her entertainment portfolio in 2012, Harkes decided to try her hand at standup comedy. Since then she’s performed in nearly every major club in NYC, Toronto and Montreal, as well as being a regular at Funny Bone Comedy Clubs across the country. She likes to say that music is her spouse and comedy is her mistress. She tries to give them equal amounts of love and attention. Whether singing songs or telling jokes, Harkes commands attention every time she steps foot on stage. Erin is regularly voted Best and Comedian in the Capital Region in local publications. She has been the subject of several cover stories by all of those newspapers. She is definitely a local favorite. Erin has had the privilege to have shared the stage with Jeff Dye, Judy Gold, Demetri Martin, Craig Robinson and Mark Normand.
Jaye McBride is funny, smart and according to the New York Times, has “…an ear for jokes.” Jaye is a regular at New York City’s Comedy Cellar and has performed all over the country, including Red Rocks and Madison Square Garden. She was also featured as one of the “New Faces” at the Just For Laughs comedy festival, the Netflix is a Joke Festival. In addition to comedy, Jaye recently won a Writer’s Guild award for her writing on ‘Inside Amy Schumer’.

About Our Host
Winner of the Capital Region’s Best of the Best Comedy Contest, Jen McMullen takes you on a wild ride through her life with hilarious tales of lovers, family, co-workers, motherhood and beating breast cancer not once but twice! She will have you laughing from start to finish and quoting her silly catchphrases by the end of the night! She has performed all over the Capital Region including the FunnyBone, the Comedy Works and the EGG as well as several hotspots in NYC, CT, RI and MA! Jennifer is an HR professional by day, comedian by night and mother 24/7. Her stories are relatable, honest and of course funny!

About To Life!
To Life! serves all those affected by a breast cancer diagnosis in the greater Capital Region, including Albany, Schenectady, Rensselaer, Saratoga, Columbia, Greene, Montgomery, Fulton, Warren, and Washington counties.
To Life! was founded in October 1998 as a not-for-profit organization after its founder, Mara Ginsberg, was diagnosed with breast cancer. As she progressed through consultations about treatment and therapy alternatives, she realized that services to breast cancer patients were limited, fractured, and difficult to locate. As she met other women in the same boat, she learned that many, like she, were occasionally overwhelmed by the gravity of their diagnoses, unsure of what questions to ask the doctors, sometimes embarrassed to ask certain questions, put off by the busy-ness and sterility of medical offices, uncomfortable shopping for prostheses and wigs in medical supply houses, and aching for a competent and sympathetic source of information, guidance, and non-medical services.
Mara created To Life! to serve as a welcoming setting for those to obtain information necessary to make informed medical decisions, learn how to explain things to their families, and thereby enlist their support and assistance and go for support and ancillary services such as wigs, head coverings and post-surgical garments and fittings. And, because early detection is half the battle against breast cancer, To Life! aggressively reaches out to the community with breast self-examination training.