All in the family

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This article was published 21/02/2018 (3020 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

If sharing a laugh helps keep couples together, this year’s Winnipeg Comedy Festival can pat itself on the back for keeping the fire burning in at least two standup relationships.

Married comics Jess Salomon and Eman El-Husseini will co-headline a show at Rumor’s Comedy Club during the festival’s 17th iteration, which runs April 9-15. And Vancouver’s Sophie Buddle will make the trip to Winnipeg with her partner, Hamilton, Ont.’s Mayce Galoni.

And the inclusive spirit doesn’t stop there.

“We’re going for an experiential kind of comedy festival,” artistic director Lara Rae says. “An overall theme of fewer shows, maybe, but a bigger investment in the shows, in terms of the quality of the whole experience.

“With the local comedians, for example, we’re moving away from the ghettoized kind of ‘Winnipeg show’ to streamlining them and including them in the main programming,” she says, adding that she thinks local Ojibwa comedian Paul Rabliauskas is “ready to bust out.”

That’s not to say there won’t be the usual comedic dustups and disagreements. CBC radio show The Debaters, hosted by Steve Patterson, will record afternoon shows at Club Regent Event Centre April 14 and 15, pitting standups against each other on a predetermined topic.

And the festival will host two versions of Your Hood’s a Joke, hosted by Danish Anwar. The concept of the roast show, created by Toronto’s Anwar, sees funny folk from different neighbourhoods, cities or countries go head-to-head to argue for which place takes the comedic cake.

A local version took place at the Gas Station Arts Centre last month and was a huge hit, Rae says; the fest will present a locals-only reprise.

“One of the things people really respond to is ‘Transcona versus St. James,’” she says. “We have a lot of fun with it as Winnipeggers. The other thing I realized very quickly — and I’ve seen this in The Debaters and I saw this when I first moved here (from Toronto) — is how difficult it is for out-of-towners to make fun of us, because we get very defensive.”

Manufactured discontent aside, Rae is eager to present a festival that reflects the changing face of the comedy scene, one that includes a broad spectrum of voices.

“Obviously, we’re always interested in representation and diversity,” she says. “I wanted to do something we haven’t done for a number of years, which was look at differently abled comics.”

To that end, one of the showcases Rae is particularly excited about is Dis’ Ability, which features a lineup of comedians facing different challenges. The show at Club Regent on April 10 will feature Toronto’s Courtney Gilmour, who was born missing both hands and one leg below the knee, as host. Featured comics include D.J. Demers, who wears hearing aids (and was just nominated for a Juno for Best Comedy Album for [Indistinct Chatter]); Colorado’s Chris (Crazy Legs) Fonseca, who has been performing for more than 30 years and who has cerebral palsy; and Nic Novicki, a standup comic and actor who has appeared on The Sopranos and Boardwalk Empire, and who has a rare form of dwarfism.

“This something that resonates personally,” says Rae, who addresses her own journey as a transgender woman in her standup. “My eyes have been so opened. You think you’re woke, you think you’re not this and you’re not that, but until you confront ‘otherness’ on a daily basis, I don’t think you can have any sense of how exhausting it is, and how psychologically erosive and corrosive it is, to your general well-being.

“It’s always been like this, of course, but in the last few years, I have had conversations with people who have disabilities, because we all get stared at, so we have that in common. I also realize how destructive it is to never see someone like you except in a marginalized situation, and then when you do see someone like you, how profoundly inspiring it is.”

Another show Rae is looks forward to is the Punching Up gala, which is hosted by Paul Sun-Hyung Lee, star of TV sitcom Kim’s Convenience. The theme arose organically — the idea of taking shots at the Man was a common topic when Rae was scouting comedians for the festival — and the lineup contains some of the performers Rae believes are ones to watch.

“In terms of the improbability of everything about her, Hoodo Hersi, who is hijabi, just has that thing where we have an expectation of what they’re going to say and do and she breaks all the rules. Yumi Nagashima is indescribably hilarious and really both plays on and destroys in a post-modern way any preconceived notions we have about Japanese female demureness…

“Christophe David is a new comic, really really worth watching. I would say there’s a whole stream that plays against this notion that there’s a homogeneity to white-male comics — there’s a whole generation of feminist, extremely insightful and provocative and challenging comics that break that cliché.”

Rae also has one or two programming surprises up her sleeve to be revealed in the coming weeks.

jill.wilson@freepress.mb.ca

Twitter: @dedaumier