{"id":34273,"date":"2024-02-29T11:52:33","date_gmt":"2024-02-29T16:52:33","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/?p=34273"},"modified":"2024-03-07T11:44:49","modified_gmt":"2024-03-07T16:44:49","slug":"hear-us-roar-cultural-centre-hosts-comedy-first-for-international-womens-day","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/hear-us-roar-cultural-centre-hosts-comedy-first-for-international-womens-day\/","title":{"rendered":"\u201cHear Us Roar\u201d \u2013 Cultural Centre hosts comedy first for International Women\u2019s Day"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

The Aurora Cultural Centre is programming something with \u201cBroad Appeal\u201d to mark International Women\u2019s Day \u2013 an evening of comedy that is a Centre first.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Broad Appeal, an International Women\u2019s Day Comedy Show, will take over the St. Andrew\u2019s College stage on Friday, March 8, with headliner Martha Chaves.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Chaves, an award-winning comedian, will be joined on stage by Cournney Gilmour, Zabrina Douglas and Sarah Boston, a troupe described as \u201cfierce, ferocious and effin\u2019 funny.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI want people to leave quoting us,\u201d Chaves tells The Auroran. \u201cI want the audience to leave happy and I want them to leave thinking women comics are strong. In 2024, people still believe women aren\u2019t funny. You don\u2019t know how many times I play a club or a bar in northern Ontario or Alberta where they come and tell me, \u2018You know what? We don\u2019t like women, but we like you!\u2019 and they actually think that\u2019s a compliment.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Chaves laughs when she recounts these experiences, underscoring that the themes she and her fellow comedians touch upon are universal.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Not every experience is universal, however.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Chaves, a Nicaraguan-Canadian, is a member of the 2SLGBTQIA+ community, speaks with an accent, and all this, she says, gives her \u201ca lot of things to balance\u201d in her work. But, at the end of the day, she just wants to make people laugh \u2013 even if she approaches serious topics in a \u201csilly\u201d way.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWhen I do shows in some places they have never seen a Hispanic woman with an accent, who is gay, when I sense they may not be open to me for whatever reason, whether it\u2019s a bar with a lot of macho guys and bros there, and I see them laughing, I think, \u2018Boy, I did something! I opened their mind a little bit. I misunderstood these people. I guess we\u2019re all the same.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Chaves, a resident of Toronto, got her comedy start in Montreal where she took a comedy course to bolster her goals of becoming a tour guide. Fluent in four languages, she just wanted to have the tools to make that all-important connection by coming up with jokes right off the top of her head.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The course happened to be hosted in association with the Just for Laughs festival, where students graduate with a show of their own, and, as far as Chaves is concerned, there was no looking back.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI don\u2019t know what happened, but the next day I woke up with a smile thinking this is what I want to do. It sounds corny, but it was just like that,\u201d she says. \u201cIt\u2019s like there were a choir of angels \u2013 you don\u2019t know what you don\u2019t know until you know! I didn\u2019t know it took so much sacrifice, so many amateur nights to get a good five-minute set. I just embarked upon it, all of a sudden I didn\u2019t have a job anymore, and I dedicated my life to stand-up comedy. At the end of my life, if I didn\u2019t invent a cure for COVID, at least I made people laugh and that makes me very happy.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Also playing a big part in her happiness is teaching stand-up at Humber College and Toronto Metropolitan University.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI teach seniors who want\u2026maybe they don\u2019t want a career in comedy, but they want to experience a show at least once in their lifetimes,\u201d she explains. \u201cThat\u2019s when I thought I did the right thing, where I can extend my knowledge to kids and older people.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI thought at Just for Laughs I\u2019d made it, but no, you want more and more. The only alternative is to move to the United States to become a superstar because that\u2019s what you want to be: a household name. Unfortunately, in Canada, the industry has not been open to us like that. I am happy making my living in Canada doing comedy; I wish I was a household name, but I want happiness. I want the kids I teach to have hopes of a better career than my generation of comedians had. I want to continue to make a climate where younger generations want to stay in our country.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

For more information on next week\u2019s Broad Appeal comedy show, including tickets, visit auroraculturalcentre.ca.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

By Brock Weir
Editor
Local Journalism Initiative Reporter<\/strong><\/p>\n\r\n\"Facebook\"<\/a>\"twitter\"<\/a>\"mail\"<\/a>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The Aurora Cultural Centre is programming something with \u201cBroad Appeal\u201d to mark International Women\u2019s Day \u2013 an evening of comedy that is a Centre first. Broad Appeal, an International Women\u2019s Day Comedy Show, will take over the St. Andrew\u2019s College stage on Friday, March 8, with headliner Martha Chaves. Chaves, an award-winning comedian, will be […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[4,5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-34273","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general_news","category-news"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p3D2k4-8UN","publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-06-20 01:34:48","action":"change-status","newStatus":"draft","terms":[],"taxonomy":"category","extraData":[]},"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/34273","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=34273"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/34273\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=34273"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=34273"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=34273"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}