Comedy Invasion; Series featuring disabled, BIPOC, LGBTQIA+, and/or female Canadian comedians

BY SYDNEE WALCOTT

Canada has a very diverse population of people who are from all different walks of life. A new stand-up comedy show will be displaying a diverse representation of talented comedians from a variety of different backgrounds.

Starting on November 29^th at midnight, comedy lovers will get to see Canadian comedians take the stage in a half-hour set for a new series called Comedy Invasion.

The series will feature Canadian comedians who identify as: disabled, BIPOC, LGBTQIA+, and/or female from different Canadian cities such as Toronto, Vancouver, and Calgary.

The comedians who will be starring in the show are: Desiree Walsh, who lives with cerebral palsy, Keith “Bubbas” Nahanee, an Indigenous Canadian, Yumi Nagashima, a Japanese Canadian, Karla Marx, a transgender drag queen activist, DJ On, who identifies as queer and Asian, Alisha Dhillon, who holds a dual South American and Canadian citizenship, Victoria Banner, who is bisexual, and David Tong (aka Peter Chao), who is a sensation on social media.

On November 23^rd, 2022, six days before the show’s release, members of the media were given the chance to see an episode of the show in a press and industry screening.

The press and industry screening played an episode featuring Desirée Walsh who has been doing comedy for five years.

During Walsh’s episode, her stand-up routine opened up with a joke about wanting to get a wish through the Make-A-Wish foundation as an adult.

She also joked about how odd it is for a person in a wheelchair to enjoy a holiday that’s centered around stairs and how she enjoys the holiday more as an adult than she did as a child.

“When I would go to the bar with my friends, one of you walkies would always be like, oh my God that’s a realistic costume, the wheelchair is so real,” one of Walsh’s jokes in regards to her wheelchair.

Throughout her routine, Walsh’s jokes also centered around: well-known Canadian stores, her relationship life, cities in Ontario, other holidays, and her family just to name a few. 

After the screening, attendees had the chance to learn about what went into the creation of Comedy Invasion and learn about how Walsh got into comedy.

Walsh, who was working at a bank at the time, got into comedy through a friend’s roommate’s now-husband who used to do stand-up comedy at a Second City in the Toronto area.

“I want to meet a husband too,” Walsh said jokingly.

Even though she did not meet anyone romantically when she went to Second City, Walsh overall enjoys doing comedy a lot more.

What Walsh is excited about from this opportunity is to be a representation for the disabled community and use her platform to address how there is a lack of media representation for those who identify as disabled.

Walsh also wants to be an inspiration to young disabled children who also have dreams of having a career in the media. She hopes this will lead to more television opportunities as she enjoyed filming for Comedy Invasion.

Comedy Invasion is a Canadian spinoff of Comedy InAsian, which premiered in 2018 on Hulu and aired its second season in May of this year on Peacock and Tubi.

Both shows were produced by Margie Films (a Canadian production company owned by filmmaker and the series director Quentin Lee) and distributed by Margin Films LTD (an independent film production studio and all-rights distributor based in Los Angeles).

Lee wanted to create a Canadian version of the show to highlight the talent of Canadian comedians like how he highlighted the talent of Asian comedians in his original series.

For those interested in watching Comedy Invasion, the series will be airing on AAM.tv (also founded by Quentin Lee), Amazon Prime, Tubi, Roku, and many other streaming services.