Sex & The City: Winterlewd and the Politics of Queer Comedy
If you’ve been living through the past however long now, you might’ve felt that collectively, we’re in need of a good laugh. A little something to take the edge off, a thing to smile and chuckle at to forget momentarily where we are or what we’re doing, a moment of levity in the sea of almost constant turmoil that is the current moment.
Enter Lauren Mallory (she/her) and Nat Pace (they/them), two comedians/producers from Ontario, and their brand new comedy festival Winterlewd, a queer comedy festival with a simple mission: to make winter a little less depressing. If that sounds too simple, it is, but I couldn’t resist trying to make a joke in the article about a comedy fest. And like most jokes, this one is rooted in truth: sitting down with Lauren and Nat over a Zoom call around 6pm, after the sun has been set for well over an hour, Nat jokes, “Winter is depressing. I wanted to do something in the winter to try and help that.” It’s all too relatable: despite having lived in Montreal my whole life, I still sometimes can’t stomach the gloom of a sunless day that seems to end just as quickly as it began, or walking through streets covered in uneven, jagged ice and cursing my choice to live in a place where the average temperature is below 0 half of the year. That being said, as their event tagline reads, Winterlewd and its packed event schedule promises several saucy, silly moments to help us trudge through the last stretch of 5:00pm sunsets together.
At its heart, Winterlewd is a coming together of Montreal queer comedians and new queer audiences, with events all over the city that align at the intersection of queer culture, comedy and eroticism. There’s of course your usual stand-up events - like an all femme line-up edition of Stand-Up St-Henri for none other than Galentine’s Day or Poly Mic, an awesome event for comedy first timers - but also some fun, less typical events like Queer Quickies: Short Films, Big Laughs, showcasing a lineup of carefully selected queer comedic shorts, and Slut Bingo, which needs no explanation. The festival culminates in a comedy gala set to take place at the Chalet du Parc Lafontaine, which not only has a killer lineup of queer and trans comedians (Eve Parker Finley and Tranna Wintour, anyone?) but also features a “best dressed” competition, inviting guests to come in their best winter-inspired formalwear for a chance to win tickets to Bota Bota. As Nat, who has over 10 years of queer event production put it, “it's an opportunity to dress slutty, but also sit down. You’d be surprised how many people love that.” And to top it all off, part of the proceeds for the event will go to the Native Women’s Shelter of Montreal, making it an event to rival even the most lavish of comedy galas.
Of course, in Montreal especially, that’s saying something. This city is almost legendary when it comes to comedy, having brought up the likes of Sugar Sammy, and being the home of the internationally renowned Just for Laughs Festival. But it’s exactly that legendary renown that makes a grassroots, community event like Winterlewd so important. “People definitely think of Montreal as a comedy city,” says Lauren, who started doing comedy here in 2022. “With Just for Laughs, even though it’s hosted in Montreal, you’ve got a lot of international acts, a lot of American comedians- but there's a very bustling local scene of comedians as well that aren’t necessarily showcased on that stage. That’s part of what we’re trying to do with these independent festivals, showcase our local talent.” Both Lauren and Nat started organizing events and doing comedy at smaller, independent shows here in Montreal, and there’s definitely a continuation of that legacy in the practices and aims of Winterlewd.
With its focus on queer/trans comedy, Winterlewd joins the ranks of an ever-growing queer comedy scene here in the city. “It’s not like there’s just one queer show, there’s multiple,” Nat notes. “If you’re a beginner and you’re funny, you can automatically get on track to do, like, five different show. It’s a very welcoming community.” Lauren, who has firsthand experience with this, agrees: “There’s so many people within the scene who provide those first points of entry for queer people. The first time I ever tried comedy was at a queer comedy workshop run in part by Alo Asimov, who’s hosting the PolyMic, which is another space for beginners to kind of start out.” The importance of queer-run, queer-centered comedy spaces and events cannot be understated- in a world where increasingly, the safety of marginalized people is at risk and it becomes harder and harder to find mainstream outlets for queer joy, it’s important to carve out places where queer and trans folks can thrive and laugh together. “It’s amazing that there’s so many people within the scene who provide those first points of entry for queer people,” says Lauren, “because in a typical straight mic, in a loud bar maybe surrounded by some “questionable” people, it’s not always a welcoming space for a queer person to start comedy.”
Talking now about the role and importance of laughter and humor in trans culture, Lauren and Nat take on a tone that I think is emblematic of both the nature of the topic and the work being done around it: their jovial tones take on a more serious note, but they remain casual, still bantering. “A lot of mainstream comedy spaces are so harmful for queer and trans people, so it’s great to have such a suite of queer-produced shows,” Nat remarks. “I always like to throw a show around Trans Day of Remembrance, because I think humour is a way to cope and it’s a survival strategy. Just to be able to laugh at all the bullshit.” And like any great comedian would do, after this sobering statement Lauren takes the opportunity to make me both laugh out loud and think about the world at large: “There’s kind of this idea that queer/trans folks are ‘woke-schooled,’ that we don't like humour, we don't like talking about anything controversial. That’s so not true. That’s so not true with the history of the greater Trans community; we’re not passive recipients of hate or jokes being made about us, we have lots of jokes to make about the world around us as well. It’s one of the ways we come together and have a good time.”
If you’re interested in comedy and community organizing, with a dash of sex, glam and queerness thrown in, you’ll love Winterlewd, taking place February 12 to 17. For more info about the fest as well as the full schedule and ticket purchase links, go to: https://linktr.ee/winterlewd
Or follow: @standupsthenri + @thepolymic + @bulgecomedy