MARGARET CHO headlining the SheDot Festival, Danforth Music Hall (147 Danforth), Sunday (May 3), 6:30 pm (doors). $50-$65. 1-855-985-5000, ticketmaster.ca.
For the second year in a row, the SheDot Festival brings together female comedians from all over the world for four days of stand-up, sketch, improv and workshops at Comedy Bar and the Storefront Theatre. This year’s closing night features a special performance by boundary-busting veteran Margaret Cho, who made headlines in January for her dig at North Korean dictator Kim Jong-un during the Golden Globes.
Cho is a perfect choice for a fest dedicated to celebrating and empowering women comics. She’s had successes and setbacks, yet remains fearless speaking truth to power, be it about Dick Cheney, Bill Cosby or a certain disgraced Canadian radio host.
“I arrived for a show in Victoria right when the news about Jian Ghomeshi was breaking,” says Cho on the phone from her home in Los Angeles.
“To find all that out was a shock and a betrayal. I’d been a guest on Q a number of times, and he was a fan. It was really sickening and it hurt. I felt what Canada felt, so I wrote about it and talked about it onstage.”
Cho couldn’t help but see parallels – and important differences – between Canadian and American reactions to the Ghomeshi and Cosby cases. This comparative analysis is a big part of her new stand-up special, There’s No I In Team, But There Is A Cho In Psycho, which was filmed in Manhattan in March and will premiere on Showtime this fall.
“Women in America don’t treat sexual violence the same way women do in Canada,” says Cho bluntly.
“In Canada, people believe the women in America they blame the victim. In America, people still have questions about Cosby’s innocence, and he’s still allowed to do shows. In Canada, for Ghomeshi, justice was swift. It didn’t take 40-odd years maybe it was a period of 10 years. In Canada, people deal with these things more quickly, and that’s the kind of feminism we need down here. We need to learn from this.”
Another thing Cho likes about Canada is our music, and she hints at some serious CanCon accompanying her onstage for the musical portions of her set.
“I basically deserve a Juno for all the Canadians I write music with,” she laughs.
“I’ve done songs with the New Pornographers, Tegan and Sara, Caribou. And I have some famous friends in Toronto that I’m going to call on: Kevin Drew – I’m actually the new triangle player in Broken Social Scene – and Lucas Silveira of the Cliks.”
Cho says her comedy is most powerful when dealing with serious topics.
“When I tell jokes – like, ‘Jian was run out of Canada, so he’s here in America in talks with the NFL’ – the way to lighten them is to find truth in them, and to use reason.
“Jokers have no power and they have all the power. Ultimately, I’m just a comic. No one has to listen to what I say, but if I say something very astute and powerful, then it gets heard. We’re kind of tricksters because we can have it both ways – we can not be taken seriously and we can be taken totally seriously.
“The only thing that’s required is that we be funny.”
stage@nowtoronto.com
