Jackie Joy moved from Brazil to Vancouver with almost no English. Across from her office was a club called Comedy Dark. Bring three people and you got four minutes on stage. She told her friends she was going to do it. Nobody believed her, on the grounds that her English was broken. She had already handed in a letter saying she was leaving Canada. She did the open mic anyway, and cried afterwards. Then she went back to her boss and asked to stay. He agreed, and comedy has decided her movements ever since.
She now runs two of her own shows. Only Fails is built around her dating app screenshots. How I Met My Trauma brings other comedians on to discuss theirs. She is also a working marketer, and says the two jobs are inseparable. By her own estimate she is eighty percent marketing. The remaining twenty percent is the comedian.
We caught up with Jackie to talk about a man called Roger, a spreadsheet, and Judy Carter. We also covered the night she froze and stopped performing for three months.
Four minutes, three friends, no English
The deal at Comedy Dark was straightforward. Fill three seats and the stage was yours for four minutes. Communicating at all was still difficult for her at that point. Her friends were not encouraging.
You have broken English — how can you do it?
She went up regardless. By her account she talked for eight minutes without interruption. She came off and cried, and understood immediately that she wanted more.
Looking for Roger
Her favourite illustration of the language problem involves her boss. She asked him about a project and he answered without looking up. He said, roger that, and carried on typing.
She heard an instruction containing a man’s name.
And I spent the whole day looking for Roger.
The nickname stuck at that company for a while. Her colleagues called her Roger.
The letter she had already handed in
The timing of that first open mic was not incidental. She had already submitted notice that she was leaving Canada. That is precisely when she decided to get on stage.
The night went well enough to reverse the decision. She went back to her boss and said she wanted to stay. He allowed it, and she started doing comedy.
So comedy made me stay in Canada. Comedy decided my next steps.
That is not a figure of speech in her case. Her immigration status followed her set list.
Canada versus the United States
She adjusts the material depending on which side of the border she is on. In Canada she mocks her dates and calls them Americans. In the United States she mocks Canadians instead. The appetite differs too.
And Americans are more for blood.
Canadian rooms, she finds, are more sensitive to certain jokes. American ones tell her to go further.
Laughing at the joke, laughing at her
She thinks Canada is more open to immigrants generally. One night in a New York club gave her the counter-example. She was listening back to a recording afterwards.
Near the stage, a couple were repeating a word the way she had said it. They were not responding to the joke. They were doing her accent back at her.
Sometimes people laugh at my jokes. Sometimes they laugh at me. Doesn’t matter — I like the laughs.
She reports this without much heat. It reads as a working condition rather than a grievance.
The night she froze
In her third month she landed a Saturday night alongside established names. It remains the only time in her career this has happened.
I literally froze.
The audience tried to rescue her, calling out encouragement from the seats. It did not help, because she could not move. She almost quit standup entirely, and did not perform again for three months.
Keeping the broken English on purpose
Some of her jokes are old enough now to have been polished hard. The problem is that correct English breaks a few of them. If she pronounces the word properly, the joke stops making sense.
So I keep the way I talked in the beginning — more broken — so the joke still makes sense.
She is relaxed about the accusation of doing it deliberately. Her answer is yes and no. She still makes plenty of genuine mistakes, so it costs her no effort.
Portuguese, and who actually gets it
She performs in Portuguese when she is in Brazil, which requires a rebuild. Her act is about being an immigrant and about broken English. Only six percent of Brazilians speak English, so none of it lands. She writes fresh material there about her grandmother and her mother.
She also finds the two languages behave differently. English gets what it needs using fewer words. Portuguese, she thinks, is built for storytellers.
Her ideal audience is neither, strictly speaking. It is Brazilians living in Canada, where the jokes translate and hit harder.
Canadians and Americans laugh at the situation, but they didn’t live the situation.
The shows work better for immigrants generally. They are the people the material was made out of.
Only Fails, and How I Met My Trauma
She approaches her own shows the way she approaches a campaign. She tests topics and tries different names to see what sticks. Her stage material is relationships and her troubles with English.
For How I Met My Trauma she brings other comedians on to discuss their own.
Every comedian has a trauma. That’s how we became comedians.
Only Fails is closer to a dating show. She arrives with screenshots from the apps.
Eighty percent marketing
Asked whether she prefers producing or performing, she does not hesitate. Standup, and being on stage. But she quotes Judy Carter on why she produces anyway.
You cannot wait for people to open the doors for you. You need to open the door.
Without building her own shows, she doubts she would be headlining anything yet. Her shows sell out, which she attributes to the other half of her skill set.
I’m about 80% marketing and 20% comedian.
Marketing also gave her the initial stage nerve. She had already given speeches to two or three hundred people. Standing in front of a crowd had stopped being fatal.
She is clear that the vibe is entirely different. The adrenaline from comedy is its own thing, and she thinks she is addicted to it.
Five minutes for Judy Carter
Her toughest recent room was small, and that is the point. Twenty people, all women, at an open mic last week. It was the first time Judy Carter would watch her perform.
She has worked for Carter for the past year without ever being seen on stage. She went in with expectations managed.
I don’t think you’re going to like it — everything you say, I think I do the opposite.
She was given five minutes, so she compressed everything into her strongest five. The target was a laugh every ten seconds, fully acted out. She wanted Carter to tell her she was good, and Carter did.
Blue material, and what it is for
She has worried in the past about how much of her act is about sex. Her conclusion is that it is not where the punchlines live. The jokes belong to the immigration story rather than sitting on top of it.
I have sex in another language, and I have to talk about that.
That framing makes the material part of the same argument. It is another translation problem, with higher stakes.
Idols, and the Judy Carter job
Among Brazilians she remains a big fan of Rodrigo Marques. Internationally she names Michelle Wolf and everything she writes. She loves Beth Stelling’s style, and how she finds light in the hardest topics. She cites Stelling’s abortion material as an example of doing it well. Pete Holmes is a recent addition.
The Carter job began on an Instagram Live two years ago. Carter mentioned trouble reaching the Brazilian market with her book. Joy typed a message during the broadcast.
I’m a marketer, let’s fix this.
That single project became her social media account. They doubled the follower count in three months. She also has to reread the book constantly to find clips.
So I’m getting paid to get better.
It is a neat description of the arrangement. The day job is also the apprenticeship.
Joy records every show she does. The punchlines go into a spreadsheet and get scored out of five. She is unimpressed by comedians who claim they just walk on funny. Her view is that the work happens after you leave the stage. That discipline came from marketing, and it built the rest. Her advice to Brazilians who ask is short. Learn a lot, read a lot, and stop being afraid. New York, she points out, is just a city. She got there by doing four minutes she was told she could not do. The rest was homework.
Jackie Joy performs as The Brazilian, and produces Only Fails and How I Met My Trauma. She is live in Vancouver and on the road. Find her at @thejackiejoy.