The Comics Unseen
Press Kit
Stand-up · Producer · Marketer
Jackie Joy
She moved from Brazil to Vancouver with almost no English, spent a whole day hunting for a colleague named Roger, and then walked into the comedy club across the street from her office.
Based
Vancouver, Canada · from Brazil
Works in
Stand-up · Show production · Marketing
Performs in
English, second language — kept deliberately broken
Also
Twenty years in marketing; produces and sells out her own shows
Interview
45 min · The Comics Unseen · 2026
“You cannot wait for people to open the doors for you. You need to create your gates.”
Jackie Joy — The Comics Unseen
Ready-to-use copy
Biography
242 words — lift as-is, no rewriting required
Jackie Joy is a Brazilian stand-up based in Vancouver who arrived in Canada with a good marketing career behind her and, in her own words, almost no English. The gap produced the story she still tells on stage: asking her boss about a project, being told “Roger that”, and spending the rest of the day looking for someone called Roger. Her colleagues called her Roger for a year.
She had already handed in a letter saying she was leaving Canada when she noticed the comedy club across the street from her office, which let you do four minutes if you brought three people. She brought about fifteen — colleagues and classmates from her immigrant college, most of whom came because they did not believe she would go through with it in broken English. She cried afterwards, went back to her boss, and asked to stay. As she puts it, comedy decided her next steps.
She performs in English and deliberately keeps the early-days broken grammar in, because the jokes stop working without it. She is clear-eyed about the rest of the job too: she records every show, keeps a spreadsheet scoring her punchlines out of five, and produces her own nights rather than waiting to be booked — which is how she started headlining. She reckons she is eighty per cent marketer and twenty per cent comedian, and has twenty years in marketing to back the first half up.
The part other press kits leave out
What you should know before you book her
Jackie Joy is two useful things at once: a comic whose material comes out of being an immigrant in a second language, and a producer-marketer who fills her own rooms. Both matter if you are putting her on a bill.
The broken English is a choice
Some jokes she has told for years no longer work if she says them correctly — the room stops believing the mistake. She keeps the early grammar deliberately.
She knows who the material is for
Brazilians living abroad get it completely; Canadian and American rooms get a different version. She adjusts, and calls out whichever nationality she is standing in front of.
Canada and the US are different rooms
Her read: American audiences are “more for blood” and less forgiving of a mistake; Canadian audiences are warmer and more open to immigrants.
She froze once, and nearly quit
Third month in, on a Saturday night bill with established names, she froze completely and stayed off stage for three months. Worth knowing what she has already survived.
She fills her own rooms
Her shows usually sell out because she produces and markets them herself. A booker gets an act who brings an audience rather than waiting for one.
The homework is the job
Every show recorded, every punchline scored zero to five on a spreadsheet. She is scathing about comics who claim they just go up and wing it.
For press · cleared for use with attribution
Quotable
01
“He said “Roger that” — and I spent the whole day looking for Roger. My nickname at that company became Roger after that.”02
“A lot of people decided to come and watch because they didn’t believe I was going to have the courage to go on stage with my broken English.”03
“I cried after the stage. I was like: oh my gosh, I want to do that.”04
“I talked for eight minutes, uninterrupted, and people looked at me and laughed.”05
“I had already delivered the letter saying I was leaving Canada. I went back to my boss and said: I want to stay.”06
“If I go there and speak really correctly, people will be like — whoa, how did you make this mistake? So I keep the way I talked in the beginning.”07
“I could hear the audience making fun of my accent. They weren’t laughing — they were repeating how I said the word.”08
“Sometimes people are laughing at my jokes, sometimes they laugh at me. It doesn’t matter. I like the laughs.”09
“Americans, they are more for blood.”10
“That was the only time in my career that I froze on stage. I literally froze. I almost quit.”11
“The audience was amazing. They were like: you go, girl. They were trying to help me.”12
“You cannot wait for people to open the doors for you. You need to create your gates.”13
“If I didn’t create my show, who knows when I would be headlining something.”14
“I’m like eighty per cent marketing and twenty per cent comedian.”15
“I record every show. I have a spreadsheet where I put my punchlines and I score them from zero to five.”16
“He said: I’m funny, I just go on stage, I don’t prepare. Come on — you’re not funny. That doesn’t last.”17
“It’s much more afterwards than the time you were on stage, and I think people don’t realise that.”18
“Every comedian has a trauma.”
Attribution: Jackie Joy, speaking to The Comics Unseen, 2026.
Career
Selected credits
Stand-up
- Headliner; performs across Canada and the United States
- Began at Comedy Dark, Vancouver, with a four-minute open-mic spot
- Regular on women’s and Latina lineups in her first year
Producing
Creates, produces and markets her own shows, aimed at Brazilian and immigrant audiences abroad — usually to sold-out rooms.
Before comedy
Twenty years in marketing, including a senior marketing career in Brazil and a marketing job in Vancouver.
Logistics
Press assets & contact
Online
Instagram @thejackiejoy , Email : thebraziliancomedian@gmail.com
This kit was produced by The Comics Unseen. The interview and quotes are drawn from The Comics Unseen × Jackie Joy, recorded 2026. Jackie Joy and their representatives are free to use any part of this document — the biography, the quotes — for booking, press and promotion, with credit to The Comics Unseen for the interview material.
The Comics Unseen shines a light on stand-up artists and spreads comedy across the world. Follow at instagram.com/hopforpop.
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