Ottawa’s performance art scene has traditionally been an underground one—literally, shared in underground bars and basements, tucked away from the rest of the city. It’s not hard to picture: a single performer stands admist a crowd, mic in hand, probably in a dark room, performing music, spoken word, comedy.
Aside from posing physical barriers, these spaces are often intimidating and exclusionary for artists from minority backgrounds. But, that’s starting to change, beginning with restaurants and cafés jam-packed with eager performers and audience members of all ages and backgrounds.
Over the past few years, Ottawa’s performance art scene has evolved to allow for new spaces dedicated to amplifying the voices of marginalized communities.
More than sugar and spice
“Inclusivity is so important with performance art, because art is supposed to be vibrant,” Zainab A, a comedian and fourth-year Carleton psychology and biology student, said. “If you only have one kind of person or one kind of experience being told through performance art, it loses its vibrancy.”
This vision of performance art as a force that brings people together is what Zainab hopes to achieve with SPICE, a comedy collective dedicated to artists from marginalized communities. The collective is for queer and trans Black, Indigenous, and people of colour (QTBIPOC), womxn, and disabled people. The collective’s bimonthly shows feature all forms of performance art, having hosted poets, improv artists, and musicians in the past.
Zainab had performed at many local shows before she created SPICE in 2018.
“I always kind of felt like I was one of the only women of colour there,” she said. “I just felt like, ‘Oh, this is just the way it is—it’s fine, it’s normal.’”
However, after attending shows in Toronto produced by and dedicated to women of colour and other marginalized folks, she realized a similar platform could be created in Ottawa.
“I made the space that I wish already existed,” she said.
Including struggling to get booked and have their stories valued as much as other performers, Zainab said marginalized artists often grapple with feeling as though their experiences do not matter.
“Barriers are more internal rather than external,” she said. “Underground comedy shows are usually middle-aged, government, older white men. You have to kind of switch your jokes to make them more white-pleasing.”
Zainab said she hopes shows can continue to strive for greater accessibility, especially by offering free or low-cost admission. She also wants platforms like SPICE to secure bigger venues—over 100 people attend every show, and the audience always exceeds venue capacities.
“There’s such a demand for inclusive art spaces,” she said. “SPICE has evolved from being a little niche show that no one really knows about to a really big community.”
Connecting through humour
As veterans of the comedy scene, improv artist Dani Alon and stand-up comic Laura McLean have both faced the challenges of being one of few women on a comedy show.
McLean said she and other female comics realized that male comedy performers would often only put one woman on their show to fill the quota.
“One of the issues with being one of the only women on a comedy was you wouldn’t have other women to talk to about your experience,” she said. “Or a big thing would be you’d have men hitting on the only woman on the comedy show.”
Alon said she agreed, adding that she often wondered if she was betraying other women by playing unsavoury characters.
“I’ve been in shows where the burden of representation is almost on me,” she said. “You’re the only woman on the show, so it’s like you’re representing all women.”
As a co-founder of the Improv Embassy, a local theatre company, Alon said she produced a show called the Fembassy in the past that featured the school’s female and non-binary improvisers.
Together, Alon and McLean transformed the Fembassy into a monthly comedy show that centres female and non-binary voices through formats such as stand-up, improv, and sketch.
“I just wanted to create an environment where women, at least once a month, could go as an audience member, watch the show, and feel comfortable in a space, or even as performers,” said McLean.
The duo has held five successful shows so far, which Alon attributes to the audience’s hunger for on-stage representation. She said she sees comedy as a more palatable way to engage people who are defensive or apolitical.
“Humour is a gateway to empathy,” she said.
McLean said she learned that doing stand-up could be a political statement.
“I didn’t realize until a couple years ago that me doing stand-up was actually inspiring other women and other queer people to get on stage,” McLean said.
She hopes that audience members will use the Fembassy as an outlet to gain the confidence to do other comedy shows in the city, ultimately making the comedy community as inclusive as possible and more representative of different people.
Alon added that the Fembassy strives to encourage audiences to be more mindful of other people’s struggles.
“You can train an audience to have higher expectations and higher standards,” said Alon. “I think we can create nourishing, fulfilling comedy that actually enriches people’s lives.”
Empowering women through poetry
Growing up, Maya Basudde had a difficult time finding her voice. She discovered spoken word in high school but found that most spaces were male-dominated and geared towards competitions.
“I just felt really discouraged. I didn’t feel like I really had a place in that community,” she said.
That’s when she turned to social media in hopes of organizing a small get-together for women to share their poems. That event, known as Tell ‘Em Girl, evolved into a recurring spoken word showcase for women.
Basudde said a lot of the performers at Tell ‘Em Girl’s shows are performing for the first time.
“They’re sharing things that are really personal, so we all have an understanding that, whatever this person is about to share, we’re going to surround them and be there for them,” she said.
She added that many people are left out of other arts spaces because other performers’ content is disrespectful or the space is unsafe.
In celebration of Black History Month, Basudde launched Loud Black Girls, a sister platform that invites local Black women to present their visual art and share poetry, music, and other talents.
“For a long time, being a loud Black girl has been a negative stereotype,” she said. “We’re trying to take back the narrative and say that there’s nothing wrong with being loud and being proud of who we are.”
Tell ‘Em Girl has also grown to provide other services for marginalized folks. Aside from a self-care workshop, the initiative offers an anonymous support program where people can be paired up with a buddy to accompany them to therapy or to file police reports.
Looking ahead, Basudde is working on organizing a bigger women’s festival and attracting performers from outside Ottawa. She hopes that Tell ‘Em Girl can continue to be a space for celebration and empowerment.
“It’s easy to feel discouraged with all the things you read and all the things that you see,” she said. “I just want this to be a place where people can get away from all of that and know that their voices matter.”
Speaking up
Namitha Rathinappillai, an award-winning spoken word artist and second-year criminology student at Carleton, performed at Tell ‘Em Girl near the beginning of her spoken word career. She has also performed at SPICE and was part of the lineup for the March edition of the Fembassy.
Rathinappillai said that spoken word is a uniquely inclusive medium because newcomers can perform without prior experience.
“It’s a community that’s kind of already fostered to these marginalized groups, where people are very much aware of the space they take up,” she said.
In her view, platforms like SPICE and Tell ‘Em Girl break down barriers for new performers by taking away the emotional energy and work required to make space for their voices.
“I’ve noticed that a lot of new people will go to women’s slams,” she said. “They know they’re going into this audience that’s going to be very inclusive and very supportive.”
Rathinappillai added that poetry can be a form of education by exposing people to different perspectives.
“What’s beautiful about spoken word is that you hear all these different voices,” she said. “I think that people don’t really appreciate the value of lived experience, and I think just hearing from someone who’s like, ‘This is my experience, this is literally what I’ve been through,’ is really important and should be valued.”
The community is evolving as people become more aware of the importance of representation, according to Rathinappillai. However, she hopes that venues can be more physically accessible and that more LGBTQ+ spaces can be created.
“With the Fembassy and most spaces that are women-centred, I feel like non-binary comes as a second step,” she said. “I think it’s a very nuanced experience that a cis[gender] woman will never know.”
Image by KC Hoard
