What It Really Takes to Run a Comedy Show as a BIPOC woman

"You're doing great."

I hear it a lot. From comics, from audience members, from people who genuinely love what we’re building at Comedy on Mackay. And I know they mean it with love. They’re rooting for us. But what people don’t always see is that ‘doing great’ often means doing everything.

Producing comedy as a BIPOC woman — especially in Montreal, where scenes can be cliquey, white, and historically male — is not just about curating lineups. It's booking. It's negotiating. It's DMing. It's crowd wrangling. It's staying calm when someone says something casually racist onstage. It's being the one to handle it afterward. All while still trying to write, perform, and grow yourself.

When I created Comedy on Mackay, I didn’t just want a stage. I wanted a space that felt like mine — ours. A space where a queer Filipina could talk about her trauma, mental health, and bisexual dating disasters and not get followed by someone doing their ninth riff on Tinder or why women be shopping.

But being a BIPOC woman producer means you’re not just making space for yourself. You’re making space for everyone else, too. And that’s the beauty. And the burnout.

You want to book more queer comics. More women. More voices of colour. And then the messages start rolling in:

• "Hey, can I get a spot?"
• "You're doing tokenism."
• "Why wasn’t I booked?"
• "I thought this was a meritocracy."

It is. And also, it isn’t.

Meritocracy only works after equity exists. And in most scenes, we're just not there yet.

I remember when I first started producing, someone told me: "If you start your own room, you'll never get booked on other shows."

That wasn’t just a comment. It was a warning.

But I did it anyway. Because I realised: if people don’t want to book me because I built something of my own, then those are stages I don’t want to stand on anyway.

What I’ve learned is: a lot of power in this scene is imaginary.
Still, the microaggressions are real.

Nobody throws slurs around (at least not out loud), but the energy speaks:

• Being called "intense" for setting boundaries.
• Being told I'm "emotional" when calling out harm.
• Hearing people say they "love the diversity of your show" while never offering to share, fund, or promote it.

And still — we do the work.

Let me be real: the hardest part isn’t the logistics. It’s the emotional labor.

I stay late. I help wipe the tables and clear the stage. I pay comics before paying myself. I absorb the tension in the greenroom. I mediate. I cry at home. Then I show up the next week with a smile on my face and a clipboard in hand.

Because I know: if I burn out, the show burns, too.

Some weeks, I’m proud of a set I did. Other weeks, I’m so busy texting comedians to accommodate their schedules and sorting out Eventbrite orders that I don’t even get to be a comedian.

But when it works, it’s magic.

When the lineup is fire, the room is full, and a queer comic says, "I’ve never felt safer to be this weird onstage," I remember why I do this.

When an audience member says, "I’ve never seen someone talk about mental illness like that and make it funny," I know we’re doing something real.

So yes. It’s hard. It’s invisible. It’s not always fair. But it’s mine. And it’s changing the space—slowly, stubbornly, beautifully.

To every BIPOC woman, femme, and non-binary person producing comedy: I see you. You are not too much. You are not imagining it. You are not alone.

You’re building something real. Even if the work feels invisible — you are the infrastructure.

If you want to help us:
🎟️ Buy a ticket. 🗣️ Share the show. 💸 Pay the comics. 🪑 Respect the room.

We’re not here to be "diverse." We’re here to run shit.