Stir Q&A: Comic Katie-Ellen Humphries weighs in on her debut album, anxiety, and what she finds really unfunny right now
The Vancouver stand-up comedian opens up about her first same-sex relationship on the just-released Ladyfinger
As a youngest child, Katie-Ellen Humphries had an obnoxious drive for attention that made her want to get on stage. Photo by Shimona Henry
Vancouver stand-up comedian Katie-Ellen Humphries is on fire. Perhaps best known for her regular appearances on CBC Radio’s The Debaters and on TV broadcasts of the Winnipeg and Halifax Comedy Festivals, she’s releasing her debut stand-up comedy album, Ladyfinger, on October 20. She’ll have an in-person release party at Kino Café that night at 8 pm and a virtual event on October 24.
On October 29, Humphries will appear in two shows at the Cultch for tapings of The Debaters. And she recently launched a new podcast, Horny OFF MAIN with Vancouver actor Amitai Marmorstein.
Produced by 800lb Gorilla, Ladyfinger was recorded in November 2019 at Yuk Yuks Comedy Club and features material Humphries developed over the past decade. The 13-track album covers everything from the three-foot hot dog you can buy at Nat Bailey Stadium to her first same-sex relationship.
Prior to the pandemic, Humphries had been splitting her time between Vancouver and New York and was about to make a more permanent move to the U.S. Here, the Victoria native weighs in on Wreck Beach, isolation, and what matters.
What drew you to stand-up?
I’ve always loved comedy, and stand-up in particular. My dad’s a great storyteller and loves a witty rebuttal so there was a quick back-and-forth banter in the house. Conversations were a bit of a game. Being funny was something I prized and enjoyed in my home growing up, and as a youngest child I have an obnoxious drive for attention that made me want to get on stage.
Comedy is also an excellent defence mechanism. Ironically, the thing I got good at in part because I was wildly alienated from both myself and others is now a thing that not only allows but requires me to self-reflect and foster connection.
Super exciting to have an album out! Has the material taken on any new meaning given how much has happened in the world since Ladyfinger was recorded?
I recorded the album at the beginning of November 2019, and that feels in some ways like a different life. I barely recognize her. In the way how these days it’s sometimes seems strange to see characters on TV hug or shake hands, when I listen to the album and I hear 250 people packed into a hot room, laughing shoulder to shoulder, it feels kind of bizarre. It’s a nice reminder we used to do that and hopefully will again.
I have a joke on the album about Gender Reveal parties and I make a point to explain to anyone in the audience who might be unfamiliar with those – which was obviously recorded before a couple’s deranged gender-reveal pyrotechnics sparked a fire that devoured hundreds of acres of California and cloaked the entire West Coast in smoke for weeks.
You open up about anxiety on the album. What made you want to bring that to light?
One of the things comedy can do is potentially show you something you’ve seen a thousand times in a way that you never considered. Something I’ve been so grateful for in recent years is how much I’ve learned through comics sharing their own experiences. Often it’s younger millennials and Gen Z performers. (I’m on the elder end of the millennial cap. Analog for grade school. Internet by university.) I find the younger folks are a little less shame-filled about things like anxiety, sexuality, gender, et cetera. and I’ve honestly learned a lot about myself through watching them.
I grew up in a way and in a time where I never really heard the word anxiety, and as a person whose anxiety is high-functioning and hyper-productive I was often even praised for it and didn’t realize. I feel like a lot of the last few years for me has been learning or realizing things that I feel I should have known sooner. I come from a very head down, work hard, don’t complain, difficulty is virtue kind of disposition. And I’m great at it. Just a hearty little donkey, plugging away. Which is burdensome sure, but there’s a comfort to having your head down. But as I’ve matured (gone to therapy) and as I poke my head up out of the sand and realize not everything has to be a struggle and withstanding poor treatment or a difficult situation that you don’t have to isn’t worthwhile, I’m interested in talking about it. If you find a shortcut and you’re able to tell others but you don’t, that’s kind of a dick move.
Katie-Ellen Humphries has never been to Wreck Beach. Photo by Maggie MacPherson
You also open up about your first significant same-gender relationship. Why was this important to you?
The messaging I internalized growing up was essentially “it would be absolutely awful if you’re gay. But a few people are and that’s okay. Bi-sexuality is fake.” It’s helped me so much to hear people talk about every experience outside of the binary and I want to repay that a little bit where I can. To borrow a term from my “comedy wife”, frequent comedy collaborator and Lady Show producer Morgan Brayton, it can also feel good to “queer up the space” that historically has been dominated by heteronormative performance. If I tell a story on stage about a past relationship with a man and later a joke about a relationship with a woman, I like to think hopefully there’s some value in showing how incidental those things can be.
Besides halting your planned move to the U.S., how has the pandemic affected you?
Before the pandemic restrictions I would perform, on average, five nights per week. So the shift to no live performance was drastic. One thing that I’ve found interesting in this time away from the live stage is my confidence has actually increased. Initially I was worried, like all comics were, about getting rusty and about how rough it would be coming back. Usually any more than a couple nights off will make most comics feel out of touch with their timing. And it’s been six months without the kind of continual validation comedians rely on. But it’s also been six months since I’ve failed. It’s been six months since I’ve been replaced on a show by a man or asked to open for a male peer. Six months since I stared at a wall of “appearing this month” posters at a comedy club with a sea of nearly identical scruffy dudes. It’s been six months since I’ve seen an act succeed on something wildly ignorant or cruel.
For this whole isolation period I’ve been my only critic. I’m writing things that make me laugh and reconnecting a bit with a slightly sillier, more experimental side of my comedy that I’m enjoying. I hope some other people, artists or not, if they’re lucky enough to have some slowdown from their regular routine and the luxury of mind space afforded you when your basic needs are met, find they have room to let in a little more weirdness too, or anything else they may have forgotten about somewhere along the way that they’re ready to pick back up.
What's one quintessential Vancouver thing you've never done?
I have never been to Wreck Beach, which is a shame because I look much better naked than clothed. I joke that the reason I’ve never been to Wreck or any other nude beach is because I don’t want to go with anyone that I know but I also don’t want to go alone. And that leaves me in a weird Craigslist area.
What are you dressing up as for Halloween?
Feels like a real good year for Wild West-era bank robber, if only for the built-in mask. My podcast and non-romantic life partner Amitai Marmorstein and I would be make a decent Siobhan & Kendall Roy from HBO’s Succession, but getting the rest of the family together might be more faces than we’re comfortable with these days.
What is one thing you find really unfunny right now?
Trans jokes by cis-gendered people. It’s kind of the “faux edgy topic du jour” for a certain type of performer. I don’t consider any topic off limits. I don’t think it’s beyond any person to have something thoughtful to say with the privilege of a platform, but I’ve also seen a lot of dangerous “jokes” about Trans people or Trans experience from cis-gendered people with no regard for who they might be endangering or why they feel entitled to speak on something they have no knowledge of or personal experience with.
Also, every sentence that ends with the word “Matter” that doesn’t start with Black or Indigenous Lives. People who think a movement like BLM is rife for parody, and that’s what they want to contribute to this world? Hard pass.
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