Image courtesy of Sled Island’s website.
Isabel Zaw-Tun performed as a part of Sled Island Comedy, an event that took place during the festival on Saturday, 7pm at Vern’s.
TRANSCRIPT:
Isabel Zaw-Tun
Isabel Zaw-Tun
Brooklyn (CJSW)
Thank you so much for chatting with me, Isabel. I appreciate it. You mentioned in your set that you are a UTI survivor. I’d like to thank you for bringing a cause so close to my heart into light. But seriously, when you joke about the more like intricate parts of being a woman. What has the response been to that?
Isabel Zaw-Tun
The response has been overwhelmingly positive, mainly from other women who can relate to it, but also from men, which was I was not expecting that. I also have a joke that I did on the first night about having PMDD or premenstrual dysphoric disorder, and I even have a line written into it where I go, ‘Okay, fellas, you gotta stay with me while I explain what this is.’ Kind of anticipating that they wouldn’t be super into it. But I’ve had men come up to me and be like, ‘Oh, I didn’t even, I didn’t know that.’ And that’s cool to know, and it’s very funny. So it’s always nice knowing that women let me redo that. It’s always nice knowing that comedy that I have written for women is also resonating with men, which is never what you expect.
Brooklyn (CJSW)
Yeah, there are very unexpected people who connect with what you say up there. What has been the most interesting fan encounter you’ve had?
Isabel Zaw-Tun
Thank you for assuming I have fans. First of all, that’s very generous.
Brooklyn (CJSW)
This is the fan encounter in question, actually.
Isabel Zaw-Tun
Most interesting fan encounter… I had a man come up to me after a show once, and it was after a Indigenous show, because my mother’s Metis, and I’m involved in the Indigenous comedy scene in Toronto, which is woefully small. I end up doing a bunch of those shows, and they’re always so much fun to do because Indigenous people have such dark, dark senses of humor, I can do jokes at those shows that I cannot do shows for white audiences or even like immigrant audiences. Just to give an example of what I’m talking about, I have a joke that I wrote for a roast and that I liked so much I wanted to keep it, but again, can only tell it at an indigenous shows, which is, I take great pride in my appearance, and I it’s true, I am a tall drink of water, but unfortunately, I’m from a northern Indigenous community, so don’t drink the water. Don’t drink it. Make you real sick. And I’ve tried that in with mixed audiences, what always happens is a white woman goes and covers her mouth with her hands. So yeah, I can’t do it, but Indigenous people love it. In my experience, I don’t want to generalize, but yeah, so I did all my spiciest stuff. So did the tall drink of water. Did my joke, but Roman Polanski did my joke. I have one that I really like about how I’m so glad that Brian Mulroney died, and how we have to start pissing on more people’s graves. And man came up to me afterwards, and he said something to me, and I wish I could remember the exact words, because I just like the vibe of what he said made me feel so good. And he said, you have a very good knack of identifying something that is like hypocritical about the way society operates, and then verbalizing that and making it very funny. And it meant a lot to me that he said that, because I think that’s a wonderful brand of comedy. So I guess an interesting fan interaction for anyone in the world other than me, the person who thinks about it a lot, but it was very affirming.
Brooklyn (CJSW)
I mean, that’s, I think maybe not the job of comedians, because maybe that’s too broad, but a big part of what I think comedy is supposed to do is acutely observe and then poke holes in what you find wrong. And I think you do that very well too. That Roman Polanski joke was hilarious, because that’s a real thing. Wes Anderson did sign a letter saying, like guys, the pianist is so good that this guy can touch kids.
Isabel Zaw-Tun
One of my a lot of my friends, make jokes about how they’re like, we should somehow make a game or a show where the audience just yells names of famous people and you say what they did. That’s bad, because I have a really bad habit of doing that in conversation. I remember when David Lynch died, I was like, I cannot post. I cannot be like, ‘Guys, he signed the letter. Guys, he, yeah, like, I know he’s on the file. Like, we love Mulholland Drive. He signed the letter.’ I did not do that. I just DMed a couple people being like, ‘Should I?’ And they were like, ‘No.’
Brooklyn (CJSW)
Wait about six months, maybe it’ll be funny.
Isabel Zaw-Tun
I mean, I mentioned his name, I didn’t stop mentioning his name in the joke where I named him, saying he signed a letter. So it’s still funny. Yeah, I say R.I.P. after I mention his name.
Brooklyn (CJSW)
The radio station I work at, like we almost had to take a day off when he died, because imagine, just like a bunch of young gay people all in the same room, imagine that no-
Isabel Zaw-Tun
Is it big with the queer community?
Brooklyn (CJSW)
Yes, I’d say, I’d say, I’d say young, young queers.
Isabel Zaw-Tun
Very interesting, because all the big—everything I know about David Lynch is because I’ve dated an insufferable straight man who loves David Lynch. I guess that’s not a huge pattern. It’s just two but.
Brooklyn (CJSW)
I think the weird theater kids are reclaiming him, because I watched Twin Peaks in high school and I went, this is meant for weird drama kids. And then all my friends who are weird drama kids and gay were like, ‘Oh, this is meant for us.’ Maybe I don’t know, struck a chord.
Isabel Zaw-Tun
Can I-can I say something uncharitable, deeply uncharitable. As a non-white person who went to theater school, I don’t like theater kids. I think every, every single person I’ve met who is non-white and went to theater school immediately trauma bonds over the incredible racism they faced from 10 dozen basic blonde girls who could not stop singing show tunes.
Brooklyn (CJSW)
Go for it. Get get their asses, Isabel. No, well, because I’m a white person, I didn’t know this went on. You absolutely can tell me the story.
Isabel Zaw-Tun
Here’s a story in my, also I went to Queens, which probably didn’t help my first year theater school. So because I’m mixed, I didn’t really realize that I wasn’t hiding. I thought I could pass as white for a very long time. And I also thought that it wasn’t going to be something that people were going to like ask me about.
Brooklyn (CJSW)
You even have a joke about that in your set about about passability.
Isabel Zaw-Tun
It started happening when I went to university, because the school I went to was in Toronto, and it was actually pretty diverse, considering it was like an upper, upper class demographic. I wasn’t my mom taught there, which is how I was able to go there. But anyway, this is a long shout out, mom. Shout out to my amazing mom, but I was doing a presentation with my with my lecture group. I don’t know if lecture group is the right word, but like my smaller group in front of a lecture hall that had easily like 150 students in it, and because we’ve all been in theater school, in every lecture group, there was one man and I had short hair, so I was playing a man, and I was playing again. There were no boys, so I was playing a man, and my spouse was a girl who was also playing a man. We were playing a gay couple. I don’t know why we didn’t just say we’re lesbians, but for some reason we were like, We were playing a gay couple. You’re both playing men. Isabel, you have the shortest hair. You are one of the men. And we did our little presentation that was probably very poorly acted and written, and the professor, who was a woman who really prided herself on being like, super leftist, on memorizing everyone’s names and all this stuff. Her name was Jen. Shout out to Jen. I don’t know if I should be mentioning this many names, but in the Q&A afterwards, when we’re talking about, what choices did you make with the blah, blah, blah, she points at me, and she goes, ‘Okay, so you, you’re not white, so why? So you playing this role? Are you making a statement about mixed race marriage and how controversial that is?’ Controversial? Her-that those words have echoed in my head since she said them. That is what she said. I don’t want to besmirch the name Jen. One of my, one of my dearest and most wonderful friends is a Jen. So the spectrum of Jen’s is very broad. They can go from being extremely wonderful to, you know, pointing at a 18 year old child and being like, you’re no white why is that? Which is also so weird that that would be the choice that she clocked us on, because it was like she could have been like, ‘You’re both women playing two gay men.’
Brooklyn (CJSW)
Why aren’t you just a women gay couple?
Isabel Zaw-Tun
Yeah, and I remember being in like, shock and turning to the girl who played my spouse and being like, I’m no, I’m white. Just still thinking, like, ‘No, I can hide.’ That was my introduction to four years of—that was not the first time a professor, like, looked at me and pointed at me and was like, so I want your opinion on this, because you’re not white.
Brooklyn (CJSW)
I can’t imagine that tokenism feels good at all.
Isabel Zaw-Tun
Just so weird and and a lot of a lot of like, oh, but like, you wouldn’t be right for this because it’s Shakespeare. A lot of like, again, I’m not, I’m not black. But at one point they were doing The Color Purple, and they were like, Oh, you can audition for this one. And I was like, Lauren, I am not black. Yeah. I so whenever, whenever I hear people like, oh, like, yeah, the artsy theater kids, my personal experience of theater kids is that they’re very basic, like these basic white girls I ever met in my life who just want people to hear them sing, and that’s very uncharitable, but also, I think, accurate.
Brooklyn (CJSW)
Thats your lived experience, that can be your lived experience. I did theater since I was like, could walk like any, anytime I could get up on stage, I was like, give me the mic for me that I grew up in, like a mostly Asian neighborhood. So it was like that I didn’t even clock it. No, I’m from here. Northwest Calgary has, like a really big Asian community, South Asian, Indian, Pakistani, Korean community, and so I just never it flew over my head. But it’s so interesting you say that, because then when I got to high school, really beautiful women with love to be like, Yeah, I’m Mary Poppins. It’s like, are you? Let’s give the other kid a shot. So that’s really interesting. And thank you for sharing that, because from one theater person to another, like, I’m happy to be informed by your experience. That is very interesting.
Isabel Zaw-Tun
It is interesting seeing the wide array of experiences that people have in the theater community.
Brooklyn (CJSW)
Would you say that any of your theater training informs your comedy practice?
Isabel Zaw-Tun
No, I was there for costume design and playwriting. I, like most people, I got into it because I wanted to act. But I don’t think I’m a great actor. I think I get commercial roles because I am racially ambiguous, and I frequently get casting calls for Latina but specifically the type that, that that I get, that I get called for, are Latina in brackets, like Selena Gomez. So you know where you want someone who looks white but ticks a box. You can cut that from the interview as well.
Brooklyn (CJSW)
You’re being interesting. Why would I cut that?
Isabel Zaw-Tun
I went to theater school for costume design and and playwriting. I had an interest in acting, but I was not good at it.
Brooklyn (CJSW)
How did you make the jump to comedy?
Isabel Zaw-Tun
It was actually not really related to theater. I made the jump to comedy. It was something I’d always kind of considered. I liked talking and I like making people laugh. And I had actually had a professor suggest it to me once, but I just thought that was kind of funny, because it was at the end of the the end of the unit, or the end of the whatever. That class wasn’t going to exist anymore with us in it. How do you say it was the class was ending. It was exams, I don’t know.
Brooklyn (CJSW)
Sorry, goodbye. It was the class goodbye.
Isabel Zaw-Tun
The professor was saying goodbye, and was going up to everyone, and was like, ‘Oh, you know, like, Mary, I love your gravitas, and you have a great stage presence.’ And ‘John, you know your your projection is even in my examples,’ I’m forgetting things to comment on in terms of acting. And then she got to me and just went, ‘Have you considered stand up comedy?’ And then immediately moved on. And I was like, ‘Oh, she’s just telling me I’m a bad actor,’ which, in fairness, I am, but it was one of those things that kind of like hangs around the back of your brain for a little bit, and then I was working a job that was very boring, and I was watching a lot of stand up clips online. And by this point in my life, I was a single mom of two kids, and I remember feeling very frustrated because all of the comedy that I saw from the perspective of being a parent was very negative, and just made me feel like bad.
Brooklyn (CJSW)
Jim Gaffigan? why does he talk about hating his family so much? Do you have you do you know this, like a lot of his stand up is like my kids.
Isabel Zaw-Tun
What? And he’s even viewed as someone who talks about his family positively, yeah, like, you know, yeah, relatively, he loves his family, yeah, and it was a lot of also, like, like, women being like, I hate being a mom. I hate my kids, and I hate it’s a super common line with women being like kids just, they wreck your body, you know, like they destroy your body, which I’m this is a radio program, but I’m very hot, having kids did not wreck my body.
Brooklyn (CJSW)
I can concur. Isabel is completely stunning, gorgeous.
Isabel Zaw-Tun
And I know so many other moms who are like, beautiful, and even if your body does change from having a kid, I hate the idea that it gets wrecked somehow, to me, it’s just rooted so much in misogyny being like, oh, a man might be less. Is less interested in it by a little bit. So it’s wrecked. And I was looking for comedy that talked about parenthood and more of like a like, a loving perspective, and I just couldn’t find it. And then I was like, ‘Should I do it?’ And then I a couple more things happened, but that was kind of my point of view when I started comedy, that was what I wanted to see, and that was what I wanted to put out there. And it’s funny, because when I first started, I didn’t talk about my kids a lot because I felt like I have to get better before I can talk about the stuff I want to talk about, but that is what the initial desire was.
Brooklyn (CJSW)
That’s a fantastic answer. That’s all I have. So thank you so much.