The Open Michelle Comedy Showcase at Fates Fest
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festival poster taken from fates fest instagram.
Who the heck is Michelle and how did she end up at Fates Fest?
To answer that, we’d have to go back to fall of 2025. The setting is quite literally the house on 8th & Main that caught fire last week (I can’t make this stuff up), the occasion is hot people grieving. Hot people what? It’s a grief support group started and facilitated by a good friend of mine. The whole vibe of hot people grieving is ‘queer east van pot luck’ and a lot of dark jokes. “Hi, my name is Carmen. I’m hot and I am grieving” kinda vibes.
It was our biggest one yet and there were a lot of new faces to meet. One of those being Isaac Li. Who I soon learn is the artistic director of Promethean Theatre. If I’m being entirely truthful, I’m not sure what their entire thing is about… they kind of just had me hooked when he told me about how they had been translating Romeo and Juliet into Chinese and hosting readings. I’m certain it’s other cool, awesome things like that though!
Image courtesy of carmen lee.
Context: due to my lived experience, I truly did not realize I could be an Artist until about 4 years ago. So I am only now, in my adult life, meeting people who come from similar and far from similar backgrounds who never outgrew their identity as an artist but rather pursued their passions professionally. We could do that?! In my personal exploration of the local creative community, I caught the theatre bug after watching Gangsta. Grandma. Guerilla. by Abi Padilla. Like baaaad. And guess who also worked on that project? If you said Isaac from hot people grieving, you’d be correct. He was the Apprentice Director, big deal alert!
Back to the Carmen and Isaac chatting at hot people grieving last fall. I had just spent a year severely underemployed and really putting the ‘trying’ in ‘trying artist’. During that time, I started producing Open Michelle with another local comedian, Amy Cornish, under the production company Community Clowns. Open Michelle exists as an open mic for underrecognized voices in the local stand up comedy scene. We wanted to create a safe and encouraging space for diverse comedians to try new material, get their reps in, or meet other artists! And it has become so much more than that, but I digress. As I was telling Isaac about our Community Clowns and Open Michelle, he said he wanted to connect me with Mikenzie Page, the Artist Director for Fates Fest. As such a green artist, this was the first I was hearing about Fates Fest but all I needed to hear was ‘for femme and non-binary theatre artists” and agreed to follow up.
In classic Vancouver fashion, many balls were dropped and passed around until our long anticipated Community Clowns x Fates Fest, Promethean Theatre meeting in February of this year. Isaac and Mikenzie filled us in on their lore and then proceeded to support us to dream big with our ideas for the festival, providing helpful insight based on their extensive combined experience in theatre. This is how Michelle ended up booking her first theatre show!
The support from Mikenzie and their team has never wavered from our initial meeting; it’s been a dream to work with and alongside them in producing The Open Michelle Showcase, featuring comedians who have been integral members of our vibrant and supportive community. Mikenzie and Isaac invited all the artists to a soft festival launch party and in their spiel, Mikenzie expressed how her favourite part of putting Fates on is witnessing incredibly deserving artists see their work properly showcased. As I was looking around the reception room and at all the beautiful mixture of art on display, I started commenting on the pieces I liked with a fellow festival artist and we ended our conversation simultaneously sobbing about how lucky we are to be alive in a world where art is made.
Thank you to Mikenzie, Isaac and the rest of the Fates Fest team at Promethean Theatre Company for championing femme and non-binary artists and curating such a fun festival lineup! It really does mean a lot to little big girls who never knew they could be an Artist.
The Open Michelle Comedy Showcase is April 4 2026 at 7:30. Hosted by Community Clowns and Promethean Theatre.
Fates Fest is a 3 day theatre festival/celebration, dedicated to the advancement of femme, gender non-conforming, and non-binary voices in key creative roles. Find showcase and ticket details here.
Carmen is a human being (sometimes bean), storyteller, artist... all of which are just synonyms in their world. She’s lived most of their life not realizing she could Be an Artist and is just trying to make up for lost time. Catch them producing see lai comedy and Open Michelle with her fellow Community Clowns.
