How BC’s Rural Islands Became Hotbeds of Comedy

Living on Gabriola Island means that you’re likely to see someone you know while making your way down one of its rural roads. Gabriola’s residents are a neighbourly bunch; people greet each other while they pass by.

But there are details to consider, especially if you’re an outsider accustomed to the anonymity of fast-paced city life.

“You see people coming, and it’s a straight road. How far should they be before I address them? Should I address them?” Scarlet Chen wonders aloud on a video call from her home on Gabriola. She elaborates that it’s possible and desirable for some folks to hunker down in their yards and not see another human soul for days.

“Then they ask you, ‘How are you doing?’” she says. “Do they really want to know? Or is it just a greeting?”

From the wacky social norms of Gulf Island life to the impassioned, conservation-minded environmentalism that grips the imagination of many Gabriola residents, Chen’s home offers her plenty of comedic material. Her wry, observational standup style is both magnetic and self-reflective, touching on themes of migration, cross-cultural identity and the peculiarities of rural life in B.C.

It’s a delight to watch, and even more so when considering the surprises that brought her to Gabriola.

The 48-year-old screenwriter and filmmaker built a career in China’s film industry, where she worked on major blockbusters such as Kill Bill. While running the travel department on the set of The Kite Runner, she met a Canadian who was heading up the art department. A leap of faith in early 2020 found Chen moving from her home in Beijing to Gabriola Island, where the couple decided to get married and build a life together.

It was something of an adjustment to leave a city of 22 million for an island of 4,500. But Chen was eager to connect with Gabriola’s creative community as a new resident. After she stumbled upon a local comedy writing workshop that focused on teaching participants how to perform standup, a new world opened up.

“I got really interested, because I didn’t know standup is about writing,” she recalls. The only person of colour in her initial comedy writing workshop, Chen continues to be one of very few racialized performers on the standup circuit across Vancouver Island. Her show, Citizen Chen, incorporates these experiences into a performance that includes bits about border-crossing anxiety, learning a new language and the oddities of island life.

Citizen Chen has a three-show stop in Vancouver at the end of May, then a month-long run at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe in August.

Comedy has helped Chen connect with people in new ways, especially in a moment when “the world is so divided,” as she says. She hopes that her presence onstage as a Chinese woman will help change people’s perceptions — particularly across rural parts of Vancouver Island — about who a comedian can be.

“I never thought I would totally switch my creative language to English,” she says. “I didn’t think I would make it.” But she has.

Prior to her current tour, Chen opened for big names on the North American comedy circuit including Maria Bamford and Julie Kim. She performed at the Burbank Comedy Festival in Los Angeles and at local B.C. festivals.

She also taught comedy to immigrant youth at the Central Vancouver Island Multicultural Society in Nanaimo. The process has been illuminating and, on many occasions, therapeutic.

As Chen explains, she loves meeting people who are interested in humour as a form of connection, community and healing.

‘This Is a Gardening Show’ celebrates coastal life

Scarlet Chen is not the only Gulf Islander with a Hollywood portfolio. U.S. comedian and actor Zach Galifianakis (the Hangover movies; the Bored to Death TV series) is rumoured to have a home on Denman Island, B.C.

Last month, Netflix premiered This Is a Gardening Show, Galifianakis’s latest filmed-in-B.C. creative effort that recalls the absurdist talk-show stylings of the cult classic Between Two Ferns with Zach Galifianakis.

Gardening takes viewers to the lush environs of the Comox Valley, the Gulf Islands and across Vancouver Island to cement Galifianakis’s stated thesis delivered in his usual deadpan: “The future is agrarian.”

In bite-sized 15-minute episodes, the comedian introduces audiences to B.C. food producers, farmers, foragers and Comox Valley schoolchildren in a series of interviews that blur the lines between education and satire. Watching Galifianakis devour a freshly picked B.C. apple whilst seated on a log across from a young kid reminded me of his beehive-wig-wearing role in the 2008 comedic skit A Vodka Movie, a predecessor to the sponsored social media reels that help contemporary comedians pay rent.

The series opens by introducing viewers to the wonders of apple production by following agrarian and cellist Danielle Bellefleur of Fruit Forest Farm in Cobble Hill, B.C. The second episode takes place in Courtenay, B.C., where Galifianakis interviews the proprietors of Steller Raven Ecological Farm and learns how to grow tomatoes. He also goes foraging with the couple behind Forest for Dinner, whom the Tyee also recently featured in a What Works article by Ryan Stuart.

The show is a silly, sun-drenched sojourn across the islands that helps B.C. residents see their region and its bounty of foodstuff with fresh eyes.

Both Galifianakis’s series and Chen’s standup are refreshing and fun to watch, conveying genuine affection for the people and places they’ve discovered. Locally produced food and a few good belly laughs are exactly what we all need more of.

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Scarlet Chen performs her ‘Citizen Chen’ show at Haus of Owl in Victoria on May 24, followed by three performances at the Cultch in Vancouver on May 29, 30 and 31 and a 24-show run at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe in August.

Zach Galifianakis’s ‘This Is a Gardening Show’ is now streaming on Netflix.