You know that saying about ‘laughter’ and ‘medicine’, right? This May long weekend, a group of local comedians hope to tickle your funny bone while helping a global medical cause.
Spearheaded by Charles “Charlie” Demers, The May-Long Fundraiser takes place on Saturday, May 22. Proceeds from the show will go to the Canadian branch of Partners in Health, an organization that brings health care to those in need all over the world. Currently, their focus is on getting COVID-19 vaccines distributed to lower-income countries.
Join us on May 22 for a night with some of Canada's top comedians from @Vancomedyonline doing their thing in support of @PIHCanada!
Get your tickets now: https://t.co/rrAhd5RO3s pic.twitter.com/aEEyaT6OEc
— Partners In Health Canada (@PIHCanada) May 6, 2021
The lineup for the virtual show includes Vancouver locals Charlie Demers, Maddy Kelly, and Graham Clark (co-host of popular podcast Stop Podcasting Yourself, which you can listen to here).
Also performing are Vancouver-born Ivan Decker, The Debaters mainstay Erica Sigurdson, and touring comedian extraordinaire Sunee Dhaliwal.
Indeed, it will surely live up to its tagline as being “the most fun you can have during a pandemic”!
The May-Long Fundraiser will run for one-and-a-half hours, with each comedian performing a roughly 10-minute set from their home.
(Fun4All / Pixabay)
In addition to championing this fundraising effort, Charlie Demers also regularly lends his comedic voice to the CBC Radio One program The Debaters (listen here). He is also known for his writing, voice acting, and political activism.
Demers has said before that free and accessible healthcare is a cause that is important to him. He has been following the work of Partners in Health for over a decade.
There is a pithy statement to be made here about how we need laughter now more than ever (the newest dreaded cliché), but there is truth there. It has been difficult, and often seemingly inappropriate, to find kernels of humor in current events.
A virtual comedy show that directly funds the distribution of vaccines to low- and medium-income regions seems to be the perfect place to start giving ourselves permission to laugh again.