Martha Chaves

Chaves was born in Nicaragua where she grew up under the Somoza dictatorship. Her parents were lawyers.[5] Her family home was destroyed in the 1972 Nicaragua earthquake.[6] When she was 17, Chaves was sent to Canada[5] to study at Concordia University in Montreal, Quebec.[7]

Her family fled from the Contra War, fearing that her younger brothers would be forced to fight in the army.[8] Her parents and three younger siblings became refugees in Guatemala where her father died two years later.[5] Chaves was unable to return to Nicaragua or reunite with her family in Guatemala, and so became a stateless refugee in Canada when her student visa expired.[6] She initially found work serving Spanish-language customers in a Montreal clothing store.[5]

Chaves had studied languages and translation at Concordia but was nervous about her accent. To build her self-confidence for public speaking she took a comedy course[1] with Andy Nulman of Just for Laughs.[7] Chaves performed on stage at the conclusion of the course, which inspired her to pursue a career in stand-up comedy.[1]

Chaves has been performing stand-up comedy for 23 years (as of 2018).[1] She has toured the comedy-club circuits in Canada, the United States and Latin America, and performs in English, Spanish, French and Italian.[2] Chaves first performed at the Just for Laughs gala in 1998[1][2] and has been a regular at that Montreal festival[9] and other major comedy festivals including those in Halifax,[7] Winnipeg, Edmonton, Vancouver, Boston, and in Bogota, Colombia.[10]

Chaves has also performed for the Canadian Armed Forces at CFS Alert and in Egypt, Israel and Afghanistan,[11] and for the 2012 Nobel Women's Initiative delegation to Central America.[12] She warmed up an audience of 43,000 before the 2015 Pan American Games opening ceremony and hosted the 2016 ACTRA Awards.[11]

She has had two nationally televised stand-up comedy specials: Comics! on CBC and There's Something About Martha on CTV and The Comedy Network.[10] She frequently performs on CBC Radio's The Debaters, Because News[2] and Laugh Out Loud; she was one of the latter show's five most-requested performers who appeared at their 10th anniversary gala.[13][1] Chaves performed at a comedy show for the BBC World Service when it recorded an episode of The Arts Hour in Montreal.[14]

Chaves came out publicly around 2009 and began working her experience as a homosexual person of colour into her material.[9] At about this time she began writing and performing in a series of one-woman shows. Her semi-autobiographical play In Times of Trouble, about a lesbian woman returning to Guatemala to care for her dying born-again Christian mother,[5][15] premiered at the Soulo festival in 2014 and opened the Caminos Pan-American arts festival in 2015.[8]

While continuing to perform mainstream shows, Chaves performs many gay, Latin or ethnic events.[7] She headlined in Canada's first LGBTQ+ comedy tour, Queer and Present Danger,[16] which performed in more than 25 cities.[3] She also headlined in The Ethnic Rainbow, Canada's first comedy show featuring LGBTQ comedians of colour.[17] Chaves performed in multiple showcases at Toronto Pride.[18]

Chaves was nominated for the Canadian Comedy Award for Best Female Standup every year from 2001 to 2006. She won the award for Best Standup Comic of 2017.[4]

Chaves has performed at fundraisers including Stand Up for Nicaragua[9] and Gags for Rags,[19] and has been a keynote speaker for numerous charity events.[12][10]

Chaves has spoken at many high schools as part of an anti-bullying campaign,[10] and spoke at an annual 4/20 rally on Parliament Hill in Ottawa.[20] She took part in a comedy marathon for the Canadian Association of Stand Up Comedians (CASC) which sought to have stand-up comedy recognized as an art form, eligible for federal arts grants and aid with visa issues.[21]

Chaves lives in Toronto's Church and Wellesley neighbourhood and had supported Olivia Chow in the 2014 Toronto mayoral election.[9]

• Martha Chaves at IMDb