The Comedy Arts Festival in Commonsense City, Sponsored by Lust4Life Casualty, Tom Thornton Donuts and Common Man Craft Brewery, was the kind of event that could make this small, historic town feel like it mattered for one glorious weekend.

Once, long ago, when it was still named for a forgotten humourist, the festival had been an enormous deal, headlined each year by one braying funnyman from TV, a sure-fire audience draw such as one of the Jackies, and Jerry, or Norm. Just before the festival was put on hold and cancelled outright due to diminished interest and eventually to Covid, the official slogan was “We’re Where the World Comes to Laugh.” That world fell within a two-hour drive of town.

And now the festival was back. It was a return to a time when the narrow streets buzzed with anticipation, the cafes brimmed with laughter, and the grand old Opera House—recently restored to its Victorian splendour—became a beacon for humour lovers from all over. This year was bound to be different. The Jackies and Jerry and Norm were out of fashion. This year, the festival had a headliner who had already made waves before even stepping foot in town: the celebrated comic known as Laughing Boi.

At twenty-seven, the gender-fluid comedian had built a devoted following on YouTube, where their biting humour and fearless commentary on everything from identity politics to modern dating rituals to small-town life had earned them millions of views and an army of young fans. 

For weeks before the festival, City Affairs, the sensationalist local blog run by students at the community college, had been breathlessly covering Laughing Boi’s arrival. The Boi’s intense feud with several older, established comics kept the comedy world talking. They picked fights indiscriminately. They were audacious and beloved for that.

Articles with headlines such as “Laughing Boi to Bring Shock, Awe and Hilarity to Commonsense City” and “Opera House Prepares for Comedy Revolution You Won’t Want to Miss” dominated the site. The town was abuzz, and tickets for Laughing Boi’s Saturday night performance at the Opera House had sold out within minutes.

It was a homecoming of a sort. Though Laughing Boi carefully managed and obscured their origin story, it was known that they had spent childhood summers at a cottage just outside the city and still had many relatives living in and around the community. The comedian was spotted regularly making brief visits to town.

Laughing Boi arrived in Commonsense City on Friday afternoon, driven in a sleek black hybrid minivan with tinted windows. A sticker on the bumper read, “Keep honking. I’m listening to ‘Linger’ by the Cranberries.”

A small crowd of fans had gathered outside the Opera House, many clutching homemade signs with slogans that read “Laugh Harder, Laugh Louder, Just Laugh Y’Bastids!” and “Boi Oh Boi!” The fans erupted into cheers when the vehicle pulled up. Laughing Boi stepped out wearing an oversized purple blazer, neon green sunglasses, and platform boots that added at least four inches to their diminutive, cylindrical frame. Pinned to the blazer were dozens of buttons, each with a different catchphrase. One button read, “Have a Nice Dystopia.”

Their hair—dyed the same shade of blonde as their comedy hero, a forgotten foul-mouthed nightclub comic of the 1950s named Belle Barth—was bouffant on top and shaved on the sides.

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