Queer Filipina comedian Isabel Kanaan stars in a new comedy series on OMNI TV
Credit to Author: Lisa Evans| Date: Tue, 05 Jul 2022 15:32:39 +0000
Isabel Kanaan never planned to be a comedian, but a few surprise turns of events created the perfect conditions for this Filipino, queer-identifying comedian to shine. This 2018 Top 25 Canadian Immigrant Award winner moved to Canada with her family when she was 16 years old.
“We had applied years ago and we didn’t know if we were ever getting in and it looked like it wasn’t going to happen and in the middle of the school year in the Philippines they said you’re approved and you have to go to Canada in one month,” says Kanaan. Still in shock, the family packed up their lives and came to Canada in August 2008, settling in Burlington, Ontario where Kanaan completed her grade 12 year.
While acting had always been in the back of her mind, she pushed the idea to the back burner when she arrived in Canada. “When I got here I was like ‘oh there’s no way I’m going to do that’. I had an accent and culture shock. I thought I can’t be an actor here,” she says. “But passion has a funny way of finding you.”
Kanaan switched majors multiple times in college. “Nothing was sticking,” she says. Until she found out about a camera and voice program at Seneca College.
While studying at Seneca, one of Kanaan’s teachers told her she could find the comedy in everything and that phrase resonated with her. “I feel like as Filipinos we’re a very happy country even though there are things going down we still see the brighter side in it,” she says. Kanaan taps into that brighter side mentality in her acting, focusing on the part of the situation that is humorous and playing to that part of the situation.
But as a Filipino in the industry, Kanaan says she struggled to fit in. “Filipinos weren’t as represented in the media,” she says. “I would get roles for Indian or Spanish. There were casting calls for Asians and they were like oh, are you Asian? Obviously I can’t go for white because I’m not that either,” she says.
There were even less opportunities for queer roles. When Kanaan wasn’t getting the roles she wanted, she decided to take things into her own hands, going to Second City and creating her own roles. In the conservatory program though, Kanaan was the only person of colour. “A lot of the things I’d write wouldn’t go up on stage,” she says. It wasn’t until she got accepted into the Bob Currie Fellowship Program that was filled with people from diverse backgrounds that her pitches were accepted. “When they put it up on stage to the audience it did great,” she says. The audience resonating with her work fueled Kanaan to focus on her journey as an immigrant.
Throughout her career, Kanaan has performed as a member of the CBC’s sketch comedy troupe Air Farce, The Sketchersons and is known for her lead role in the series Haunted or Hoax which won the NYC Web Fest’s Audience Choice Award.
Recently, she has co-created, written and is starring in ABROAD, a 12-part comedy series on OMNI Television. ABROAD finds humour in the challenging situations facing immigrants from different generations. “It’s a half-Tagalog, half-English show about immigrants on Canadian television. That to me is ME,” says Kanaan. “I speak Tagalog. I speak English. I’m an immigrant. I’m in Canada. It’s an amalgamation of all the different parts of me.”
Although her work now highlights her culture, Kanaan says it took time for her to bring her true self to her craft. “When I first arrived it did not always celebrate my culture, my sexuality and for the longest time I hid that even in the start of my career. In a way it was kind of what was hindering me from gaining success. If I wasn’t being honest with myself how could I create honest work,” she says.
Kanaan credits her fans and followers who posted comments on her TikTok or came up to her after a stage performance and told her that they resonated with her work. “That showed me that there is a space for me, for us,” she says. “I celebrate my culture and I’m proud of it, I wasn’t always this way.”
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