In 2017, shortly after presenting her first bilingual number in a comedy evening in Gatineau, Rachelle Elie attended a show by François Bellefeuille at the Salle Odyssée, where the stars of Quebec laughter stop during their visit to the Outaouais. . “And I was like, ‘holy cow ! 900 people in the same room to see a comedian!” There was a Hollywood in Quebec and I didn’t even know it! »
Posted at 9:00 a.m.
Rachelle Elie pronounces her first name the French way, and not like the character of Jennifer Aniston in Friends. And although a touch of English accent colors her sentences when she speaks in the language of Yvon Deschamps, the comedian has mastered French since childhood.
Daughter of an American mother and a Haitian father who left her country for the United States to study at Cornell, the one that her relatives simply nicknamed Rash (“As in eruption, yes!”) Was born in Toronto , but went to school in French until 5e year.
After studying theater in Vancouver, then in Lennoxville, she quickly realized that she was surrounded in the Canadian metropolis by young actresses who, like her, played waitresses in restaurants, while waiting for a conclusive and life-saving audition. She then turns to the stand upas one embraces one’s inner nature.
I didn’t really want to be a comedian, it’s just something I had in me, and sometimes it was even too much. I say it in show, and it’s not really a joke, that I was expelled from the circuit of parties house, so I always tried to make everyone laugh.
Rachelle Elie
But when she became pregnant with her first son in the early 2000s, she deserted the Toronto circuit of comedy clubsthen unwelcoming for women, even less for young mothers.
“The environment was not positive,” she recalls. It was in basements, people were smoking, there were always hecklers [des chahuteurs]. You had to put up with guys who only talked about porn and masturbation. »
Rachelle quickly reconnects with the stage by giving birth to the zany character of Joe, an affable loser with salt-and-pepper hair and a toothless smile, which she created during a clown workshop with Philippe Gaulier, the intimidating professor of Sacha Baron Cohen (Borat). She will carry it around on different alternative scenes, all over Canada.
“But after eight years of doing Joe, I realized I didn’t want to play a man all my life. I was going to see shows stand up and it bothered me not to hear women, not to hear my voice. I had a responsibility towards myself and towards women: since I had the ability to do stand upI had to do some stand up. »
find his family
Adding up the show she presents with Val Belzil, the variety evening she hosts (the Rag Bag Cabaret) and her various participations in other posters, Rachelle Elie is the artist with the most stage time in the current Zoofest program. She will also be at the Just for Laughs Gala by Phil Roy and Roxane Bruneau on Thursday, and on Friday at Erich Preach’s big outdoor party.
After years of struggling on the Toronto and Ottawa scenes, the scintillating 53-year-old blonde, who lives in the capital with her gynecologist husband and their two sons, has obviously found her El Dorado in Quebec. His return trips from Ottawa to Montreal are increasing.
“Before, I came to Just For Laughs, but it was just to see shows, she quips. It’s really difficult for English-speaking Canadians who don’t live in Los Angeles to be invited to a Just For Laughs gala. But at the Brothel [où elle joue souvent], it was on the first day as if I was a member of the family. »
Endowed with an implacable sense of repartee reminiscent of Joan Rivers, Rachelle Elie inhabits the stage with a rare magnetism, which testifies both to her pure charisma and to her long experience of the microphone. Shit I’m in Love with You Againan album of naughty songs and short assorted monologues, released last January, contains valuable advice for a fulfilling life as a couple, such as having fun before going to a restaurant to eat with your partner (fuck first), and not afterwards, when you risk being too bloated to perform.
“If you come to the show with your partner and you don’t have sex after show, I will give you your money back”, she sometimes jokes on stage. Why ? “Because a lot of couples don’t talk about sex. Divorces happen all the time just because couples stop communicating. But when they come out of my show, all the taboos have been broken, they just have no choice but to talk to each other. »
The 30/30 by Rachelle Elie and Val BelzilJuly 20 and 23 at the Cabaret du 4e of the Monument-National