Comedian Steph Tolev is coming to Peterborough and she’s bringing her raunchy, dirty, high-energy performance with her — consider yourself warned.
On Thursday, August 3rd, as part of her Filth Queen Tour, the stand-up comedian will be rocking her signature jumpsuit at Peterborough’s Market Hall. The Toronto-born comedian has four comedy albums, including I’m Not Well, which was nominated for comedy album of the year at the 2020 Juno awards.
Most recently, she was featured in last June’s Netflix stand-up special Bill Burr Presents: Friends Who Kill — a compilation from the “Netflix is a Joke” comedy festival in Los Angeles the previous month — and also opened for the well-known American comedian at Toronto’s Scotiabank Arena last August.
Though Tolev was born in Toronto, the show will be bringing her to a familiar area. Her parents own a cottage north of Apsley and she can easily recall her childhood of running around barefoot and nonstop swimming.
The 38-year-old comedian is looking forward to performing at Peterborough’s Market Hall for the first time, where she’ll have the opportunity to try out some different material.
“It’s just different from the club scene,” she says. “And I can do all my cottage jokes that I never do anywhere.”
The location also means her family can come to the show. She admits that when she was just starting out, her family didn’t quite understand her comedy style. Now, despite her raunchy humour that often includes explicit personal stories, she has no qualms about performing in front of them.
“Sometimes I say things and I’m like, ‘Well, this is wildly inappropriate’,” Tolev explains. “But then the problem is too, sometimes I’ll say something so gross and then my dad laughs the hardest. That’s why I’m like this. My parents act like I’m weird, but I say ‘This comes from you guys.’ They have always been swearing, always been kind of gross. I tell them, ‘Don’t act like this came out of nowhere — you made this.'”
Though Tolev had always been a performer, she originally had her sights set on acting. When she didn’t get into acting school, she ended up studying comedy writing and performance at Toronto’s Humber College and found her new passion.
She says her first few stand-up shows were a “bomb,” but she pushed through the challenges to finally gain the satisfaction of getting those laughs.
“It takes a long time to get your voice, but I think after doing improv and sketch I got way more comfortable being myself,” she says. “Once you get your one big laugh, you want that all the time. You want that feeling that you’re just absolutely annihilating the stage.”
Today, as she’s about to kick off on her Filth Queen Tour that will take her across the continent from July to October, she’s quickly selling out venues.
With 350 seats, Market Hall is one of the smaller venues she’ll be visiting — especially in comparison to the Scotiabank Arena when she opened for Bill Burr.
“It felt out of body,” she recalls of being on such a large stage with a famous comedian. “He’s such a nice, kind, generous man who genuinely finds me funny, and it was crazy.”
Due to the size of the Scotiabank Arena, she says she felt that she wasn’t able to connect with the audience, something she’s eager to do in Peterborough.
“When I do smaller places like Market Hall or clubs, I like the audience interaction,” Tolev explains. “I’ve really leaned into that in the last year, because I’ve been touring so much and really enjoy talking to people and getting them to talk back to me.”
She points out the show at Market Hall will likely include a lot of “crowd work” — when a comedian engages with the audience during their performance, calling out specific audience members, asking them questions, and improvising jokes based on their responses.
“I find people in smaller towns or venues are just way more open to answering stuff and talking, so I think it’ll be fun for that.”
She’s looking at the Market Hall show as an opportunity to practice her crowd work even more, as she’s hoping to soon split her sets evenly between stand-up and crowd work. Her goal is to be able to release a special that’s solely a compilation of crowd work.
Local comedian John Carroll will open the show with a short set. Sharing the Market Hall stage with Tolev will be Woodbridge-born comedian Alex Pavone, who is no newcomer to performing alongside Tolev.
“We’re very similar,” Tolev says. “People think we’re related because we’re both high energy and nuts. But he’s not very dirty, so it’s a good balance.”
When she’s not on stage, Tolev also hosts the Steph Infection podcast where she welcomes fellow comedians to tell stories about different ailments, injuries, and infections that have taken over their bodies. She says she was inspired to create the podcast because of her own “body issues,” adding that her body always has “something bizarre happening,” from skin problems to blood clots and hives.
“We all have weird body stuff, so I just wanted to have an outlet for comics to just come and openly talk because we all have had some sort of body thing happen. We’ve all had an ailment. We’ve all had a surgery or some sort of growth.”
VIDEO: “12 Minutes of Jokes About Dating” featuring Steph Tolev (foul language)
Tolev explains she’s sometimes amazed by the reach of the podcast, with listeners often getting in touch to express they were able to diagnose their own problems from hearing the stories on her podcast.
“I think it’s a good outlet for people,” she says. “They feel better about themselves.”
Tolev’s stand-up comedy reaches people in a similar way. She says she’s very body positive and fans of her comedy will often reach out to express that they feel better about themselves because of her.
“I don’t do politics or racial jokes because I don’t want people to be sitting there upset, thinking about other stuff they deal with every day,” she explains. “So when you see my show, it’s about me. I’m making fun of myself. I’ll poke fun at others, but I don’t want them to sit there thinking of negative stuff. I want them to be laughing.”
Tickets to “Steph Tolev & Friends” at the Market Hall are $35 and are available in person at the Market Hall box office at 140 Charlotte Street from 12 to 5 p.m. Monday to Friday or online anytime at tickets.markethall.org.
For more information about Tolev, including her tour dates and her Steph Infection podcast, visit her website at stephtolev.komi.io.
This story has been updated to remove comedian Pat Burtscher from the line-up, as he can no longer attend.
