Cheyenna Sapp, actress and comedian from Little Pine First Nation, Sask., said comedy and humour are an important part of Indigenous culture.
“Growing up, I knew I was funny, but I come from a community where everybody is funny so I didn’t feel like humour stood out,” Sapp said. “We grew up with our families teasing us, teasing each other, and it’s basically like a comedy roast every time you are at a family dinner.”
After moving to Saskatoon to study Indigenous Studies at the University of Saskatchewan, Sapp started watching local open mic performances around the city.
She said she watched for about a year before she saw three Indigenous comedians walk onto a stage – it was the inspiration for what she does now.
“I was just blown away by that. These are Indigenous people doing what I love and successfully and I was inspired by that,” Sapp said. “I saw people who looked like me and were from the same communities as me doing standup comedy.”
The only Indigenous comedian she said she grew up watching was Don Burnstick.
“I started to write my own jokes down,” said Sapp. “I wrote a three-minute set and I was so scared to perform. The first time I did it was at Buds on Broadway and I remember being so scared that my legs would buckle because they were shaking so bad.”
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She said she had to sit down during her first set in 2019.
After the pandemic, Sapp began taking acting classes at the university to help with her delivery and has been performing ever since.
“Humour and laughter is a big part of Indigenous culture,” Sapp said. “It’s a big part of our resilience. The comedy and humour is what kind of gets us through those dark moments.”
She said that most Indigenous cultures are ‘traditionally oral’ cultures, meaning that knowledge is passed down through generations through storytelling.
“Standup comedy is a form of storytelling,” Sapp said. “So, it’s a continuation of Indigenous culture.”
She said she uses a lot of learning from her Indigenous studies to educate her audiences about different aspects of the culture and issues.
Sapp said her favourite part of performing is feeding off the energy of the crowd.
“My heart pounds, my palms sweat and there is a bit of anxiety and then once you get on stage and start telling those first few jokes and the audience responds with laughter, then it becomes so easy.”
Sapp’s success in the comedy world helped her land her first acting job in the new Indigenous sitcom Acting Good which is currently streaming on Crave.
She said that most Indigenous film and TV shows focus on trauma and grief but she loves the lighthearted aspect of Indigenous sitcoms.
“It’s just modern-day Indigenous peoples living their lives and doing silly things and just being silly characters. It’s a nice, refreshing break from the other stories that you see out there.”
After she is finished filming, Sapp will be headed on a comedy tour with two other Indigenous comedians from Canada in a group called The Deadly Aunties. The group will begin their tour in Ontario in mid-July before heading west.