She’s been at the standup comedy game for 40 years now, but the world just keeps giving Margaret Cho reasons to be pissed right the hell off. 

The iconic comedian will be at Vancouver’s Vogue Theatre this Saturday, February 18 as part of the Just For Laughs Vancouver comedy festival. It marks the first of over 30 stages Cho will perform on this year, as she plans to traverse North America on a comedy tour that spans into September. The name of the show? Live and Livid. 

“It's really a nightmare,” Cho told the Straight a week ahead of the show. “There are a lot of things to be mad about: homophobia, racism, sexism, gun violence. There’s a lot more. That’s just the start.” 

The latter seems a particularly impactful topic to Cho, and fittingly so, given that a mass shooting would hit Michigan State University just three days after our interview, killing three students and the gunman, and injuring five others. 

It’s the very real “nightmare” that Cho had been referring to, and not one easily woken up from. 

“[The US is] the only country that has multiple shootings a day,” she said. “Yet for some reason, we're all about upholding the rights of guns. They don't have to have rights. Guns don't need rights. We need to get rid of guns. Permanently.” 

In the four decades that Cho has been onstage behind a mic, she’s never shied away from critiquing societal and political issues. Cho has long been an advocate for marginalized voices, most notably as a member of the LGBTQ+ community. 

“How do we protect queer lives? How do we protect people of colour? How do we protect Asians from violence? How do we protect ourselves from not going completely extinct? Trans lives are at risk of genocide. It’s a really big deal,” she said. 

“We're under threat—which I think, as a marginalized community, we have always been—but the fact that we're also not allowing people to learn the history of it is a huge issue, too.”

Speaking to these topics during a comedy routine might seem like a monumental task, but Cho noted that she aims to “take on all these topics and try to find some way of healing” by addressing them while onstage. 

Turning lamentation into laughter is a skill particular to comedians, and is likely why camaraderie among comics is something Cho looks forward to when participating in Just For Laughs. 

“I love the festival,” she said on a lighter note at the tail end of our conversation. “I really love going because it’s the one time comics actually get to see each other and hang out.”

She’ll be in town for one night only, but it’s a night that Cho is looking forward to. 

“For me, it's a really special thing. I've been going to the different iterations of [Just For Laughs] all over since probably the ‘90s, so I'm grateful to be back.”

Margaret Cho: Live and Livid is playing at the Vogue Theatre at 7pm on Saturday, February 18. Tickets are available online.