Wavelength Summer Music & Arts Festival 2019

Natalie Norman is a Toronto-based stand-up comedian, podcaster, storyteller and Jewess. 

Outrageous, witty, and often political, Natalie hosts a weekly LGBTQ+, feminist friendly show The Crimson Wave at Comedy Bar in Toronto. She recorded her second TV taping in May 2019 for the Winnipeg Comedy Festival and her debut comedy album The Big Reveal is set was  released on Howl & Roar this summer.

In addition to the weekly show, Natalie is the co-host of the Crimson Wave Podcast. The menstruation-themed podcast was included in Blog TO’s Top 10 Toronto Podcasts and named by Toronto Life as one of the city’s most addictive podcasts. The Crimson Wave has been among the acts featured at JFL42, and was also an instrumental force in the Canadian Menstruators’ #NoTaxOnTampons campaign, writing and starring in the viral video to promote and spread awareness on the initiative to remove tax on menstruation products. The tax was successfully removed in July 2015.

Natalie has also performed at Just For Laughs in Montreal, Winnipeg Comedy Festival,  Sled Island, Guelph Comedy Fest, Women In Comedy Fest, Pop Montreal, Canadian Music Week, Toronto SketchFest, Feminist Arts Conference, Field Trip, NXNE and LadyFest Montreal. Most importantly, Natalie is a Spice Girls enthusiast, who loves talking about her period. 

Jialu Wang is a recent engineering graduate who used to want to go to grad school but now just wants to tell jokes for the rest of her life. She’s a fairly new comic who started doing stand-up in August 2017, a month before she turned 20.

In the short time she’s been doing stand-up, Jialu has performed on various stages and shows across the city such as Yas Kween, So Fresh n So Clean, and SHADE. She also recently started producing and hosting her own stand-up show called What Are You Doing After You Graduate?: A Comedy Show. which sold out its first two shows in Toronto and Kingston. Just last year, Jialu performed at the Chicago Women’s Funny Festival. Honestly, she’s just trying her best.

A few years ago, Cathryn Naiker decided to leave her career in broadcasting to follow her dreams of becoming a comedy writer, comedian and according to the British Journal of Psychiatry, completely insane. But the risk has paid off. In 2018 Cathryn started writing for This Hour Has 22 Minutes. Previously she was the writers room Script Coordinator for The Mr. D Show season 8 and The Beaverton Season 2, plus is a writing contributor for their website. Currently she is a writing consultant for the popular YouTube Channel ASAPScience.

Cathryn was also a top finalist in The Writers Guild of Canada and Bell Media’s Diverse Screenwriters program. She also wrote and co-starred in the IPF funded web series Dhaliwal ‘15 with YouTube star Jus Reign. As a comedian she has been accepted to the Women In Comedy Festival (WICF Boston) and performed at top comedy festivals such as, Just For Laughs 42, JFL Zoo fest, Gilda’s Club Laugh Fest, She Dot (Toronto 3 years in a row), Border City Comedy Fest, Brantford Comedy Fest, and NXNE to name a few. Cathryn was also featured in Sirius XM’s Canada’s Top Comic. She is an in-demand performer in Canada’s comedy scene and continues to pursue her goals of hilarious domination.

Rush Kazi is a Montreal-born, Toronto-based, non-binary, bipedal, carbon-based stand-up, sketch, and musical comic. Rush uses She/They/He pronouns. A Second City alum, Rush has performed at the following festivals: SheDot, Toronto Fringe, Leelfest, Garden City Comedy Festival, and both Toronto and Montreal Sketch Festivals. She has produced Toronto’s longest running musical comedy show Comedy Mixtape (nee Off-Key Comedy) since 2013, produces the Asian All-Stars Comedy Showcase series at the iconic Rivoli Pool Hall, and has run the open mic, Laughter Luau since 2012. Rush is a member of the Queer and Present Danger Comedy Collective based in Toronto, and is an alum of the IBPOC LGBTQ Sketch Troupe, Fusion.