The CDMX Comedy Fest is ready to take the city by storm this month, giving Mexico City locals and foreigners alike a place where they can find common ground — in laughter.
The event is scheduled to take place June 23-27 across six venues in Mexico City, all in the Roma and Condesa neighborhoods. Organizer Stephen Steers, who, with Mexican comedian Martín León, created this one-of-a-kind festival, says that the type of cultural connection this festival represents is all the more important these days, when everyone could use a smile on their face.
“What we’re doing here is bringing positivity into a world where there’s a lot of negativity,” said Steers. “It’s just, ‘Hey, come sit down and laugh for a little bit.’”
The magic of a bilingual comedy festival
Steers calls the CDMX Comedy Fest a love letter to Mexico City, a multilingual platform for a common form of communication — laughter. For him, it is also an attempt to give back to the city what he has gotten from it: a warm welcome and a sense of belonging.
“It’s like, I love being here. It’s a cool place. We have great people. We have great talent. And it deserves a chance in the conversation. English is a part of that because (with English) people pay more attention in some ways, but we also do (the show) in Spanish. And that can open the door to more vision and more people to see what’s happening here across the board, in English and in Spanish.”
To understand the magic of this festival, one must understand the venues that keep the comedy flame alive in Mexico’s capital. These include El 139 in the Coyoacán neighborhood — a cramped, high-energy room where iconic comedians test their tightest sets — and the underground club Clandestino — with a secret pop-up location for every show. Both are local gems of the Mexico City standup scene.
“The English-language comedy scene here was largely built by Mexicans,” said Steers. “People like Mariana Ramírez, Efraín Lomelí, Martín León and others helped create spaces where we can all connect.”
These spaces are more than just rooms with a stage and a microphone. They are sweaty, intimate spaces where the boundary between the performer and the audience blurs. The CDMX Comedy Fest aims to bring this underground energy into its five different venues and capture that classic, indie comedy club vibe where locals and expats are forced to share a table and rub elbows — and where anything can happen.
Spanish vs. English humor
The CDMX Comedy Fest is meant to make two (and if possible, more) languages collide. The main objective is to bring people together to laugh in the face of a complicated real world, and to meet face-to-face and hear each other’s voices.
For foreigners in Mexico City, it’s a unique — and very funny — opportunity to get to know another culture through jokes.
Mexicans take pride in their sense of humor. Each word spoken can have a twist, an addendum that changes its meaning. It requires a sharp mind both to create and understand Mexican jokes, which will, of course, present a challenge for foreign comedians like Steers himself.
Mexican humor is “its own thing,” Steers acknowledges. “So doing stand-up in Spanish is difficult in some ways, but it’s a good challenge.”
Mexican Spanish loves albures (wordplay), a nearly untranslatable source of humor, and even a mystery for non-Mexican Spanish native speakers. Steeers says that’s one of the most difficult things to get (and replicate) when a foreigner tries to be part of Mexican stand-up.
But English isn’t lacking in linguistic tricks either; the flavor it injects into its humor also relies heavily on exploiting wordplay.
“In English, one word can mean five things,” Steers said. “So, for example, the word ‘two’ is the number two. It’s also ‘to’, and ‘too.’ There are three different ways you can use that word right there. That could change in the way that you’re making a joke or the way you write.”
Who will be appearing?
From headliner Danysteria — bringing a fierce, millennial energy to the stage and navigating the absurdities of modern life with a sharp, unfiltered perspective — to comedians Martín León and Mariana Ramírez, bedrock members of the local comedy scene — everyone playing the CDMX Comedy Fest is an expert in manipulating language and leaving a room in tears of laughter. Along with Steers’ own sharp observational humor as a foreigner navigating this beautiful, chaotic metropolis, the festival promises a rollercoaster of styles.
“Hopefully, everything’s really hilarious, and you love every bit of it, but that’s not how comedy works all the time. Sometimes you’ve got to make a mistake, but the whole thing is we want to bring people together for something positive.”
Lydia Leija is a linguist, journalist and visual storyteller. She has directed three feature films, and her audiovisual work has been featured in national and international media. She’s been part of National Geographic, Muy Interesante and Cosmopolitan.
