Comedy saved my life. Seriously.

While a sense of triumph usually waits until the end of a performance, there’ll be a quiet, thrumming victory felt from the moment comedian Alva Sparkles takes the stage at Yuk Yuk’s on May 10. As host and MC of The Best Medicine—a show she created that’s giving all proceeds to the Mental Health Foundation of Nova Scotia—she opens the evening, yes. But, falling the one-year anniversary of her survival of a suicide attempt, she’s won before she delivers a single punchline.

“Comedy has always been a coping skill for me” Sparkles (who asked to use only her stage name for privacy reasons) tells me, speaking by phone days before the show, which also features local laugh-getters Dan Hendricken, Clare Belford and Carol Davis. “It really taught me that it can be an avenue to take something that hurts and turn it into joy. And I think that's really beautiful: To be able to take your pain and your suffering and make not only yourself, but other people, enjoy it and have a little bit more insight and feel better about it.”

"Comedy really taught me that it can be an avenue to take something that hurts and turn it into joy."

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With about a decade’s experience in the indie comedy world, it feels natural this is how she’d celebrate such a milestone—but she also hopes to make the show a space where stigma is tackled. “I've relied heavily on mental health services over the last year, and I just really wanted to get back to them, and say thank you to them, but also to do something public,” she says. “And let people know that if they're suffering, that there are people who understand—and that you can bounce back from it.” (Here is where Sparkles makes a point to promise me that the show is really funny, using mental health as a thematic jumping off point. Given the number of times she makes me laugh during our call alone, I believe her.)

It’s also something she knows a lot of folks need right now: “I feel like there's a lot of leftover mental health issues from the pandemic that didn't really get addressed,” she says. “And now, sort of post-pandemic, people are starting to really feel the heat of that. So I think that now is a really relevant time to address mental health: Let people know that there are resources and that it's okay to reach out and get help— and increase the understanding of what that really means.”

She mentions here that while general understanding of mental health has increased in the last decade, we still have room to go: Specifically, she mentions that mental health days alone aren’t always enough and that self-diagnosing through social media is a trend that worries her. “I think therapy is helpful to absolutely everyone. I see it the same as going to a doctor, even if you're just getting checkups: It's important that you go. Your brain is the place that you live 100 percent of the time—and I think it's really important we take care of that,” she adds.

Sparkles describes her comedic style as “telling stories about my life in a way that is funny and silly and a little bit sexy,” noting that her therapist has compared her to stand-up star Taylor Tomlinson. I ask if that means she’s done the impossible and made her therapist laugh. “She was like: ‘I appreciate your humor so much. But I also know it's a coping mechanism. So, even though I enjoy it, I need to ask you to stop’,” Sparkles says.

Luckily for us, no such rule will be applied onstage: “Comedy has always been the thing I've used to bring light to the darkness in my life,” Sparkles says. “And I've received so much support from the comedy community. There's so many comedians that have been checking in on me, who have really been there for me throughout this whole thing, and I just really wanted to include them in this as well, and just bring it back to the community that's given me so much support.”