Gina Yashere

With Kate Ghiloni

SPACE is proud to welcome stand-up comedian and The Daily Show’s British Correspondent Gina Yashere to Portland for a special evening comedy performance on the heels of her recent hour-long special on Netflix’s The Standups, released on March 20th.

Yashere is the daughter of Nigerian parents and was born and raised in London, England. She is now based out of the United States where she moved in 2007 while working on her acclaimed comedy routines internationally and recording TV shows for over 20 years. Yashere is vocal about celebrating her plural identity as a queer multinational POC, avoiding simplistic labels for her unique voice within comedy. This is a crucial foundation from which she discusses and critiques a variety of topics and critical issues of our time through satire and humor. 

As a stand up and television star in the UK for years before moving to the United States, Yashere made appearances on iconic TV shows such as Live At The Apollo and Mock The Week, as well as creating & performing popular comedic characters on The Lenny Henry Show. She also made film appeareances in the critically acclaimed Kiss Kiss Bang Bang and Mr. In Between, as well as voice work for the animated comedy shows and movies. Her break our moment in the American comedy scene started with appearances that lead to being a finalist on NBC’s Last Comic Standing, and later followed that as the first (and only) British comedian to ever appear on the iconic Def Comedy Jam. Since then she has appeared on NBC’s The Tonight Show, HBO’s Crashing, @Midnight on Comedy Central, her feature length stand up special, Skinny B*tch on Showtime & now as the British Correspondent on Comedy Central’s The Daily Show with Trevor Noah.

Her third stand up special, Gina Yashere: Ticking Boxes was filmed at the iconic 02 Brixton Academy, London, in front of over 2000 of her fans and broadcast internationally via NBC affiliates; she has since shot a fourth stand up special for Netflix’s comedy series The Standups which is available to stream now. In 2018, you will be able to catch her voice as part of the animated comedy film Early Man! from the makers of Wallace and Gromit. 

Portland-based comedian Kate Ghiloni will be opening the show. Ghiloni has been featured in festivals across the country, including the Limestone Comedy Festival, Laugh Your Asheville Off, the Seattle International Comedy Competition, Laughing Skull, Boston Comedy Festival, Women in Comedy Festival, Out of Bounds in Austin, and more. As a writer, Ghiloni’s work includes The Washington Post, People Magazine, and KickinKitchen.TV, a comedy-cooking webseries. She has trained at The Second City (Chicago) and Improv Asylum (Boston).