University of Alberta PhD student turned comedian back off to New York

Jules Balluffi moved to Canada when she was 18 for her bachelor’s degree and came to Edmonton for her PhD in wildlife biology. 

“The whole plan was academics through and through. But, I always had an inkling that I wanted to try stand-up. I always loved comedy and I always told myself I wanted to be a comedy writer if I wasn’t doing the science stuff,” Bellufi said. 

After signing up for a class to gain some confidence, Bellufi “got hooked.” 

Bellufi’s main stages in Edmonton are the Black Dog’s basement for the Underdog Comedy Show, and The Comic Strip, which is her home club. 

In terms of her comedy, Bellufi said “I’m pretty observational. It sometimes feels like my comedy stems from me [being] against the world. It’s things that are going on around me that are out of my control, things that I’m witnessing or happening to me. A lot of my comedy stems from a general underlying frustration and my health anxiety.” 

“Coming to comedy [and] having to chip away at my filter and be a more honest version of myself [has been healing],” Belluffi says

For Bellufi, comedy is a fulfilling and massively validating thing. “The feeling of making a room of people laugh is incredible. And there’s nothing quite like it. Having an idea in your head, saying it out loud, and feeling a room of people laugh, meaning they agree with you, that it’s funny or surprising, is incredibly validating,” Bellufi said. “It’s so nice to feel understood at that scale.” 

Comedy has been a healthy space for Belluffi. “Being in grad school for so long, I’ve worked really hard to be this professional person who’s got such a strong filter, and not in a bad way. [But], coming to comedy [and] having to chip away at my filter and be a more honest version of myself [has been healing],” she reflected. 

Humour can, at times, be used as a shield against connection and vulnerability. But for Bellufi, doing stand-up has been about doing the opposite.

“I think I’ve felt misunderstood in many instances in my life and I’ve been using humour as a way to be understood. People use humour as a way to hide their emotions or ease tension in a room, or feel connected to the people around them. But also as a wall to not be vulnerable with people, but if you twist that thinking and apply it to stand-up, it really is a way to connect and get people to agree with you. 

Edmonton helped start her comedy career, but New York is calling her name

Belluffi said that while she is moving back to New York, Edmonton was a great place to start her career. “We have a lot of rooms, stage time, and good audiences [in Edmonton]. It’s this liberal pocket in a conservative province, and as a result, you get a nice spectrum of audiences from liberals to conservatives.” 

She added that Edmonton has some good comics and a really strong scene. “A lot of people don’t realize that you can go and find a really great comedy show on any given night of the week. We have some local stars who are quite good and it’s a shame when people don’t realize that this is happening here.“

On moving back to New York, Belluffi said the decision is based on missing family and friends, and partially because of the wildly big comedy scene there. She’s been able to do a show every time she goes home, but acknowledged it’s a big scene to break into. 

On October 9 and 10, she had a farewell show at the Grindstone Theatre, where she performed all her work created during her time in Edmonton. And, she taped the event, looking to make a comedy album out of it. Belluffi said that “the goal of it is just to [record] these jokes that I’ve written that use Canadian, and Edmonton, references. And, they capture this period of my life.”