““It’s like an East Vancouver pantomime, he lays down his coat on the wet ground outside the Wise Hall,” host Emma Cooper explained beneath the narrow spotlight of the Cultch theatre. At just over 6’0” they’re willowy, like the early fall trees melting into impressionistic dots of red, orange and yellow on the pavement outside. Their cropped brown haircut and tortoiseshell spectacles peer out at the audience. This is the setup to a joke about their rape.

Cooper is the host and producer behind Rape is Real & Everywhere, a comedy show written by and starring survivors of sexual assault.”