Meet comedian Gina Love. You might know her as Gina Davis, CedarBridge Academy’s director of staff development, but Gina Love is much, much more funny. She’s also philanthropically inclined. For the fourth year in a row she’s performing at a Family Centre fundraiser for free.

It’s a way for her to give back to a cause she believes in. She’s not the only one who will take to the stage on Saturday, March 12. Head to Fourways Inn for drinks, dinner, live music, improv and dancing with Tony Bari, Mike Hind, Gavin Smith, Hugh Murray, D’Nice, The Simons Brothers, Patrina O’Connor and many others, from 7pm until 11pm. Until then, here’s more from Ms Love.

Q: How’d you get into stand-up? Something you’ve been doing for a while?

A: I’m the oldest comedian in Bermuda. I was a big grown woman when I started acting on stage in Bermuda — I had to have been at least 40.

Q: What made you start?

A: I was in a play called Phat Girls that ran, I think, maybe in 2002. [The playwright] Patricia Nesbitt asked for the entire cast to display a talent for the final ending of the play, and I told her I was talentless.

She insisted I was funny and said I should do some stand-up. And that’s when it all began. I still remember the entire routine to this day. It was about my inability to buy a brassiere that fit me in Bermuda.

I wrote it and rehearsed in front of the cast. It was a lot of work but the feedback was positive and that’s why I’m still doing it to this day.

Q: And you had no experience before that? No lessons at all?

A: My undergraduate degree is in communications. When you do communications in the US as a degree, drama is part of [the curriculum although] I never acted in university. I had my own show in 2013 that I got somebody to record for me. When I look at it today I say, “I am really, really funny”. The show reflected who I am — it had a bit of improv, there was a live band that I love, we had skits and I did stand-up comedy.

The band members were all men who had performed from the time I was a young girl, plus upcoming musicians. I work in a school so it was impossible for me to do a show and not have students. And I had two or three skits myself. It could have been called the Gina Love and Friends Show. There were people I’d acted with in the past, people I just met who like acting, friends, students and Improv Bermuda.

Q: How often do you perform?

A: I work in education so it doesn’t afford me the opportunity to be a full-time performer but not a year goes by that I don’t do something.

Q: And your jokes are mainly about ...?

A: It depends on the audience. Since I write my own material I can write for whomever the audience will be. I’ve performed for church groups, I performed at Grotto Bay [Beach Resort] during the summer with Bootsie for three years so I had a routine for tourists; I have material for my age group and material for young people.

Q: Why do you perform under another name?

A: When I first started performing it was very difficult for the audience to separate me [the educator] from me the comedian, which is why I perform as Gina Love, a separate entity from Gina Davis. I am who I need to be onstage and when I leave that stage Gina Love is not there any longer. I remember the first time I performed stand-up at Devonshire Rec the feedback was, “She’s a teacher?!” I had to put in my routine that this is for the stage. When I’m in the classroom I’m a different person — that’s not to say I’m not naturally funny — but I don’t perform for students. When I’m here at CedarBridge Academy that has nothing to do with me performing.

Q: You’re performing next Saturday for free. Very kind, but why?

A: Sometimes you have to just give of yourself. There are people out there that will promise to pay you and don’t, and don’t even speak to you when they see you again. I’m not rich, but I’m not hurting for money. If someone says I will pay you I expect them to honour that. If someone says I cannot pay you, I [might] do it for free — but that’s my choice. I know [Family Centre] work very hard helping families with social issues and all sorts of other things. Our society has changed so much. We’ve lost a lot of family — and that has nothing to do with single-parent families, etc — because of how we’re so spread out. At one time a neighbourhood was a family even if the [neighbours] weren’t all related. We’ve lost that and if part of what Family Centre does is help people reconnect, then I’m all for that. So that’s why I don’t mind doing it for free. I tell everybody this is my one community service.

Q: Aside from the feel-good vibe that comes from supporting a charity, why should people attend?

A: It is the best night out. It really is. I think the first time I ever went I was invited but I wasn’t on the plan to perform. I remember buying a ticket to go and was like, “This is so amazing”. I remember sitting with Toni Bari, who I love as a pianist, Randy Lambert was on the guitar; it was fantastic night and to me it just gets better every year. There’s also Hugh Murray who has been [volunteering], doing the sound for the comedians since I began. He stays long after that for karaoke and it makes the night very special; there’s the improv people — I’ve just watched everybody go from strength to strength.

•Watch Gina Love on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yPeuKpePJd8, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oEqW9a0WeVU, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xLDSgCQUvFA Tickets, $65, are available at Fourways, BdaTix, La Trattoria and Family Centre. A buffet supper is included with admission.