Category: fringe

I love to travel. This shouldn’t be surprising. A lot of people like to travel. You probably love to travel. People who don’t love to travel have either 1) not travelled or 2) not travelled right… yet. (There’s still hope for them.)

There were a few things I worried about when I made the leap to the life of a comedian. One was: will I ever have enough money to travel again? (Noting that I spent a year in Europe back in the pre-comedy days and it totally changed my life.) It’s well documented that amateur comedians often don’t lead the most glamorous lifestyles. Most of us are just scraping by to make rent and / or feed ourselves. A lot of us end up getting day jobs to make that process a bit easier. (See The Constant Struggle Podcast.)

When I was getting started, it seemed pretty obvious the only way I could ever continue to travel was to become a stand-up comic, get hired by Yuk Yuk’s and only ever travel in Canada. So I gave stand-up the ol’ college try. (Literally. I went to college for stand-up.) Along the way, I got side-tracked with this wonderful thing called improv, and again by the calling of the craft of sketch. What can I say? Humans are by nature social animals. (And empaths don’t do super well listening to that much misery and misogyny.)

In spite of the joys I was getting performing sketch and improv, I kept telling myself if I wanted to travel, I needed to put more emphasis on my stand-up.

I’m only now realizing that I was dependent on an outside source to give me the ability to travel; when, like many other things in my career in comedy, it is in fact possible to just do it myself. Thinking back, in my first year outside of Humber, I co-produced a tour that hit three Canadian cities; Stratford, Ottawa, and Montreal. Afterwards, I was part of a Fringe show that took me to Winnipeg for the first time in my life. I took some personal trips to the comedy meccas of New York and Chicago. Another Fringe took me to Halifax for the first time, where I also took the opportunity to road-trip around PEI in case I never got back! Last year my sketch troupe visited Boston. I began teaching workshops and doing shows that took me back to my alma-mater city of Ottawa, and this summer, I’m booking regular shows in my stomping grounds in the Niagara Region.  And lo and behold, should I be ever-so lucky to have been asked to do some travail that’s taken me the furthest West I’ve ever been in our great country. Vancouver! And on my birthday, no less.

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They have mountains AND water here!

I am grateful. I am happy. I am travelling!

The long and short of it is, if you want to make travelling a priority in your performance plan; make it so, number ones! Just take a look at what the awesome gang at Daisy Productions are doing. Funding can be an issue, so they worked hard to raise a bunch of dollars to take their production LOL LOL LAND all the way to Orlando later this year. With that, they can combine performing AND a trip to DisneyWorld all in one shot! It’s genius. As I type this, my Assembly buds Grim Diesel are currently rocking the Chicago Improv Fest. Improv pros RN & Cawls are currently Down Under teaching courses and no doubt getting more material for their podcast while they’re at it. And I’m here in Vancouver. On my laptop. When I should be on a suspension bridge or something! Maybe not. It’s pretty late.

I guess this is just my own reminder, and maybe it’s helpful to you too, not to wait for someone to tell you what you can do. Figure out how to make it happen, and in the immortal words of everyone in Letterkenny (which I think is appropriate given how that show came to be. Look it up.): PITTER PATTER!

Ever notice how new beginnings always surface in September, even though you’re not going back to school? What the heck is up with that?

Maybe it’s because my recent trip out East had a very “wrap-up the Summer” sortof feel to it. And I actually didn’t get much of a summer because I was working pretty much constantly throughout the PanAm Games. So it was nice to get a little summer/end of August break and do a little travelling… and then do 10-days straight worth of performance. (Not really, there was one day where I didn’t perform, but I did 2 shows on another day, so it totally makes up for it.) It was nice to be a tourist and to visit a part of the country I’d never seen before. I got to check off two Canadian provinces I hadn’t yet been to. I’ve now got the ENTIRE East Coast checked off! #PointsMe #GottaCatchEmAll

But then immediately upon my return it was like BOOM: Here’s the shit you put aside the past few weeks galavanting amongst the “friendlies.”  (what I have decided to nickname people from the East Coast.)

All of a sudden I was like: “Oh crap! My contract with CBC Sports is up! I’m unemployed!” Luckily, HR’s wheels were in motion while I was away and have secured me a new position amongst the Corporation’s Communications, Marketing, Brand & Research Department. (Seriously, who wants to talk about how much they hate the unions, because I will kick you in the face to defend mine.)

Show-producer-wise, Exit, Pursued by a Bear came back after a successful Fringe run, with great reviews and lovely audiences to our monthly show at SoCap with TWO paying customers. (I love you Dave & Alanna) and one drunk dude who just kinda walked in and out of the show at his leisure. I don’t want this to sound complain-y. It’s just sortof a matter-of-fact consequence, but now we’re forced to rethink our show. Whether to and where to keep doing it, if we indeed want to keep doing it. It looks like we do. Personally, I get a lot of enjoyment out of being able to perform alongside some of my favourite the troupes and people in the city looking for stage time. And it allows Gill to play together as well, because over the past year of playing together, and certainly after 10 days in a row playing together, I like to think we’ve become a pretty dang good duo. (Now, if our duo could get into a couple improv festivals to showcase it, that would be great.)  <– THAT, was complaining.  (Note the distinction.) 😛

I just auditioned for Toronto’s French improv league: “Les Improbables.” If I make it into that, there go all my Tuesday evenings, which would require adjustments to shows I run and play in, namely “The Drill” at the Second City Training Centre, but also other great shows that take place on Tuesdays at that venue. That’s a big decision to make.

I need to make time to write a potential one-woman show. I want to work on my stand-up. I might apply to teach improv to seniors. It’s GWCI?’s birthday and I need to learn to bake a cake. I want to write my original pilot. I need to write more specs… and on and on and on with the things I still want to accomplish this year.

At least I AM sure about one thing. I am NOT going back to school! (Although, I could use a bit a bit of those deadlines and discipline.)  There should be an app that’ll make me feel horrible if I hand some life project in late. Get to work, nerds!

Thanks to Facebook, it’s  now easier to get super-reflective on the stuff you’ve been up to over the past, well… since you joined Facebook…. For example, on this day, 7 years ago, I visited Lyon, France. I had a panic attack in a taxi on the way to a Coldplay concert and wasn’t quite sure at the time what was going on. I carried on anyway because I would eventually stand so close to Chris Martin, I’d hoped to catch a bead of his sweat in my mouth. I would later discover Lyon is the hometown of the first CBC employee who would call me a friend.

See how close?
See how close?!?!

On this day 1 year ago, Gill and I had our first improv set together as a duo at Winprov at the Cage. We called ourselves Exit, Pursued by a Bear. A name combining her love of Shakespeare and my desire to be chased by bears. I would later discover we were bound for more than just that one performance. We founded a monthly show for emerging and established comics to come present and perfect their material all while doing the same with our own craft. This would eventually bring us out to Halifax, where I am currently enjoying performing daily hour-long improv sets for completely new and different audiences than those from our Toronto base at the Social Capital Theatre one Thursday night per month.

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“…unusually surrealist…”

At this time, 5 years ago, I was settling into my new apartment in Toronto, having up and left my life in Ottawa. I had some big dreams, which is apparently rare for someone leaving the civil service. I was happy because if I walked a few feet away from my apartment and gazed through the trees, I could see the CN Tower, not knowing how significant that landmark would become to me. I went back to school. I was weeks away from performing stand-up comedy for the first time. Months away to writing my first comedy sketches. Years away from producing my own shows and touring the country, working in one of Canada’s most significant cultural establishments as well as one of North America’s most recognized comedy institutions, from meeting my future husband, (still not used to saying that,) meeting new best friends, new amazing colleagues & immensely talented creative partners and laughing more and harder than ever before.

I would later discover Toronto (dramatic pause) …is my home.

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Happy anniversary, you beautiful bitch.