Category: Sketch Comedy

I went on vacation this week. I almost asked to reschedule because I Think You Should Leave – Season 2 came out in the middle of my time off. Seriously. I thought about staying home when I found out the release date.

Not a surprise to anyone who met me in the hotmail days of tv_addict1@hotmail.com – (honestly, that email address might still work, I should really check it out and see if I’ve missed anything over the past decade.)

I did go. I was fully prepared to activate my delayed gratification function for the absurd sketch show until we got home. There wasn’t supposed to be any wifi at the cottage. It was supposed to be a tech-less paradise. That’s why I didn’t bring a laptop. I would have used it. For Netflix. And work. Not vacation stuff.

Given the past year and a half, I honestly think my Netflix needs a vacation more than I do.

That’s not true. I need one. Needed one. Took one, regardless of making Tim Robinson wait til I got home, like the cat — and stupidly like the cat, I checked in on Tim. We tried to stream episodes of ITYSL on a tiny iPhone screen. I think 75% of that show’s comedy is in Tim Robinson’s face and teeth, so we missed a lot of it being on a teeny tiny screen. Why couldn’t I just have let it go? Because most everyone went to bed and those of us still up were drunk and high, that’s why.

The weather was less than ideal for vacationing. Except that one day where the outside was nice but Lake Ontario is always fucking freezing. Luckily laughter is a good substitute for sunshine and we had it in abundance.

Every cottage needs a cheese grater. FACT.

It’s a weird thing being on vacation with people a generation younger than you. Why is the music so uggggh jeeez?

The extravert that had been suppressed during lockdown reemerged AT THE COTTAGE. It’s so nice to feel the buzz of being around people once again.

It’s also nice to be home now. There’s still no place like it.

Yeah I know it’s been a weird year, and yeah I get it’s totally OK of all you accomplished this year was staying alive, breathing and not murdering your roommate. I’ve been posting YIRs since 2016 and I’m not going to stop now. If there’s anything we’ve learned in 2020, it’s that among all the chaos, there’s still a whole lot to be grateful for and it’s easy to miss if you don’t take a second to appreciate it.

My lighthouse word for 2020 was NOW. I got into reading some Eckhart Tolle thanks to Pete Holmes and felt it’d be some super great reading for an improviser, an anxious person and for life in general. I think 2020 was the perfect year to have chosen that word, and that NOW couldn’t have come at a better time.

Here’s some of the good to come out of my many NOWs in 2020:

  • Ran two successful in-person editions of Guess Who’s Coming to Improv? & brought it back via Zoom just in time for its’ 6th anniversary.
  • My company held our first corporate events.
  • Continued teaching improv with The Second City Training Centre & successfully transitioned to doing so online since March. During his process, I taught my first Level D class, the highest level I’ve taught thus far.
  • Held my first table read for my sitcom pilot.
Improv Niagara team reading Brie's comedy pilot.
We had La Croix because this was a LEGIT writer’s room.
The cast of Improv Niagara and friends with Colin Mochrie.
Improv Niagara meets our improv hero Colin Mochrie
  • Continued seeing a counsellor to help manage my anxiety.
  • Performed in the Worlds Biggest Improv Tournament with Linda Julia Paolucci as Niagara Balls, and shared that one awesome night playing arcade games and eating garbage.
  • Auditioned a bunch in person, then sent out self-tapes galore.
  • Continued writing sketches with my Utilidors partner David Lahti, closing in on what will one day be an epic themed sketch revue.
  • Maintaining a 17-year tradition of interrupting my friend Curtis in the middle of the Super Bowl.
  • Held a short run of successful Improv Fallout shows at Mahtay Café before things closed down. (Bringing it back via FB Live in 2021!)
  • Held a short run of successful POPAGANDA shows at the John Candy Box Theatre before things closed down. Attempted one online version, which proved to be very complicated.
  • Performed stand-up comedy around the Niagara Region.
  • Recorded seven new episodes of The Constant Struggle Podcast with my brother Nick.
  • Performed many improv scenes and sets in Toronto & Niagara, including a set with the Second City Main Stage cast.
  • Performed in The Vagina Monologues at Camp Cataract (ICYI – I performed the The Woman Who Loved to Make Vaginas Happy monologue – that’s me to the right, in the pleather.)
The Women who performed The Vagina Monologues on stage at Camp Cataract in Niagara Falls, ON.
The incredible cast of The Vagina Monologues at Camp Cataract in Niagara Falls, ON
  • Participated in a Race & Theatre in Niagara workshop, hopeful more work continues on this front.
  • Premiered our pilot “Time Slicers” at the Toronto Sketch Comedy Film Festival.
  • Built up the courage to ask for something I really wanted.

And then, things happened. Life shifted. From home, I created different NOWs.

  • I binge-watched SO MUCH EPIC TV.
  • Many sweaty Sherwarrior workout sessions.
  • Performed many mini-online shows with Improv Niagara in the early days of the pandemic.
  • Began performing in Toronto-based online shows like Duo Derby and Connect 40, which did a great job of bringing the improv community back together in these tricky times.
  • Grew a vegetable and herb garden in my backyard.
  • Held my second official Writers’ Room. This time, digitally.
Zoom meeting of people's faces, reading Brie's pilot script.
Script Read-thru | Round 2
  • Participated in improv jams and classes with people from around the world from the comfort of my own home.
  • Participated in the virtual edition of In the Soil Festival with the women & enbies of Improv Niagara.
  • Held outdoor, socially distanced improv rehearsals in my backyard and in local parks.
  • Protested anti-black racism, police brutality & social injustice.
  • Spent a few weekends in London, ON working on an indie comedy about a cult.
  • Read 50 new, original Canadian comedy plays.
  • Began co-leading improv & mindfulness workshops with Stream Yoga + Meditation
  • Attended the Our Cities on Our Stages symposium online though Bad Dog Theatre.
  • Improv Niagara’s newest Kids’ Instructor, Simon, offered workshops with the Town of Pelham.
  • IN held a series of outdoor, socially-distanced improv shows at Camp Cataract for the summer.
  • Attended my first Zoom bris.
  • Was invited to guest on Tuong La’s Ranked podcast with Dan & Nick.
  • Celebrated 4 years of wedded bliss at the top of the Skylon Tower.
  • Learned how to grow and harvest cannabis.
  • Booked a role on a French web series for TFO & shot it in December (where I got my first swab.)
Selfie of Brie in full make-up, hair done, on set for the French webseries shoot.
On set as Mme. Gisèle.
  • Participated in an online version of Culture Days with Improv Niagara.
  • Participated in the Niagara Leadership Summit for Women and was reinvigorated by it.
  • Took an awesome workshop with my Chicago improv heroines Susan Messing & Rachael Mason.
  • IN participated online in Dunnville, ON’s River Arts Festival.
  • Improv Niagara wrote & performed a virtual sketch for Suitcase in Point’s Community Comedy Series
  • IN’s held our first ever student show, broadcast live via Facebook (because groups of 10+ were not permitted.)
  • Welland finally got a Starbucks
  • I stayed alive.
  • I breathed.
  • I Didn’t kill my roommate.

I’m thankful for all of the NOWs 2020 brought along and I do wish to continue working in being present and in the moment (luckily I’m in the right field for that.) NOW, my word for 2021 is very different. Stay tuned.

2019 | 2018 | 2017 | 2016

HAPPY 2021!

This Remembrance Day in particular, I’m mindful of these men.

These are The Dumbells. They were a comedy troupe consisting of Canadian soldiers during the First World War. Them, The Princess Patricia’s Canadian Light Infantry Comedy Company, and as many as 30 other such troupes performed in France to entertain their fellow troops, and to help boost morale.

It got me thinking that throughout history, there are always people who feel a call to lighten the darkness others experience during difficult times.

They’re out there now too, throughout this crazy pandemic. Trying to make us laugh. Taking our minds off the rising numbers and harsh news, if only for a moment.

Understanding what we’re all going through, and expressing it in such a way as to allow us to carry on a little further.

I strive to honour that particular calling.  And today, I commemorate these giants who did under truly extreme circumstances.

Last weekend, my longtime best bud Dina and I took a road-trip down to Chicago. I’d wanted to see The Second City’s all-women “She The People: Girlfriends’ Guide to Sisters Doing It For Themselves” because:

  • it sounded like a cool show
  • I like the idea of an all-women cast
  • I wanted to go back to Chicago & Dina had never been to this city of wonders
  • Feminism.

The show was fantastic and the experience had everything I could ask for, including an uncomfortable middle-aged white man at my table unsure as to why his wife and daughter took him to see this particular show. (See “feminism.”)

For the record, the scene with the dinosaur suit was hundo p my favourite.

I don’t do this very often on WordPress, but I thought I’d post a few choice photos from my trip to Chi-town with Dina.

Traveling for improv is probably my favourite thing to do right now; and that I got to have this quick little trip into improv mecca (we saw a show at the iO! as well) with my Dina, (who I’ve know basically my entire life and who has recently agreed to start an improv company with me,) well that was just the icing on the cake. Or the cheese on the deep-dish, if you will.

I can’t wait to see where improv-travel will take me next. Or what all-women show I produce as a result of the burning hot lady-fire She the People lit under my ass.

 

 

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!