Tag: comedy

If I don’t get a job and start paying off my loans, I’m going to have to move back to Welland.  I can’t do that.  I love Toronto and I want to do comedy.  I can’t fulfill my dreams in Welland.

With that in mind, I started applying for jobs to keep me alive financially while I wait for my proverbial “big break.”  So yesterday, I had an interview with a post-production company, to be an office administrator, where the interviewers gave me some straight-shooting advice that, though financially a bit worrying, was the most honest commentary I ever received in an interview setting, EVER.  They basically told me that Arts, Entertainment, Media; they’re “pay-your-dues” industries.  And if you’re going to start at the bottom (ie. Office Administration,) you might as well do it somewhere you’d eventually like to end up.  (ie.  Not at a post-production company, as I do  not want to be an editor – ) but rather, a production company for TV, film or otherwise, a Literary Agency, etc.  And because turnover is high among the lower echelons, odds are there’s something available.  All I have to do is find it.

Easy.  Right?

Also, the interviewers said “fuck” a bunch of times.  In no government interview I’ve ever had, has someone ever said “fuck.” It was fucking fantastic.

What a weird and wonderful series of days I’ve just had/coming up.

This past weekend, I had my first ever audition for an acting part.  I don’t think I did very well, given I messed up the simple lines I’d been assigned to read due to extreme nervousness even though I was only mildly interested in playing the part of “Friend/Family Member.”  I was in and out in less than five minutes and I met some interesting nice and some pretentious people along the way.  (For the record, if you introduce yourself to me by telling me you went to a “Triple Threat Academy” I will, without a doubt, hate you forever.)

Well, at least I got my first audition out of the way!

It’s been a fun past two evenings down at Comedy Bar for Sketch Com-ageddon, but sadly I won’t be able to see the rest of the competition because I’m working the next few evenings and on Saturday I’m going to see Radiohead.

Finally, a band I’ve wanted to see live in concert since I was pre-high school.  The Bends was the first CD I ever bought.  For whatever reason, I never got around to seeing them live.  I had tickets the last time they were in Canada, but I had to re-sell them in order to return to France (oh, boo-hoo, I know!)  The kicker, they’d been playing the city where I lived in France the DAY before I arrived.  I really should have planned that better.  But this weekend, I’m finally going to see them.  Unless someone has free tickets to France.

Back to Com-Ageddon, it was fun!  I performed on Monday and Tuesday I attempted to live-Tweet the festivities (despite my tardiness.) It was fun to re-connect with some TOsketchfest pals & Humber pals.  It felt a little strange to see fellow Humber students now, even though we used to see each other every single day of the week.  Maybe that’s why.  Or maybe it’s because I’m kindof awkward, socially.  Mph.

I’ve got a PREVIEW to some news.  A few of my fellow comedians with similar sensibilities are planning somewhat of a comedy tour in October.  We’re thinking about hitting up some more Eastern areas, such as Ottawa, Montreal and Sherbrooke, and some more Western areas, like St. Catharines, London and Guelph.  If anyone who reads this blog lives around any of those places, keep reading for more information to come.  If you’re from those areas and you have tips about venues and booking information, please get in touch with me – because I value your knowledge and experience.

Ooooh!  Also.  My partner in cat-crime, Paige Mcintrye, & I finally put up our second episode of CatChatz.  You should be sure to check that out, because it’s funny and about cats.

I’m sure you’re sitting on the edge of your seat right now just dying to know how the debut performance of Getting Even with Chesapeake turned out, so I won’t keep you in a state of suspense.

Or will I?

HAHAHAHAHAHA Blah blah blooooooooo lalahfjdhfkdakda.

No, I won’t.  It went fine.  We didn’t move on in the competition, but it was fun to be performing sketch comedy again in a non-academically-obligatory kinda way.  It was also great to perform in an non-entirely Humber-based audience.  Helps to shed some objectivity on life in general, as a whole.

Buuuut that being said… congrats to troupes Sketch & The City, Jape and Parker & Seville for moving on to the next round of the contest!

I’m going to go back to Sketch Com-ageddon tonight to catch more of the action because I loooooove sketch comedy! (And because performers get a 4-free show pass.)

Good luck to all you bloodthirsty troupes!

Today is an exciting day.  This evening, I will be performing with my new sketch troupe for the very first time.  They are called Getting Even with Chesapeake and are composed of Ashley Moffatt, Paige McIntyre, Matt Surina & myself.  Ashley, Matt & I had been talking about working together for a long time and we brought Paige on board because she’s a great writer and she and I have been working together on Cat Chatz – so it all made sense!

Consequently, this will be my first time performing in a sketch troupe since the decomposition of LaughDraft earlier this year and the subsequent denial of my entry into the troupe that formed out of the dregs that was LaughDraft – so, I think it’s fair to say I’m pretty damn excited to get back into the swing of sketch comedy with this awesome group of people!  🙂

Getting Even with Chesapeake is making its debut, performing as part of the Toronto Sketch Comedy Festival’s Sketch Com-Ageddon competition with many other awesome troupes from around town as well as a lot of newbies.

It should be a fun time – so feel free to come check us out.    The sketch-dule is RIGHT HERE!

See you tonight!

Maybe I didn’t get to perform stand-up in the Industry Show this year – but tonight, I did get to perform on the Main Stage at Second City along with some amazing local comics.  Check out this line-up:

  • Blair Streeter!
  • Chris Roberts!
  • Mark DeBonis!
  • Erik Bamberg!
  • K. Trevor Wilson!
  • Hosted by Jim Kim!

 

Sometimes things have a way of working themselves out.

 

 

 

 

Thanks Chemika for the sweet pic!

In light of the recent dump the National Post took on female comedians, (see: The Bullshit) – and taking into consideration both my background in the Humanities as well as my experience in Humber College’s Comedy: Writing & Performance program, I must admit, there are many sociological elements to the Canadian comedy subculture that could do with an intense analysis, but I hardly think the physical appeal (or lack thereof) of certain female comics is the most pressing.

How about the fact that most comics I know either suffer from an attention deficit disorder, an anxiety disorder or some other social, psychological or chemical instability?  Maybe some insight into that would make for an interesting read.  What is it about comedy that attracts so many people suffering from mental or developmental health issues?  That could be insightful!  So many of us use the stage as free therapy already, why not throw a Masters student in the crowd to find out more?

Or…what if you studied the socio-economic impact of the female stand-up comic vs. the male.  Instead of focusing on matters implemented by Western societal views on beauty, maybe we should have the researchers examine that element of the female stand-up comedian – her drive, her business savvy, her hard work.  Nope.  Don’t wanna think about it.  She’s a fatty, that’s all that matters.

Or many have someone look into the reason why SO MANY comics, both starting out and intermediate, find it so necessary to tell rape joke after rape joke after rape joke.  What is it they’re all trying to satisfy?  (Oh yeah, here Brie goes again… always bitching at us for talking about rape.)  Well what the fuck is it that so many of you find so damn appealing about the most painful and humiliating experience to ever happen to a woman – and to treat it so lightly?   I get it – take the things that matter the most to people and make light of them – that’s comedy – we do it about Politics and Religion all the time (that being said, Priest pedophile jokes are hack by now, OK? And so are jokes about clothes hangers or throwing pregnant women down flights of stairs.)  But why rape?  Especially when the jokes are being told by late teen to early twenty some-odd virgin douchebags who don’t know the first thing about the severity of this issue on a grand scheme.  Why is stand-up comedy obsessed with rape?  Let’s get some Women’s Studies PhD candidates to find THAT out?

Anything ANYTHING instead of how physically appealing they are. That’s not science.  That’s a tabloid.

…or a mud hut, for that matter.  This was certainly well proven tonight in the National Theatre of the World‘s May 30th edition ofThe Script Tease Project, which I thought was brilliant!  Now, I’m pretty stupid, because I’ve only seen NTOW twice since moving to Toronto (if you don’t count the multiple times I’ve seen them on various TV commercials & in a bunch of the photos lining the walls at The Second City.)  I saw them do Carnegie Hallin the first few months after I’d started at Humber and it completely changed my understanding of what improv could be.  They are the outstandingly talented improvisers and ever since I first saw them, I have had the strongest desire to learn to emulate their skill and technique.

I also saw Naomi Snieckus and Matt Baram perform together in November’s Toronto Sketch Comedy Festival – which, if you’d like to take a step back in time, you can read about HERE.

BUT ON TO THE MATTER AT HAND!  It was my first time seeing them perform @The_NTOW’s #ScriptTease format.  If you haven’t heard anything about it, well… who better to explain it than the cast itself:

The Script Tease Project ’12 – YouTube

Tonight, the playwright responsible for penning the first few pages was Anusree Roy, award-winning playwright and performer.  And, well, since Glenn Sumi moderated the Talk Back after #ScriptTease tonight, I’m just going to direct you to his feature in NOW all about Anusree so you can find out more:

OK – so you know how the show works and you who the playwright is – good?  Good.

Anusree Roy’s play:  Starving

The play was set in a mud hut in Calcutta. Naomi is Babui, wife of Gokul (Matt), but she is pregnant with the child of Gokul’s brother, Komol (Ron.)  To feed his starving wife, child and himself, Komol has killed a cow and it is lying outside in the village square.  But they are Hindu and cows are sacred.  The stakes are high and…

You know what, if you want the play-by-play of the play, you really should read what the live Tweeters were getting up to during the show ->  Here check out the feed, it’s hilarious: @The_NTOW

What I will do is tell you about how amazing an experience to watch these guys and lady live.  The moment the scripts are put down and the lights come back up, you’re truly taken into their universe.  Even though there’s not but a rug, a stool and a tiny bag on stage, you’re right there in that hut – and those seemingly meaningless objects become the funniest rug, stool and bag you’ve ever seen in your life.  They seamlessly flow in and out from dramatic and deeply emotional moments into the silliest nonsense:

  • “Please! Let me have a fun fun barbeque!”    (This is Calcutta, remember – after two years of drought!)
  • “There is no fish curry.  Eat the rug.”

No!  There are too many of these…  Just read the Twitter feed!!!! DO IT!!! Read it!!!  Or better yet, go see one of their shows.   This run goes until June 3rd, so you still have plenty of time.

THEN you’ll see how amazing they are at character work – I imagine South Asian accents are probably pretty tough to pull off – but then again, I’m still new to Toronto.

THEN you’ll see what good chemistry looks like.

THEN you’ll see what truly great improv is.

“It’s Jazz.”

Seriously.  Go see this show.  Call 416-504-7529 for tickets, or get them by e-mail at info [at] passemuraille.on.ca.  (Comedy nerds might be happy to know that Scott Thompson’s Script Tease play will be performed on Saturday, June 2nd @ 8pm.)

I’d been meaning to go for a long time, but I finally got around to attending Toronto’s Indie Comedy Hour, a fun monthly half-booked, half-lottery open mic on College Street hosted by two awesome babes; Catherine McCormick and Arleigh Curran.  Annnnnd it pretty much restored my faith in humanity.

I had a great set, the crowd was amazing, the other comics were fantastic – a lot of whom I’d never seen before, which was also refreshing.  If you’re a comic in TO and you haven’t tried this room out, you’re just wrong.   And if you’re not a comic, and you need something to do on a Wednesday night once a month, you should definitely check this show out because I guarantee you will laugh.

I was asked to come back next month and perform on the booked portion of the show, which was amazing and I’m honoured.  Yeehaw!  Bring on Spring and Summer nights of comedy around TO.  It’s gonna a good Summer.

I’m being temporarily optimistic!

But speaking of the summer – I would like to organize a small road trip to Montreal to finally attend the Just For Laughs festival.  I’ve never been before and though I don’t have the money to afford it at this point, hopefully by July I’ll have made enough to sustain me in Montreal for at least 2 or 3 days of the festival.

Also, preliminary plans are in the works for a Fall tour with some fellow comics.  Stay tuned because that might be really awesome!

In the meantime, you can catch me tomorrow night, I’ll be performing at the Theatre Elusive with my pals The Young Geologists.  For more information, check out the Performances section of this blog!  Doooooooo it!

Clown College is officially over!!!!  (with the exception of graduation, which will be happening in June, but who cares about actually graduating??!?!  [I do, I made the Dean’s list!])  When I finished University, my Mom really wanted graduation photos, but I never got around to taking them.  She might get what she asked for this time around, except I need to warn her, she’s not allowed to complain about the giant red nose.

On a different note, as the impending sense of dread looms nearby, we were given one last educational tidbit before calling it quits for the summer.  Pam Thomas, casting agent, producer, manager (etc.,) who’s worked with Lorne Michaels at SNL, with KITH, with some of the SCTV crew and managed Maya Rudolph (etc.) came by to talk to us a bit about what happens après Humber…

Everything she said made sense:

  • Get an agent
  • Get a demo reel
  • Get a website
  • Move the fuck out of Canada

A one-on-one meeting with the guru turned into a one-on-two with someone who graduated 7 years ago and is currently touring the Yuk’s circuit while simultaneously working retail to get by. That’s what we call an “eye opener.”

I was worried there wouldn’t be much use for a blog that was meant to document my time at Comedy School after I graduated, but it looks like this is really just the beginning.   There’s probably enough in the self-reflective element of this business that will keep me (and hopefully you) interested… for the next 7 years at least!

And if not, here’s a picture of my cat:

Yay!  Peanut!