Tag: Toronto comedy

This is another post that’s several weeks in the making, but I wanted to make sure to put it out there before I go into more detail about those two days I spent working on a TV pilot for The Comedy Network because, in the end, it all goes back to one Mr. Jake Labow, Manager of Original Programming at CTV Globe Media/The Comedy Network and proprietor of shiny Nike sneakers.

Jake "my sneakers are shinier than yours" Labow

Labow’s an über-successful Humber Comedy alumni who came to speak to us at one of our “Prime Time” seminars.  I attended both last year and this year and the message I retain remained the same: work your ass off… and harass Rick Mercer, if necessary.

Factoid I found on the interwebs->  Labow made the decision to go into comedy while in the Amazon setting up medical clinics – he initially had wanted to become a doctor.   I like hearing about these stories because they help justify the decisions made by people like me who were originally on one path and decided to make the shift into lala-land.

I’ll spare you Labow’s entire biography and instead send you to this local story that pretty much sums everything up nicely: Doctor of Comedy.

Somewhere in there, people are saving lives!

What I will say is that Jake Labow is a do-er, there’s no doubt about that.  He was managing a comedy club while still studying at Humber, getting to know the ins and outs of the business hands even before graduating.  That work ethic, that drive seems to be what got him to where he is today.  On top!

Labow’s advice about the industry: know everything about everything.

His observations about the social atmosphere in the comedy subculture: “Everyone gets down on themselves and shits on everyone else.  Why not work together?”   Partnerships are key. (And they are!)

His tips on how to make it in the biz:  Be funny.  (Makes sense.)  Keep working at it and make it your focus.  “You can’t have any distractions.”  (Now here’s where, in the past – people have been known to tell us not to get involved in romantic relationships (because God forbid any comedian should find happiness in any ‘normal’ social convention!   Labow’s clarification:  If you are involved, your partner will have to realize that this is what you WANT and still be cool with it – with the lifestyle it breeds.)

Here are some of Labow’s tips on how to get more work:

  • Don’t be lazy
  • Take more courses
  • Find good acting teachers
  • Always evolve

By April, he suggests we all:

  • Have a resume
  • Have a job – anything, to help keep us alive while trying to be comics
  • Look for an agent
  • Do LOTS of shows
  • WRITE (Like the Dickens!) Spec scripts, show bibles, you name it!
  • Check out literary agencies
  • BE AMBITIOUS
  • Create your own opportunities
  • Be the creative force that drives others around you.

Why am I still blogging?  I should be out right now!  (No wait, it’s Saturday morning…  I can just keep writing.)

She's gonna be all sorts of sweaty by the time she gets to wherever she's going.

Some of us had the added treat of getting to meet with Labow for a one-on-one after the presentation – He’s ambitious as he is encouraging.  When discussing my future prospects, my goals for a career in comedy, he took what I said and kicked it up a notch:

“Why not try for the Daily Show?  You know the head writer for the Daily Show is Canadian, right?”

Touché Jake.  Goal = set.

It’s February and it’s reading week.  Over the past two days, my apartment has become a completely different entity; no longer the disastrous shit-pit it was only a week ago.  There’s now a functional bed (ie. one that won’t collapse just resting my school bag on it,) the futon has returned to an upright couch-like position and I feel like I have room to breathe again.

So naturally, I’m writing this blog post at Starbucks.

I felt it might be a good idea to ride the wave of positive feedback after a pretty good set at Yuk Yuk’s to more creative things.  Normally, I just let that happy feeling drain away as I embark on the one hour journey back home on the 501 streetcar.   And, although this location will be closed in 20 minutes, I intend to find somewhere else nearby to help me work out a few more pieces including a radio play I need to edit, which we will be performing at Comedy Bar on Monday March 5th (Mark your calendars.)

Many of us second years are currently working hard trying to shape our showcase sets for our end-of-year stand-up performances taking place the last Tuesday of March & the first Tuesday of April.   These are the shows Mark Breslin, industry professionals and Humber alum will be present to evaluate our performances.  Basically everything we’ve managed to pull together over the past two years of stand-up comedy classes,  on display for everyone to judge.

  • My slot’s on Tuesday, April 3rd.  If you don’t know why that date has any significance, you should probably go check my Facebook profile.

Nah, I’ll save you the trip.  That’s my birthday.  (Mark your calendars.)

It seemed like it would be a pretty stressful night to begin with before I knew it was going to be on my birthday.  Most people probably think, “Meh, it’s a day like any other.  What’s the big deal?”  But I don’t know.  I just feel like a lot’s riding on this because if I bomb, not only will I have made a fool of myself in front of my peers and potential future employers, but I’ll have done so on my BIRTHDAY!  The day of my birth!

That being said, if my showcase gets the response my set received tonight, I think I’ll be OK.  One thing’s for certain one way or the other -> The booze’ll be flowing big time the night of April 3rd.

—

STAY TUNED as my next post will hopefully have something to do with BRIE’S FIRST ADVENTURE IN TELEVISION.

It’s OK to be curious.

I had the privilege of working Front of House for the very talented first year comedy students’ Archival Show over the past few nights.  While they seemed anxious, excited, proud & stoked – I felt calm and reflective.  It reminded me of the simpler times – of my own first year…

(Flashback to Brie’s First Year Archival Show Performance)

Well, that was fun.  Now.  Back to the present.

I wish I’d taken home each of the programs so I could have pointed out which of the performances stood out to me, but I’m forgetful and I didn’t do that.  I guess I can point out some points I noticed overall about the performances – I’ll do it in order of how I saw them:

1)  Team Melody: What I would have given to be in this performance!  An ode to vaudeville with great little snippets & bits all throughout, each just as fun as the last.  Lots of individual stage-time for many people in the cast, lots of singing AND a LOT of great parts & focus for the LADY performers!  It flowed so nicely.  And Monty Python’s Penis Song was in there.  Hilarious.  I left singing that Eva Tanguay song for hours upon hours after both nights Melody’s group was performing, which I suppose is good and bad.  OMG the Bored Room sketch.  Too much.  SO good.  And the Lie Detector sketch.  LOVE Mr. Show.

2) Team Eric/Christel: Reminded me loads of our performance last year, structure-wise (which makes sense, considering the Tothmeister directed my section.) BUT… our transitions were better.  I’m just kidding.  But we had that weird onesie Bruno was crabwalking around in– However, this year they had an exceptionally well-choreographed Thriller transition, which was rather impressive. The Lumberjack song – a classic!   It was also fun to see the Lawrence Welk song revisited – and as funny as it was to see a lanky dude in drag, I still couldn’t get the image of Camille Cote out of my head singing around and chasing bubbles.   Oh, and OMG the Hunger Strike sketch is amazing.  LOVE Mr. Show.

3) Team Baumander:   Lewis’ group seemed more, disciplined, more sharp.  Does that make sense?  I don’t know.  All I know is that adding the CSI intro to the Wayne & Shuster bit was a stroke of genius.  And the Smothers Brothers song was super well done!  The Jerry Lewis opening was FANTASTIC!  Holy cow!  It seems that some people were more heavily featured in this group than the others.  You would see some performers a lot more than others.  I’d be curious to know Lewis’ decision-making process for allocating roles.  It was fun, again, to see some of the performances revisited from last year ie: the Marx Brothers one (well done!), Bronx Beat (still heard Rachel & Camille in my head the whole time) and the Hail Satan one, thought not my favorite… I just wanted to make sure I mentioned that I LOVE Mr. Show!

All in all, the performances were very well done and SO much fun to watch.  First years should congratulate yourselves on a job well done – and a good chunk of dough raised for LAMP.  I’m glad to have been part of the whole thing. 🙂

And now I’m filled with the desire to research and watch some classic archival sketch comedy over the reading week break!

The Toronto comedy scene can be quite competitive.  On any given night, you can be competing with several other comedy shows.  I’m only in year-two on the scene and I regularly get bombarded with Facebook invites to attend  multiple shows that conflict with each other time-wise.

Comedy can also be very selfish.  Your buddies could be putting on the show-of-a-lifetime, but if you’ve got even the remotest chance of getting some stage-time somewhere, you’re going to bid them good luck and be on your merry way.

This can be a bit discouraging for those just starting out – it’s hard to break into a scene that’s already saturated with show after show after show of more of the same.  But it warms me to know that one troupe in town will always make time for the newbies.

Humber alumni sketch troupe Vest of Friends canceled two of their regularly-scheduled weekly open-mic nights this month alone to discourage competition and encourage student and alumni attendance to both the second years’ Ten-Minute Play Festival and the first years’ ongoing Archival Show.

The Vests host an open-mic every Wednesday night at Celtes Pub in the Junction and it is, in my experience, predominantly attended by current and former Humber students.   It’s a great room to try out material amidst a group of people who truly support each other.

The room continues to thrive even after the Vests have left the hallways of Humber behind them and move on to greener pastures.  (Keeping my fingers crossed that they get a spot at Just for Laughs this summer.)

When I was in first year last year, I couldn’t help but be grateful every time the second year students attended our performances, knowing they didn’t really have to be there.  They’d been there in their first year, knew the score and had taken it upon themselves to support the newbies.  But that the Vests (and the few grads who attended the Archival Show tonight–notably Steph) attended a performance for people they rarely see and hardly know,  is really awesome — I think anyway.  I mean, at least they saw us in the hallway from time to time last year!

I’m going to do something that all of you in first year, and those of you in second year should do — out of respect for their support, because they canceled Sirens to see you and us, and because they’re just a damn funny sketch troupe — I’m going to go watch the Vest of Friends shows as often as I can.

Vest kind!

Don’t forget!   The first year Archival Show performances continue tomorrow and Friday night, 7pm @Alumnae Theatre on Berkeley.

Also, the Vest of Friends are performing at Comedy Bar  on Friday Feb 17th – so… yeah.   Remember what I said about “conflicting shows”   Uh, oops.

This post is several weeks in the making – this past January 30th, a Canadian comic icon, Don Ferguson, of the epically successful Royal  Canadian Air Farce came to speak to the students of the Humber School of Comedy.

Here’s what I got out of it:

When I got the music, I got a place to go!

The Air Farce got their start back in old days of r-a-dio…. radio.  Is that how you pronounce that?  Radio?  Ferguson and the late Roger Abbott met in Montreal, where they began performing sketch comedy together in front of live audiences.  They would perform in theatres before they got picked up to do radio, which was advantageous to them because they learned by the reception of the audience what went well, what didn’t go so well and ultimately what worked.

It was then that they understood how much the audience wanted topical, current material. *For those of you who don’t remember, Ferguson took the role of many a politician on Air Farce, including this one:*

(Oddly enough, a similar reaction to that which I had when leaving Ottawa.)

Here’s what you could do with a live audience and with radio vs. on TV with a laugh track:

  • You can hear the audience laughing;
  • You can be plugged in to what they think is funny & relevant;
  • You can go more places (it’s almost like animation the amount of places you can go! But CHEAPER!)
  • Radio gets into people’s head & taps into their imagination;
  • Did I mention how much cheaper it is than TV?  Because it’s cheaper.

Ferguson mentioned how comedy, and particularly Air Farce’s TV sketches, demands precision.  Something can be funny if written a certain way, but then if you re-word it, the message won’t come across quite as clearly.  THIS is something extremely relevant to all aspects of writing for comedy, and probably especially to stand-up.  I’m currently in the process of conducting some massive edits to my stand-up bits.  It’s true, sometimes it hurts to kill your babies, or at least to dismember them, but it ends up with more laughs, then bye bye toesies!

Don Ferguson’s method for making it as a comedian in Canada:

  1. Get a show

  2. Be a hit

  3. Remain a hit

It’s as easy as that!   The pressure, he said, isn’t off as soon as you get a show.

Get a Show

“You can’t let up for a MOMENT.  It’s like being a pro-athlete.”

Crossing the Border = Security

If any of us Humber kids are in the mindset that comedy will provide us with any kind of job security, Ferguson reminded us that his longest contract was one of five years.  That’s it.  Everything else was shorter than that, normally one or two-year contracts with Air Farce.  That might make some people nervous, but Ferguson believes security can breed complacency in a business like this one.  The anxiety, fear and nervousness is what a comedian needs to stay sharp.

How’s that for noble, eh?

Ferguson and Abbott were asked to work on the American sit-com TAXI, but they declined as they’d realized “what Air Farce was doing on Radio was more important to [Canadian] listeners than ANY sitcom would mean to US viewers.”

Writing for Andy Kaufman would have been pretty... fun?

___

At this point, we skipped into a Q&A with Ferguson in which he gave us tips, tricks, encouragement and advice.  Because I pay so much for tuition, I’m going to keep this segment of our Prime Time with Don Ferguson private.  If you want more details, be sure to check this book out; a work that will serve to remind us how relevant; how important Air Farce really was for Canadians ever since their days back in R-A-D-I-O.

... no big deal. (!!!)

(Next on the schedule… Brie needs to dye her hair again!)

So, I’m an idiot sometimes.  Like the times when I shove my foot so far down my throat you can smell nail polish out of my butt.

I’m damn clumsy sometimes.  Like times at open mics when I trip over the mic wire and cause a tragic delay and enables me to say things that force my foot so far down my throat… get it?  It’s a vicious cycle.

All unfortunates aside, last night I performed at a Friday night stand-up show run by some awesome first year Humber students.

O'Gracious Host: Ben Beauchemin

The atmosphere at room-launches is always great, in my experience.  (This is my second room-launch performance.)  Everyone’s so excited at the potential of getting something regular happening and performing with people they know/like/respect/find hilarious.

The show felt like just that, and on a Friday to boot!  It’s amazing to get the opportunity to perform on a Friday because most of the time, it’s hard to find a spot willing to accommodate amateur comedy on a Friday, the busiest drinking night of the week!  And amateur comedians and their friends are usually broke.  The economics just don’t fly.

Doing inappropriate things to poorly drawn paintings of the Three Stooges however, soars… apparently.

Congrats to Cassiee, Troy, Ben & all the comics who made O’Grady’s kick off a great success!  Hope you let me back on next time!

"I sent my brother to Bear Night."

As you may have gathered from the last late-night post reflecting my predictions of the inevitable discovery of my colleague’s talent by Hollywood or what have you, and the subsequent benefits of that association/friendship I shall reap, her play went rather well.  As did all performances Wednesday and Thursday nights.  Thus, our second year “Ten Minute Play Festival” and most of ours’ first attempt at play-writing comes to successful completion.

There were some neat ones, some serious ones, some non-verbal ones and it was always fun throughout to ask “which one of my colleagues wrote this one?” and to be pleasantly surprised at the answer.

Anyone who knows of my history as a tour guide at Vimy Ridge would not be surprised to discover I was the playwright of “the one about the WW1 brothel.”  It turned out well!  It was serious against a backdrop of ridiculousness; drunken and horny soldiers, Brandon in drag as the “Madame” of the establishment, Ron successfully pulling off a full “under the slip” boob grope to an unsurprised and perfectly-deadpan French whore, Ashley.  And my two leads, Kyle & Paige, keeping the romance and escape plan serious and honest while all this other nonsense is going around them.

It’s so rewarding to see the words you’d written and rewritten and rewritten performed on stage with the help of a seasoned director who can make your vision appear, and extracting emotional responses you hadn’t even considered in the writing process. There’s also some interesting feeling about seeing the actors work hard at memorizing their lines and becoming these characters; putting in the effort so that they too, can make your vision a reality.

I hope I was able to do that for the two roles for which I was cast – one as a middle-aged strict Russian dance teacher, propositioned by two jocks who just really need to pass their ballet exam to make the football team, at whatever cost. 😉 – and Gracie, the teen dog who’s getting too old to play pretend with her dog-brother and her human mother who wants nothing more but to create the most beautiful Dog Wedding in history.

Whether it was that or Romeo learning to appreciate his wing-man, or an English teacher getting his funk back. Getting past  St. Peter into Heaven or curing his son from his own online game persona.  Buttoning down and finally applying for that first job at No Frills, or  watching the Tooth Fairy struggle to get the job done…it sure was nifty to see the talent and creativity of my colleagues’ brainboxes come to life.

Bravo, all!

One day, when you’re rich and famous, all I’ll have to say is: “Yeah, I was in Ashley Moffatt’s play in comedy school” or “Yes, I was in an Ashley Moffatt production once. We go way back” and it will – hands down – get me some action.

… but in the meantime…

More than a few times in comedy school, people will ask me if I like comedians, typically stand-ups, about whom I know absolutely nothing.  It’s always brought up the same way: “Are you serious?  YOU haven’t heard of such and such? How can you even be in COMEDY, you IDIOT! ”

Whenever I feel ignorant about the existence or talent of some stand-up comedian I’m apparently missing out on, I have to keep reminding myself that for the six years prior to my enrollment at Humber, I was learning about the political theorists influencing rebellion in the time of Louis XVI and certainly not the comedy of Louie C.K.

What guys?  You’ve never heard of Michel Foucault?   You haven’t critically analyzed his comparison of modern society to Jeremy Benthan’s “Panopticon” prison design?  Psssht!  We can’t be friends anymore.

I was a different kind of nerd, and it’s taking me some time to adapt to this new field of Comedy Nerdom.

The point I’m making is twofold:

  • First, the fact of the matter is, I’ve been out of the game a little while, and I’m only getting back in.  I was never a super-fan of stand-up comedy.  I was always into sketch, and my background is in improv.  So give me a break.  Instead of making me feel like a moron for not knowing someone like Andy Kindler, maybe recommend I go see some of his stand-up on Letterman, or on YouTube, or at the Comedy Bar and;
  • Second, I saw Andy Kindler at the Comedy Bar last weekend

I didn’t get to take any photos, so for any of you who read this blog and like me a few weeks ago, have no idea who Andy Kindler is, feel free to check THIS out.

The program coordinator of our Comedy Program is apparently a big BIG fan of Andy Kindler’s and arranged to have him perform a special show only for the students in our program.  We packed the Comedy Bar pretty well to the brim.  After his hilarious performance (pausing briefly to explain why we didn’t understand some of his references, and why he wasn’t getting the response he wanted on certain jokes – which was hysterical,) Kindler held back for a Q&A with us Humber rats.

He answered a question about how his musical background (he was a classically-trained violinist) helped train his comic rhythm and warned of the damages of censoring one’s thoughts in the writing process (you could be losing a few good gems.)  Also, he mentioned not to worry too much about where your career is and to focus rather on improving on your own terms (OK, Mom & Dad? – //jokes// they’re actually really supportive.)

Kindler mentioned a lot of other good stuff too, but to tell you all about it would be like betraying a sacred comedy oath.  And by that I mean, I’m too tired to activate my brain to remember everything he talked about a WHOLE week ago…Yeesh.

If you were hoping this post would be a review of the Kindler show, I do apologize.  But you can go HERE for that.

Although I’ll try my best to give you my own review:

  • My throat hurt from laughing so much.  THE END.

Good enough?

Now go find out about Foucault.