I challenge anyone to get through a conversation with Canadian comedian Pete Zedlacher without laughing. It’s impossible to do. For example, when I had him on the phone to talk about his upcoming performance here for the Snowed In Comedy Tour, he stops me in the middle of a question after I mention Louis C.K.
“I’ve never masturbated in front of somebody,” Zedlacher says, deadpan. “Without full permission.”
As with the humour in any joke, that one was subjective. Some would be offended by it; others wouldn’t be. Zedlacher says a key to him making people laugh is using relatable material from his life that he thinks is funny, but he acknowledges that sometimes funny material is controversial.
“Comedy comes from experience,” he says. “I try to live a fun, exciting life, where interesting things happen to me and I can share the stories on stage.”
The Snowed In Comedy Tour this year also features, among others, Erica Sigurdson, Toby Hargrave, and Dan Quinn. Zedlacher says his jokes for the tour will be new; he adds that he’s tough on himself when it comes to his jokes.
“Selfishly, I always want to do a show that I would laugh at,” he says. “I’m my own worst critic—‘Is this funny? Am I trying to win people over with this joke?’ All these critiques that I have of myself are the editing process that I go through before I put it on stage. I’ll bring things up on stage that make people very uncomfortable, but as long as you bring it around and make people laugh and give them your point of view, you can pretty much do anything you want on stage.”
Zedlacher— who won the Canadian Comedy Award for Best Male Stand-up in 2006, which he describes as “the manifestation of a dream come true”—says audiences understand him and his style, so he doesn’t run into being misunderstood on stage very often.
“I’m in a very fortunate position now, after 21 years of stand-up comedy,” he says. “People know me. People come out and see me again and again; they know the humour that I’m going to bring to the stage. Especially on Snowed In, these towns all across western Canada that we’ve come to two, three, seven, 10 times in a row now, they know us, so they know what kind of show we’re going to put on.”
But that wasn’t always the case for Zedlacher. He says he worked extremely hard early in his career to get to where he is now, and he always had a vision of being the best comedian in Canada.
“After 21 years of comedy, I kind of know what’s going to make me laugh and what’s going to make an audience laugh,” he says. “It comes from a lot of hard work and a lot of dedication.”
Zedlacher is not one to write his entire act out the way some comedians do. When he gets an idea, he jots it in his notes and trusts that, at this point in his career, he’ll know how to deliver it. That freedom keeps his shows fresh and personable, he says.
“What works best for me is I have the nugget of a joke—something funny happens to me, or I observe something that I think is stand-up comedy—and I put down just a little bullet note in my notes and then I, literally, just hit the stage and just try to work it out on stage,” he says.
And with this relaxed approach comes spontaneity: Zedlacher says that each time he tells a joke, it’s a little different.
“I always try to find a new way to approach the joke each time, keep it fresh so it’s not stale. It’s not a rehearsed show,” he says. “I think comics that get into writing out every word of their act, they’re performing a performance rather than actually giving a performance.”
Snowed In Comedy Tour
8 pm Saturday, January 13
$25 student tickets, Royal Theatre
rmts.bc.ca