If you’ve browsed elsewhere on this website apart from the front page, (or the article about the WWI brothel, which continues to get more hits than any other post,) you’ll know that my brother Nick and I have been working on a podcast over the past few weeks that deals with the ongoing struggles creative types face on their journey to accomplish their artistic goals.
This month’s episode is no exception as we delve further into overcoming rejection, navigating networking events and just getting it done!
If you like it, and you’re interested in sharing your creative struggles with us on an upcoming episode, feel free to write to us at constantstrugglepod@gmail.com.
*** *Note: the books we referred to during this episode are:
Save the Cat!: The Last Book on Screenwriting You’ll Ever Need, by Blake Snyder
Elephant Bucks: An insider’s Guide to Writing TV Sitcoms, by Sheldon Bull
The Nerdist Way: How to Reach the Next Level (In Real Life), by Chris Hardwick
It’s Sketchfest season again everybody! Hooray and celebrate! This year, I am not working quite as diligently with the organizers as I’ve done in the past, mostly because I’m too busy with the day job to sustain all the evenings of hilarity and drinking and fun times. Fun times are exhausting, you guys. Anyway, I have been checking some of the shows and so far they have been GREAT!
Speaking of great, I wrote another article for She Does the City and it 100% has to do with Sketchfest, so please go ahead and check it out:
The idea was that I interview all the all-female troupes (Templeton Philharmonic, Ladystache, 2 Weird Ladies, LadyBusiness & She Said What) participating in this year’s Toronto Sketch Comedy Festival & find out more about them, their style, and why the readers of shedoesthecity.com should check them out. It was a lot of fun. I quickly became aware of why podcasts are so popular, because interviewing other comedians is really fun and insightful. I wouldn’t want to do it all the time, because transcribing takes a LOT of time, but the sitting down and talking to funny and interesting, hardworking and genuinely great people was a lot of fun!
Tonight, I’m off to check out the Kids in the Hall (if only 16 year-old Brie knew how many opportunities she would get in the future to see these guys live) as they do a live reading of their film Brain Candy. It’s going to be great! I love how they all hated one another when they made this movie, and now they’re revisiting it as older, cooler buds.
As the festival continues, I will attempt to post more, but don’t just sit here and read. Make sure you go out and see as many shows as possible. This is seriously such a great comedy festival, a wonderful place to study styles and methods of performing the art and basically just a really sick party.
My highlights of the fest so far are:
Bri-Ko (but they’ve already went back to Chicago, so you missed them. Sorry. Check them out if ever you’re in Chicago though, because they blew my MIND!)
Peter n’ Chris (they’re done with Sketchfest too, but you CAN check out this video pilot for their new webseries thing coming out, which is a lot of fun. It’s called Hardly Men and you can catch a glimpse here:
It’s the first time Humber contributes to our troupe (Free Food, anybody?);
We’re performing ALL NEW sketches;
It’s Halloween!
One of my sketches got in;
We might make some money if enough people come, which will help us with future projects, etc.
We were also selected as the one troupe from Humber to be submitted into the Toronto Sketch Comedy Festival (which my class friends and colleagues are quick to point out is only due to the fact that we are currently the only performing-sketch troupe in the program so far this year. To which I say: Default performance in SketchFest is better than no performance at all.)
Why this is exiting:
Two of the Kids in the Hall are performing in this festival. OMG!;
Other AMAZING sketch troupes are performing in this festival;
Our program coordinator at Humber, Andrew Clark, likes us enough to recommend us to the organizers;
We get to showcase 15 minutes of our best material to date (none of which was written by me… sigh.);
We get unlimited access to see all the shows in the festival;
Vest of Friends got to do it last year, and this year they might make it to Just For Laughs… just saying…;
Etc.
For everything there is to be excited about, it’s difficult because there are always some people ready to downplay the achievement, however meager it may be in our just-beginning careers and for what purpose? I simply do not understand. Are they still in that “it’s cool to be apathetic” stage? Do they simply not want to be a part of this but feel obligated to stay on? But again, for what reason? I just don’t get it.
I wonder if it’s to do with the fact that I’m older. Or that apathy has naver been in my nature. I crave DOING. I crave things to give a shit about! Maybe it’s relative to what you put in. I put a lot into LaughDraft, creatively and professionally. I do a lot of the organizational aspects of it, I try to keep our meetings on track. I often meet with Andrew to discuss Humber’s involvement and have done since the very beginning. Because of that, I expect the same enthusiasm from all the others. Here’s the problem. It’s not them. It’s me. Maybe I just have unrealistically high expectations. When something excites me, I expect it to excite the others in the group. And it does some. And others not.
And who cares, at the end of the day? It’s no big deal. But I do. That’s the problem.
clown college confessions 