The audience at the Roxy will have a chance to roar with laughter on Saturday night.
Laurie Elliot and Arthur Simeon will be taking to the stage in a Stand-Up Comedy Showcase.
Elliot took time with Bayshore News to talk about her comedic style, saying “I do a lot of relationship stuff. I like to tell stories. I’m a bit of a weirdo… I get a little bit strange.”
Of her co-headliner, she says “Arthur is 100% absolutely hilarious.”
She says that they work well together because they are two different styles of comedy, and because of that difference, they don’t tend to overlap in their material.
Elliot, who is a Montreal native, has a background in stand-up, and in writing comedy for children’s cartoons, and she has experience with lending her voice to cartoon characters.
She also takes part in The Debaters with Steve Patterson, and also played Bonnie, the character who married Patrick McKenna’s character Harold on The Red Green Show.
When talking about switching between kids’ TV and stand-up for grown-ups, she says “I love the fact that I can exercise each muscle doing one or the other.”
She explains that if there’s a certain joke or scenario that doesn’t quite translate to a written script, it can be reworked to be part of a routine or vice-versa.
Throughout her career, she’s taken home a Canadian Comedy Award for Best Female Stand-Up, and another for the Best Performance by a Female – Television category for Almost Audrey.
In all of her years of stand-up, she’s toured throughout North America and Europe, and still can’t quite explain what makes Canadians, and the idea of Canadian comedy, so unique.
“I don’t know exactly, I really don’t. I’ve thought a lot about it a lot,” she says. “Part of me thinks the influence of British humour and American humour has helped cultivate our own sense of humour like there have been contributions from both.”
She says that although choosing comedy as a profession perhaps isn’t the easiest choice, she explains that she loves the freedom it gives her to be creative and work at her own pace.
“I can go out at night and workshop jokes that I wrote… It’s my fault if I bomb, but it’s also my fault if I get a great response and it makes me very happy and you like that instant gratification if you can get it.”
She also talked about the catharsis of comedy.
During her sister’s illness and death five years ago, Elliot had cancelled shows.
But she found that when she was working on her material, and performing, she was able to forget about how sad she was.
She wants to pass that along to her audience, especially considering the adage that “laughter is the best medicine”.
“[Comedy] is creative, and you make people happy if you do it as best you can. And you might be improving someone’s day, and maybe even their health.”
The Stand-Up Comedy Showcase will be hitting the stage at 7:30.
