Valentine’s Day, Schmalentine’s Day – chase your champale hangover with Pump Trolley’s Stolen Hearts show on February 15th. Pump Trolley is a fresh-faced comedy collective of eight endearing and talented folks who produce hilarious shows at The China Cloud. Read on to learn about sunflowers, dreams, and what happens when you push just enough.
Sad Mag: Tell me a bit about yourself.
Nick Harvey-Cheetham: I am an improviser, performer and student originally from Toronto. When I was around 9 years old, I realized I was never going to make it to the NBA so I decided to pursue other things.
Ember Konopaki: I’m an improvisor from Edmonton. I’ve been doing improv for almost 8 years and only started doing sketch when I moved to Vancouver in 2009.
Tom Hill: I’m a writer, comedian, improviser, marketing guy with history in the province of Saskatchewan. I’ve spent a good deal of my life doing unusual jobs while making jokes on the side.
SM: What is Pump Trolley?
NHC: Pump Trolley (the group) is a collective of writers, improvisers, musicians, filmmakers and all-around creative folks who decided to write and perform a regular comedy show at The China Cloud Theatre.
TH: A “pump trolley” is a cart operated by two people. We’re a sketch comedy group operated by eight. Otherwise we’re about the same.
SM: Who comprises Pump Trolley?
NHC: Pump Trolley is: Warren Bates, Nik Bunting, Ember Konopaki, Nick Harvey-Cheetham, Tom Hill, Alex Hudson, Devin Mackenzie and Tegan Verheul with frequent musical accompaniment from the endlessly talented Devon Lougheed.
TH: Whole bunch of swell goofs.
SM: When and how was Pump Trolley started?
TH: Most of us started performing together through UBCimprov, where we’d been together for years. We had a real treat of a time so we took it to the streets and for six months in 2009 did a new show every week at the Cottage Bistro. We’ve since had a few beautiful members move away to pursue acting/genius- ing, and Warren and Ember moved here and joined us.We did every two weeks for a while in 2010, then dialed it in by the summer of last year and really got settled as an eight-person thang.
NHC: I still have no idea how we were able to put on a show every week.
SM: What do you like best about working with each other?
TH: We have this weird joke we’ve been making with each other where we sort of mash our hands/forearms together to mimic what I think is supposed to be two pieces of raw meat slapping together. I like that a lot.
NHC: If I had to pick my seven best friends, it would probably be the seven other people in Pump Trolley. If I had to pick the seven people I want to impress the most, it would be the same seven. This strange fusion of a trusting, open environment with a collective desire to produce strong well-developed work really lets us push our ideas to interesting places.
EK: Everyone is committed to creating great shows. People are selfless and will write pieces for other members, take creative notes, etc. Plus, they all make me laugh.
SM: What sorts of things/situations/people inspire sketches?
NHC: A lot of our ideas come from some marriage of the mundane and the absurd. At the end of the day, though, any idea that makes us more than half of us laugh is a good idea. We are a laughter-based democracy.
EK: A huge variety! One sketch came to me in my dream, another time I thought a specific line of dialogue I heard was funny so I built a sketch around it. I like taking fairly mundane experiences and trying to make them funny.
TH: I’m primarily inspired to write by needing to write when the time comes. Sure I write things down ahead of time, but when push comes to shove I’m really just squeezing my sphincter until jokes come out.
SM: How do you find the sketch comedy scene in Vancouver?
TH: We seem to be settled right into what I would call the alternative comedy scene in Vancouver. Lots of drugs. One time we were guesting on a show and the host comes up to me with a crack rock and tells me to put it in my eye. I was like “well, fuck, I guess this is Vancouver comedy.”
NHC: I think a lot of the interesting sketch and improv shows in Vancouver have a specific D.I.Y. charm. Creative people are getting together and starting their own projects left and right, not for money or fame but for the simple joy of making people laugh. A lot of sketch comedians in Vancouver are just starting to discover each other, which is really exciting.
SM: What was one of your favourite performances or moments as a performer?
EK: Anytime anyone laughs at something I come up with – that will always feel good.
TH: Nik and I did a sketch in which we enacted the full life cycle of two sunflowers. It required us to don a half dozen full-sized sunflowers of my
neighbour’s. The sketch builds up for the first half with us yelling the sunflowers’ ambitions and eventually egotistical rants, before hitting our peak and groaning our way to the floor over another minute or so. Felt pretty damn good. That, and when Devin and I hit each other in the balls for eight minutes to open our first show at the China Cloud.
SM: Any upcoming performances?
NHC: After Stolen Hearts (Feb 15th at The China Cloud), Pump Trolley’s next big show is Tuesday, April 19th (also at The China Cloud).
EK: The Sunday after Stolen Hearts we’re creating two long-form improv pieces as part of the Launch Party of the Neanderthals Arts Festival. We create an “inspiration package” for each set and base everything off of those. February 20 at the Cultch, 7pm and 9pm show times.
TH: Just come to Stolen Hearts, ok? OK!? God.
STOLEN HEARTS
Presented by Pump Trolley
The China Cloud
Tuesday, February 15th 9:00 pm
RSVP on Facebook
Photograph: Rob Anderson
Artist Rob Fougere graces the cover of Sad Mag’s Issue 6. Here’s a preview of Michelle Reid’s article, in which Rob discusses the logistics of repurposing vintage photography. Get a copy in print at the Anza Club tonight!
“I try not to take credit for photos I didn’t take. I’ll certainly take credit for printing a found negative, because I’m making choices about how to print the negative, and I feel that’s fair, but I’ll credit it to ‘unknown photographer’ or ‘found negative.’” Throughout the conversation he re- turns to the importance of making art public, and says, “I like to think that some of the original photographers, especially the photojournalists, would be proud to have their photos hanging in a gallery.”
-Michelle Reid
Photographs: Eric Thompson
Check out a sneak peek of this Issue 6 article by Kristina Campbell, in which she discusses manual labour with Carolyn Bramble and Kate Braid.
Bramble’s success in her trade is partly thanks to trailblazing tradeswomen like Vancouverite Kate Braid. When Braid found herself working as a labourer in 1977, she was one of just a handful of BC women in similar positions; she went on to become a rare female journey carpenter.
Over and over again, the biggest difficulty she faced on the job site was fitting in as a ‘man’ among men, Braid says. She became adept at discouraging the damning damsel treatment.
“Some guys will try and carry your lumber for you,” she says. “They’re actually trying to be helpful in the only role they know. So one of the first things you have to do is make it clear that ‘I’m here as an equal.”
-Kristina Campbell
Photography: Brandon Gaukel
Issue 6 of Sad Mag is fast approaching! Until the release party this Thursday, read an excerpt from Kaitlin McNabb’s article on the Chinatown Casino.
In between the discount T-shirt store and sparse strip mall in Chinatown is an abandoned building once ripe with insurance bureaus. The doors are barred, the windows are papered and graffitied, and the fragrant musk of regret lingers at each entrance. But above the cracked plastic awning hangs a worn neon sign. Its colour, slightly faded, still glimmers. Its relaxed, scrawled lettering seems the epitome of a good time—Chinatown Casino Third Floor.
-Kaitlin McNabb
Photography: Krista Jahnke
As a playwright, it’s never popular to speak the words “I don’t like watching Shakespeare” aloud. So, instead, I’ll just put them in print. It’s not that I don’t like the plays, it’s just that once I’ve read them once, seen them once, I’m happy to retire them.
The Comedy of Errors, itself a rather structurally flawed play, happens to be one of the few Shakespeares of which I’ve seen multiple productions. So boy did these students have to work hard to win this curmudgeonly audience member over. And work they did.
The ever-impressive Studio 58 students, combined with the magic of director Scott Bellis and a dream design team have created the most refreshing, original, engaging, quirky and laugh-out-loud funny piece of theatre I’ve seen all season.
There’s so much to take in: the breathtaking opening movement sequence, Pam Johnson’s grungy Steam Punk set, Naomi Sider’s colourful and ever-surprising costume design, Shawn Sorensen’s Tim Burton-esque underscoring, Ital Erdal’s ever-complimentary lighting, Bellis’ inventive staging and the perfect pace for a show that, in writing, can drag on for an eternity. Never in my life have I urged an audience to run, not walk, to see Shakespeare – until now.
If you’re not familiar with the play, as you can imagine, there are a lot of mistaken identity errors that lead to laughs (see play title), mostly stemming from characters having twins they don’t know about and the surrounding fifth business confusing them for one another over and over and over again.
But there’s real comedy here, certainly in the leads, but more prominently in the strong character actors who make of the periphery of the play: Noah Rosenbaum and Joel Ballard’s work as servants make for some of the evening’s greatest laughs, as do Adele Noronha and Carlos Rodriguez’s villagers.
That characters with very little actual dialogue can steal such focus is a testament that the instructors at Studio are doing something right. It should come as no surprise that the school has been noted as Canada’s foremost acting school time and time again.
Comedy of Errors
Studio 58
Remaining Performances:
January 27 — February 20
8:00 pm Tuesdays – Saturdays, 3:00 pm Saturday – Sunday
Call 604 992?2313 to make reservations
Photographs by David Cooper.
Ryan Beil talks about life as an actor in Sad Mag‘s upcoming Issue 6 but you’ll have to wait until the launch party to see Monika Koch’s accompanying illustration. Here’s a sneak peek in the mean time:
Any opportunity to act is one Beil will happily take—with the exception of commercial characters that people will hate. “It was a spiced rum commercial, a classic ‘I’m a funny guy and I say something and then beautiful women are everywhere going woo!’” he explains. “It was just embarrassing, but at the same time, if MTV wanted to pay me ten million dollars to do the next American Pie movie, I would drop my pants. Life’s situational.”
– Rebecca Slaven
Photographs: Tina Krueger-Kulic
Members of the Chor Leoni Men’s Choir will be giving a special performance at the release of Sad Mag‘s Issue 6! Check out a sneak peek of this article, in which the choir’s Director of Communications, Bruce Hoffman chats with Daniel Zomparelli.
“We’re a classical choir that is focused first on the art and the music: sexuality doesn’t come into play,” Hoffman says. Masculinity finds a new space in the men’s choir: strong, powerful voices and hard work make a great candidate for the ensemble. “I think that any man that is comfortable enough to sing is pretty comfortable in their sense of who they are,” Hoffman says. “I strongly believe that it’s the way that the world should be. If men sang more often together rather than finding out ways of killing each other, the world would be a better place.”
– Daniel Zomparelli
Photographs: Tina Krueger-Kulic
Pierre Bernanose engages in barber shop talk with Sad Mag for Issue 6, which launches Thursday, February 10th at the Anza Club. Check out a sneak peek of this article by Jeff Lawrence.
I attended university in Paris and we locked the dean in his office. He was trapped in his office and couldn’t get out for close to a week and a half. I got caught – they sent the army, so I was expelled from university. My mother was very, very upset, so because of this I came to Canada. I studied to become a barber in 1973, in Edmonton. It was an eight-month course. I was trying to figure out what I could do without going to school for four years. I thought, “Barber, huh? That sounds pretty good.”
– Pierre Bernanose, as told to Jeff Lawrence.
Photographs: Grant Harder
You can’t argue with the premise of 100% Vancouver – turning statistics about our city into performance.
100 typical Vancouverites, chosen carefully to represent the different demographics of Vancouver to create a portrait of the city (drawn 1/6000th to scale), enter a stage set up with signs marking Vancouver neighbourhoods. They introduce themselves to the audience and describe a precious object that they have brought with them before standing in their neighbourhood. The performers range in age by about ninety years and the youngest children bring stuffed animals or iPods. The older performers have family photos and keepsakes. The oldest participant holds a century-old lamp.
I admit that I’m skeptical. After all, I see a mixed cohort of Vancouverites clutching at various objects every day, but it’s not theatre – it’s called riding the bus. And while the concept is clever, the execution is flawed – some performers are visibly fatigued by all the stage crossing, and the youngest children aren’t sure what to do. But it’s impossible not to be genuinely moved while watching your neighbours reveal personal, intimate details.
Performers take turns asking questions to the audience and the performers about their lives and beliefs, asking them to identify or not with the statement. Signs appear on either side of the stage, reading “ME” or “NOT ME,” and the performers flow towards the side that describes them. Sometimes the performers stand together and raise their hands, or sit around the stage. A camera projects an image of the performers from above, creating a human pie chart.
100% Vancouver reveals the strangeness of impersonal, abstract statistics. A question like, “Have you suffered from a mental illness?” or “Have you been a victim of violence?” is divorced from the people it describes when rendered as a percentage. But the individuals on stage are the data, and the audience and performers are connected by transcendent moments of recognition and comfort.
Statistics become the tool for building community, reminding us that we have been a community with a shared and complex history all along. The atmosphere is reverent, respectful, and non-judgmental. If these audience memebers have ever written a hateful comment on a CBC article about addiction or incarceration, you wouldn’t know it from their steady, heartfelt applause.
100% Vancouver
Part of the PuSh Festival
SFU Woodward’s Theatre
Remaining Performances:
January 21st & 22nd, 7:00 pm
Photographs by Theatre Replacement (Vancouver).