ROB MURRAY: Comedian Pete Zedlacher is back in Canmore, performing at artsPlace for Friday Night Comedy. It’s a free live stream this Friday night. How have you been riding out this pandemic? I imagine this must be a tough go for a comedian.

PETE ZEDLACHER: It’s the worst chapter in my comedy career, for sure. We were in the midst of our national comedy tour, the Snowed In Comedy Tour, and it got shut down March 14th. I’ve been quarantined here in Calgary ever since. I’ve done a handful of gigs here and some Zoom shows, but very little live performance. It’s been a real test of my mental fortitude.

RM: This show coming up here on Friday is going to be a lot different than the last time you were here. I was at your last show at artsPlace. It was a packed house and it was hilarious. Did you have a good time the last time you were in Canmore?

PZ: I sure did. I love that beautiful little theatre. You get a real sense of community pride around that theatre. This time, I’m coming back solo and we’re doing a live stream. We’re going to set it up so people online can check it out.

RM: I’d imagine that a lot of a comedian’s show has to do with audience feedback. You tell a joke, they laugh, and that gives you energy to go on or it gives you some direction. Is it going to be weird performing to essentially an empty house and a whole bunch of people viewing from home?

PZ: I’m terrified of this idea. I have no clue how it’s going to fly. It’s going to be stand-up comedy in a vacuum, basically. Some friends are going to be socially distanced and safely away from me, but yeah, it’s going to be like a bit of a rehearsal in front of nobody, in front of the mirror. But I know the jokes are hilarious already. We’re good there, but performing in front of no audience is going to be very strange.

RM: What are some other ways you’ve been creative with your comedy and what have you been up to during this downtime in your career?

PZ: I’ve been doing a YouTube series with a friend of mine who is a computer genius, and just trying to create content on our own without being able to tour. This quarantine and pandemic has been under the guise of “Hey, we’re going to be back soon. Let’s start planning for the tour.” Then another wave of COVID hits that gets pushed off again. It’s just been a constant chasing of that rabbit down the road and we don’t seem to catch up, but I believe we’re in the final moments of this COVID and we’ll be back in 2021 with real shows again.

RM: Your signature series, The Snowed In Comedy Tour – is that off the table for this year? Are you finding other ways to do it?

PZ: I think officially we are canceled for 2020 now. In 2021, it was looking like we were going to do a scaled down version of the show so we could have the social distancing and the audience, and that seems to have faded away. So now we’re looking at possibly summer. It is what it is, but we roll with the punches.

RM: I hate to break the news to you, but skiing is kind of touch and go in the summer here.

PZ: The whole idea of the Snowed In Comedy Tour was just an excuse to get out there and go skiing and snowboarding. If we do it in the summer it’s just going to be four pals getting together and doing the biggest show we can.

RM: The picture of you on artsPlace has you standing in your ski gear on a slope in the middle of the summer, so I guess it’s kind of fitting.

PZ: That’s right. That was a photo shoot we did in Toronto and I believe it was in the high 20s, so I was dangerously close to expiring.

 

Filed under: artsPlace, Canmore, Comedy Night