Being funny and surviving the Fringe circuit

How do you know when something’s funny? UVic theatre alumni Chris Wilson and Peter Carlone get a pretty good idea when they’re writing comedy sketches together. The first sign? If they’re falling on the floor laughing at it themselves!

But even these now-seasoned funny guys, who were nominated for the Comedy Network’s Canadian Comedy Award for Best Sketch Troupe this year, say that “You never really know it’s funny ‘til you play it in front of an audience… but if we’re laughing out loud, it’s been a pretty good indicator that they will be too. We’ve learned to trust that instinct,” says Wilson.

After graduating in 2008, the two best friends morphed into the comedy duo and started doing professionally what they began in university: writing comedy together. They found that their harebrained sense of humour, absurd pop culture references and laugh-out-loud physical gags had a real following. “Our first show was met with just enough success to keep us going. So the following year, we retooled our script and took it on a full cross Canada Fringe tour.”

They now have four smash-hit shows that have toured across the North American Fringe festival circuits and sketch comedy festivals garnering awards like the “Just for Laughs Best of Comedy” in Montreal, “Best of the Fest” in Winnipeg and “Pick of the Fringe” in Vancouver.

It’s a busy life on the road, touring from one Fringe to the next, from Montreal to Victoria from May through September, with other SketchFests from Seattle to Chicago during the rest of the year. With almost 200 performances under their belt, that’s a lot of fast food and a lot of time spent together. “We’re pretty much like brothers now. We fight like brothers too, but Peter’s just like family to mine and vice versa,” says Wilson.

From Oct. 11 to 20, Wilson and Carlone get a rare opportunity. They’ll return to their alma mater and to the Department of Theatre stages to be guest presenters in the annual “Spotlight on Alumni,” a program that welcomes graduates back to present current work as part of the Phoenix Theatre season. They’ll be presenting their third play, “Peter N’ Chris and The Mystery of the Hungry Heart Motel,” where the dynamic duo takes on a psycho-killer and spoofs the entire “whodunit” detective story genre, with hilarious shout-outs to The Hardy Boys and The Shining.

While here, they’ll also have an opportunity to mentor  current students and share what they’ve learned at talkback sessions after the preview shows. What will they tell these younger versions of themselves? “I would tell them to try every different kind of theatre you can, because need to find what you love doing, and then do it!” says Wilson “University is a unique time in your life. You should make as many mistakes as you can while you’re at the Phoenix.”

Referencing his many collaborations with other theatre grads as well as his friendship, now comedy partnership, with Carlone, Wilson adds his other words of advice, “The people you go to school with now are the people you may be working with in the future, and you never know which one of them it might be! Make good friends while you’re here. You may just have them for life.”

“Peter N’ Chris and The Mystery of the Hungry Heart Motel” runs at the Phoenix Theatre from October 11-20, 2012. Visit www.phoenixtheatres.ca or call 250-721-8000 for more information.