After two long years of pandemic worry, disappointment, frustration and anger, and pretty much everything in between, who couldn’t use a good laugh right about now?
Simply put, it’s time to again come together in person for a shared comedic experience. To that end, klusterfork entertainment is returning to Peterborough’s Market Hall Performing Arts Centre on Friday, April 1st to do what it does so very well — help us shut out all the noise for a few hours and just laugh.
An evening of improv comedy, “April Fools’ Gold – The Joke’s On Us” will see Canadian improv superstars Patrick McKenna and Linda Kash joined by a cast of friends who know how to bring the funny: Second City alumni Kerry Griffin, Jennine Profeta, and Dave Pearce with Peterborough performers Pat Maitland and Megan Murphy. Local pianist Rob Phillips and musical funnyman Dan Fewings will also join the merry mix.
Advance tickets to the 8 p.m. performance are $33 ($23 for students) or $43 for cabaret seating and are available now at the Market Hall box office, by phone at 705-749-1146, or online at tickets.markethall.org. If the show doesn’t sell out, tickets will also be available for $39 at the door. All ticket prices include HST and fees.
In advance of the show, klusterfork founders and partners Kash, Maitland, and Burns have launched a unique “pay it forward” initiative, where people can purchase front-row tickets for essential service and frontline workers. The initiative launches on Wednesday, March 9th.
“When we were thinking of doing the show, we thought ‘How can we do something for the people who have been getting us through the pandemic for the last two years?'” explains Burns who, together with Maitland and Kash, has reserved the entire front row of 16 seats for just that purpose.
“There may be people who can’t make it to the show or are not ready to go to a live venue yet, but would like to buy tickets and give them to essential workers. Just call Market Hall, say ‘I want to pay it forward’, and they’ll put the tickets aside for the names provided.”
As Maitland puts it, “We’re going to serve up some laughs to those who served us.” She adds klusterfork will use its social media platforms to ask its followers for nominations of those they’d like to see tickets go to.
“April Fools’ Gold is a two-act show filled with improv — a comedy show of sketches and scenes but, instead of them being scripted, they’re made up on the spot,” explains Maitland, a Second City trainee with an extensive background in writing for broadcast, journalism, and consulting.
“The audience participates by giving us some parameters when we ask for a setting or a relationship, and then away it goes.”
Maitland, Burns, and Kash founded klusterfork entertainment in 2019 with the intention of producing live comedy shows as well as hosting workshops focused on various aspects of the entertainment industry. The upcoming improv marks the third klusterfork has presented at Market Hall, preceded in November 2019 by “It’s Christmas!” that also featured McKenna and, in February 2020, by “It’s Winter. Still” — klusterfork’s last in-person show before the pandemic hit.
When the pandemic brought live performing to an abrupt halt, klusterfork began hosting 23 Learn OnLine (LOL) workshops that brought together top Canadian onstage and offstage talents with participants from across North America. But as rewarding as that experience was for klusterfork’s founders, the prospect of again performing live has them chomping at the bit.
But more than that, it’s going to be a long-awaited treat for their audience.
“It’ll be the first time they’ve been out in a long time — there’s going to be some cabin fever yelling going on,” says McKenna, who knows a thing or two about cabin fever having portrayed the quirky Harold Green in The Red Green Show over the course of its 15 seasons.
“It’s going to be an exciting night letting everybody get all their frustrations out,” he says. “Letting us dramatize those frustrations for them so they don’t get into any trouble or get fired.”
“Improv only works when we all work together. That’s something we can pull out of the last couple of years. We’re better when we work together. When we fight each other, when we argue amongst each other, we get nowhere. It’ll be a night of exploratory emotions where people work together and move things forward. There’s such an unspoken need for that right now.”
For Burns, a musician, actor, director and producer with more than 30 years’ experience in theatre and television, the “energy” the show promises is what he’s most looking forward to.
“This is a big thing for the venue as well,” he says, referring to the Market Hall. “When you think of all the different people employed by performance venues, they have had it really, really bad the last two years. There’s going to be a level of excitement that everyone is going to embrace.”
To be clear, the improv comedy form is no less rewarding for those tasked with making their audience laugh.
“After 40 some years of doing this, it’s still exciting every time be causes it’s brand new,” says McKenna. “When you all get in sync and you come up with a great story, it’s pretty amazing that you built it together out of the air. There’s so much going on while interacting within the group. It’s such great jazz at a very high level.”
“I did stand-up for about five or six years — it’s a wonderful world too but you’re on your own a lot,” he adds. “There’s no one to celebrate the event with. But when you get in a group and you start to share something and there’s two people laughing, and then there are three of us, and then five of us, you’ve created a community that’s positive and wonderful. Everybody you’re hanging around wants to just play. They’re offering something and you’re building on that. Even bad improv is a blast.”
For McKenna, one of the special things about improv is the dynamic it creates between the performers and the audience.
“You build this thing with strangers — it’s incredible, it’s infectious,” he says. “When you go see a play, you’re a voyeur. With improv, you’re leaning forward and you’re involved. The emotion includes you. You feel that danger, that energy, that’s rampant in the room.”
Maitland agrees there’s “a magic” unique to improv the audience is very much a part of.
“With stage acting, we’ve got the script — we know where we’re going to start and we know where we’re going to end,” she says. “With improv, the audience watches the magic unfold but they’re also part of that magic. We’re all just waiting to see where the story goes.”
“There’s an incredible energy of ‘We’re all in it together’,” she adds. “The energy of humans in the same room is unmatchable. There’s no technology that can replace that. It’s lovely having online chats but I’m not getting as fuelled by your energies as I would if we were in the same room. We can’t wait for it.”
According to Burns, before the pandemic descended, klusterfork had booked eight shows at Market Hall to the end of this year. Moving forward beyond their April 1st return to the stage, Burns says they’re looking at doing more shows as well as offering workshops in something new: a live setting.
“We’ve discussed the idea of putting together a small tour and taking it south,” he says.
“The three of us have day jobs but klusterfork is our precious baby that we’re going to keep feeding and watch grow,” Matiland adds.
For more information on klusterfork, including updates on live shows and workshops, visit www.klusterfork.com.
kawarthaNOW is proud to be a media sponsor of April Fools’ Gold – The Joke’s On Us.
