Comedian bringing new ‘Ostrich’ tour to Brandon

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 01/06/2024 (503 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Canadian comedian Derek Edwards says he appreciates people who can bury their head in the sand and carry on living — and that is why he called his new comedy tour “In Praise of the Ostrich.”

Edwards is bringing his hour-and-a-half show to the Western Manitoba Centennial Auditorium in Brandon next Thursday at 7:30 p.m.

“I admire people who can go on with the ignorance-is-bliss way of living,” said Edwards. “And ostriches are the prime example,” he added with a laugh.

“It will be comedy, an escape hatch from reality. You can forget all your cares and we’ll just have a great chuckle and move on a nice cathartic sigh. And afterwards, a good night’s snooze,” Edwards told the Sun from his home in Toronto.

“So, that’s the big idea. It’s a positive thing for the world, eh? That’s what you’re trying to do.”

Brandon is the first stop on his 10-city Prairie tour.

“The first one is terrifying, but I’ll mix that in with excitement, and I’ll get no sleep beforehand, I swear to God, but I’m keen to go,” Edwards said.

Edwards is originally from Timmins, Ont., and will joke that he’s the second-most famous person to come out of his hometown. Recording artist Shania Twain is the other famous Canadian from that northeastern Ontario city.

Edwards got his comedic start when he entered and won a contest in 1995 — the Vail National Comedy Invitational in Vail, Colo. He remains the only Canadian to have won the award.

That win got him a gig in Las Vegas, and since then he has been featured in the Just for Laughs Comedy Festival in Montreal five times — twice in the 1990s and in 2003, 2008 and 2010.

In 2004, he received the Canadian Comedy Award for best male standup and has been referred to by comedian and television personality Rick Mercer as “the funniest man in Canada, everybody knows that.”

Edwards is quick to turn a compliment into a sarcastic quip. When he was told there isn’t anything negative written about him or his comedy, he said, “Well, that means you still have an opportunity there — keep looking.”

Edwards said he loves to laugh as much as he likes to make others crack up.

“Well, of course, it’s a nice feeling, you know, like those great kitchen parties where you happen to be on a good roll. Everybody’s had that and everybody’s had the satisfaction of getting a good laugh.”

And, he added, he will keep the humour relatively clean during his Prairie tour.

“The more you use profanity, the more you feel obliged to lean on it, and then it becomes a crutch and your writing suffers because now you’ve got that word that you have to go to, if you’re in a pinch for a chuckle.

“So, I try not to get too lazy that way in using them,” said Edwards.

The “In Praise of the Ostrich” show is a mix of storytelling, sarcasm, daily observances and down to earth laughs, he said. It’s a culmination of the life experiences he has had — serving tables as a waiter, driving a forklift, working as a miner — and his humble upbringing, with “no highfalutin swanky behaviour whatsoever in my youth.”

When time allows, Edwards will do as much research as he can about a city before a performance because “it shows people that you care a modicum of where you are and who you’re talking to. People can tell if you put some work into it,” he said.

Writing jokes and building content for his show is something Edwards has mastered over the years, and he says it requires preparation and a storyline.

“You need something in your mind that you can go from point A to point B and in chronological order, so you don’t trip it up, because you’ve worked so hard,” Edwards said.

“You go through it, and then you figure out what should follow what. You usually want to build to the bigger laugh, or you want to have a nice segue into a change of topic. And so, you figure out how you can gently go from one thing to another without jarring the crowd. Those are finesse moves there,” he said.

“So, yeah for sure — bullet points. I like to have them on a piece of paper so I can look at it and not use my glasses to read. So that’s why I need big print.”

For more information about tickets, call the WMCA at 204-728-9510.

» mmcdougall@brandonsun.com

» X: @enviromichele