The Marx Brothers, Fred Astaire, George Burns, Jack Benny and more stopped in to do their act. It was the golden age of comedy and variety entertainment. Sadly, with the advent of TV people opted to stay home for the night, and Vaudeville quickly shriveled.

In Calgary, however, Vaudeville is back. The Garden Variety Show collects a cast of jugglers, magicians, musical guests and more into an evening of rarely seen entertainment.

Since last season, I’ve taken on the role of sidekick to the host of the show (James Jordan) and with my guitar, I’m also the house band. I’m the Paul Schaffer to his David Letterman.

It’s been a great learning opportunity for me, as it’s the first time I’ve been performing in an exclusively musical role. There is some video footage (sadly not the best audio recording) of me trying out an original song for the very first time. I was very happy with the positive response of the crowd.

You’ll have the chance to be a part of that crowd starting in January 2012 as we strike up the band (still just me) for season three. You can stay in the loop when you Like the Garden Variety Show on Facebook.

I was one of the performers in the show Naked Improv (that is naked in the metaphorical sense… primarily) as well as co-hosting some of the late night Cabarets.

However, the highlight for me was not any of my scheduled appearances. It was the special Improv Mash-Up show.

A show had dropped out of the festival, leaving one of the venues with two empty time-slots on the final day.

The theatre was rented, the volunteers were scheduled, so I thought it would be a shame to let that all go to waste. With a few emails back and forth I received permission from the festival director to put together a show for 2:30 on Saturday afternoon.

Great! Except now I had to actually produce a show. In two days.

I wanted to bring together all the improvisors that were at the Fringe Festival that week, and I’m thrilled to say that the other artists were excited to take part. So I had the venue, and now a cast. The final challenge was actually bringing in an audience.

I rushed to draw up a poster, got it printed in full-size and handbill size, and began flyering the street. It’s the core marketing tactic of Fringe festivals. Simply talk to the patrons of the festivals. They are always on the look-out for their next theatre experience.

In addition, we hit “social media”, creating a Facebook event and plenty of mentions on Twitter. The Calgary Fringe Festival staff was very helpful in spreading the word online as well.

Any time you produce a public show it remains a big mystery as to whether or not people will actually be there to watch. It’s nerve-wracking to wait and see if all the efforts will pay off. So when I walked into the theatre 5 minutes before showtime I was absolutely elated to see a nice, happy, and hearty crowd sitting there. A huge sigh of relief.

A pre-show audience snapshot by somebody on the Fringe team

And then, it was showtime.

I was playing the role of show host, and hit the stage with genuine excitement about what we were all about to see.

I had the support of a brilliant cast of improvisors…

• ShLong Form Improv, four Americans from South Korea
• Kathleen Phelan from the Sabotage show
• Mikaela Dyke who was presenting Dying Hard at the Fringe
• Chase Padgett of 6 Guitars, who was lending his improv and musical skills to the show
• Some of the gang from the Improv Guild, the group doing the Naked Improv show

It was a true collaboration, with the performers mixing it up and working with each other wonderfully. The show was a huge hit, and afterwards I had both improvisors and audience alike telling me how much fun they had.

It was over so fast, but it remains my personal highlight from a very busy week of shows.

A heartfelt thank you to the Calgary Fringe Festival and the artists who helped me make it happen.

-Ryan

Ryan teaching his "Improvisation" workshop at Fun Camp 2010

I love teaching! Last weekend I was very happy to have been invited back for a second year of teaching workshops at Fun Camp Canada, a conference for family entertainers. I was teaching two workshops, appearing in the Headliner Show, and was proud to launch my new instructional book called “Finding The Funny”.

Coming up this weekend I’ll be doing another workshop on improvisation and audience interaction (two main ingredients in my shows) for Light & Motion Festival. This conference brings together jugglers, dancers, and circus arts performers for a weekend full of widely varying workshops.

At Light & Motion I also get the chance to be a last minute replacement teacher for the workshop on “Character Development”. As a performer the character you create, even if it’s based upon yourself, influences every part of your show.

The bonus of attending these sort of events is the opportunity to attend some of the other workshops. This weekend I’ll be expanding my rusty juggling skills, and learning some things entirely new to me. Fire eating! Yowza!