This Thursday the Overlander Pub teams up with Comedy on the Verge to bring Stand-up Comedy at Overlander Pub to Williams Lake.
A part of the Overlander Pub’s ongoing effort to bring a new flavour of the recreational establishment to the lakecity, this stand-up comedy night is also a test run for Andrew Verge of Comedy on the Verge. Verge is a comedian and event promoter of three years now out of Kelowna who uses his company to help create new opportunities for his fellow comedians to perform in.
To this end, he’s partnered with SONAR Comedy and Nightclub up in Prince George as he observed there are few established opportunities for comic acts between Vancouver and Prince George. With events like the one coming up at the Overlander Pub, however, he aims to change that.
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“We thought ‘hey let’s bring the comedy to some of the smaller places,’ it sort of breaks up the drive for us to get to SONAR and it brings great comedians to people in smaller towns and cities,” Verge said.
Verge got into comedy full time because he loves making people laugh, a love that began as a kid moving around a lot from place to place. The young Verge would use his humour and wit to break the ice and ingratiate himself with whatever community he found himself in.
As an adult Verge got involved with the comedy scene in Kelowna and decided he could better apply himself doing stand up than in the automotive industry. For the past three years it’s what he’s done performing in three to four shows every week.
“As a comedian, you should always be striving to be better,” Verge said. “My goal is to start working on some organized shows with some bigger comedians. That’s the way you learn, doing shows and working with other people who have far more experience than you. Comedy is one of those things you can’t really perfect unless you have an audience.”
The event at the Overlander Pub will mark both Verge and his fellow up-and-coming comedians, Velina Taskov and headliner Andrew Crone’s, first performance in Williams Lake. Verge said he’s driven through the lakecity many times and thought it would be a beautiful place to stop and put on a show.
This stand-up night will be something of an “inaugural night for comedy” in Williams Lake as Verge put it, allowing them to test the waters for future shows and tours. To that end, the tickets for the event are cheap at $2 a head for the 90 seats while the comedy will be based on observational and life experience humour, with no “shock-jock antics.”
Verge wanted to stress that the price of admission at the stand-up night is geared towards accessibility for all the public in Williams Lake. He and his fellow comedians will still be putting on their regular acts usually billed at $20 and if the night goes well hopes to return on a more regular basis in the future.
“Everybody could use a good laugh and we just want to have a good time, share our art with people and nobody really regrets it, especially for two bucks,” Verge chuckled.
patrick.davies@wltribune.com
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