Bite of the Underground

Stand-up comedian Charlie Demers will be hosting Bite of the Underground for the third consecutive time on September 29th at RIME. Charlie, a very busy man, also serves on the executive board of COPE, is the editor of Seven Oaks online magazine, performs in the sketch comedy duo Bucket, and runs a comedy room at the Shark Club on Monday nights. I caught up with Charlie at the end of August and asked him a few questions.

BOTU: I’ve seen you perform many times and am always impressed by the intelligence of your show and your willingness to stay away from the easy topics. Do you make a conscious decision to not aim at the easy targets?

Charlie: This is sort of a myth about my act - that it’s smarter, more intellectual - that I’m super happy to see proliferate, even as I keep telling dick-and-balls jokes. People tell jokes about the things that interest them - that they find funny; I just happened to have, for example, spent my teenage years in a Trotskyite cult rather than going to parties and playing sports. Things like that add up over time, and so my frame of reference is a little off for some people, and I guess might seem esoteric. I recently wrote a joke about the Chinese Head Tax, and how it’s the only tax that right-wingers in Canada don’t get mad about. I guess that may seem like I’m reaching for cerebral or political topics, but it just happens that my fiance is Chinese and we talk about the Head Tax every now and again. Mostly because I want to institute one at our house; every time her family visits we’d make a fortune.

BOTU: Do you have to change your act depending on where you play in the city?

Charlie: I used to think I had to, but people are smarter and cooler than we tend to give them credit for.  I remember telling a joke one time at Yuk Yuk’s that was a little lofty, I think it was about Akira Kurosawa and how if his samurai movies starred Italians then ‘Yojimbo’ would have been called ‘Yo, Jimbo!’, and the joke got a big laugh. I went to Rime that same night and got pretty much nothing for it.  It’s not so much where in the city as it is leaving the city - I’ve bombed in Langley and South Surrey/White Rock. Then again, I killed in Bellingham. In Bellingham, I am a god.

BOTU: Can you talk about some of the things you are involved in outside of comedy. And, how do these activities affect what you bring to the stage?

Charlie: I’ve been doing left-wing politics and international solidarity stuff around Vancouver for a little over a decade, since I was a dogmatic, rambunctious teen. It’s like mother’s milk to me. I’ve recently had the honour of being elected to the Executive Board of COPE, the left municipal party, which has been a fantastic experience; it’s a lot more immediate and organic than provincial or federal politics, in my view. My work with the Canada-Palestine Support Network, Stopwar.ca and the webzine SevenOaksMag.com are all years-ongoing commitment that bring me in to contact with - I truly believe - some of the very best and most dedicated people in the world. These sorts of activities inform my stage performance in the same way as being fat does, being white does, growing up where I grew up does; it’s an essential part of who I am, and shows up in myriad ways. This fall, I’m hoping to put it into action more concretely by organizing benefit shows for the Save St. Paul’s Coalition and the defense fund for John Graham, a framed-up AIM activist who faces extradition to the States in the same way that Leonard Peltier did so many years ago.

BOTU: You’ve been a natural fit as host of Bite of the Underground for Neworld Theatre. What similarities do you see between your comic vision and that of some of the Neworld productions?

Charlie: With infinitely more talent, grace, and sophistication than I’ll ever possess, neworld accomplishes the highest category of art - they say something important about how and why to make a better society, without sacrificing any of their artistic excellence. As a theatre writer with the Westender, I had the privilege of profiling Neworld for my first cover story, and I’m happy to be on the bandwagon now. On my very best days as a comic, I try to accomplish even a fraction of what they manage to conjure up in the space between art and politics.

BOTU: Can you recommend some Vancouver artists (comedy or otherwise) that we might want to check out?

Charlie: I don’t want to get started into comedians… it’s like asking if there were any good psychoanalysts in Vienna. There are so many absolutely jaw-dropping comedians in Vancouver right now - people, I think, honestly don’t realize that for $5 they can see a show that has three or four comics on it who will be famous within the next five years. Obviously I’m a huge fan of Paul Bae and Graham Clark. The comic who most consistently slays me is probably Jeffery Yu; he is an absolute genius, and he rarely makes a joke that doesn’t make me want to cry because I didn’t write it. Vancouver also has some incredible talent working elsewhere in the arts - musically, I’m in love with Headwater. I also love Anne Stone’s new novel, ‘Delible,’ which is easily one of the best books to come out this year. Frankly, I think that Vancouver is a hotbed right now, and it’s up to the public and various levels of government and even businesses to make sure that we create a sustainable infrastructure and economy in this city to keep our artists here, and thriving.

-Nick Marino