Funny GirlFunny GirlBy COLLEEN HAWKESFORD of the Weyburn Review
Our secrets aren't safe anymore.
Brigitte Gall, a comedian who grew up in Creelman and Regina, has taken the mystery and intrigue of growing up in small town Saskatchewan and brought it centre stage on national television. Our hobbies, habits and peculiarities are being held up like lab specimens for the rest of Canada to examine.
(So far we're a hit)
Brigitte's hour-long comedy special recently aired on The Comedy Network. Her lengthy resume includes appearances on CBC's Comics, Bravo's Laughing Matters, the 1995 Grey Cup opening ceremonies, and a Gemini-nominated short film, Twisted Sheets.
Quite a lot of accomplishments, considering her favorite pastime (according to the 1985 Creelman School yearbook) is combing her hair.
When she was 14, Brigitte's family moved from Regina to Creelman, and Brigitte was transferred from a high school with 500 students to a high school with 20 students. The difference for her was not only incredible, it was downright absurd. "I thought that was really funny," she recalled. "How could it be that there were so few people?"
While a lot of her comedy pokes fun at life in Creelman, Brigitte's humor is not cruel or vindictive. "I don't go out to skewer somebody or make somebody look bad, or go out of my way to say 'Hey, aren't these people stupid?' because they're not," she explains.
Brigitte moved to eastern Canada after spending eight months with a work exchange group in Pakistan. After taking classes at Toronto's Second City Theatre, she went on to study at the New York Academy of Acting. While she was in New York, she began telling stories of home. "I was telling these stories and I was sort of realizing that they were funny because they were so different," laughed Brigitte. "And they really were, there were all these really lovely characters and people in my life from Saskatchewan."
When
she returned to Canada, Brigitte began to write her stories down
and eventually developed them into a one-woman show, which she
presented at a small Toronto theatre. Comedian Sandra Shamas saw
the show and asked the aspiring comedian if she wanted a director
for her sketch. After developing the act with Shamas, Brigitte
took it on the road across Canada as part of comedy's Fringe Festival.
"It was never my intent to do stand-up comedy," she confesses. "But after I finished the show I didn't want to stop performing, so I just shortened a lot of the monologues and compressed them, and made them smaller versions of what they were and ultimately started doing stand-up."
Today Brigitte seeks laughs in areas other than prairie life. "That's sort of run its course already," she explained. "And people here (in Toronto) are like 'OK, you know what? We know! We've heard it.' So now it's just life observations and things that I hear or see on television that I can't believe are SO stupid," she explained. "And just sort of poking fun at things that I just can't quite wrap my head around."
Brigitte also likes to find humor in good intentions gone bad, especially when those intentions are highlighted by a lot of media attention. For instance, Mattel recently came out with a new Christy doll who sits in a wheelchair.
Problem is, the wheelchair can't fit through the doorway of Barbie's house.
"So I think, OK, what was going on in that brilliant marketing meeting? Were they just smoking way too much pot? Could they not see what was going to happen? Were they just thinking she was going to pitch a tent?"
Classmates and teachers in Creelman remember Brigitte as being a gifted storyteller. "If she saw that she was getting an audience she was happy to keep going," said classmate Angela Carnegie (Van Staveren). "Even if the story stopped there, she made it keep going."
Former Creelman School principal Ron Kalynka
also remembers her stories. "She always would come out with
some pretty amusing things," he remembered. "The kids
seemed to enjoy her sense of humor."
Today Brigitte lives in Toronto with her husband and their dog. She and Sandra Shamas are currently sharing the stage at the Toronto Comedy Festival, and Brigitte is looking at acting in a couple of independent feature films.
While she's enjoying her stand-up career, her main passion is acting, an activity she first discovered at Creelman School. "I'd rather act because that was initially what I wanted to do," she confessed. "And I'd like to keep doing the stand-up as an enjoyable thing for me so that it never becomes work."
She's also deciding whether or not to set up shop in the United States, a more lucrative market for performers. "Outside of your community (in Canada), rarely will you find anybody that knows you personally," Brigitte said. "Because it's Canada. It's like everybody in Canada is like, 'Who? Who? We don't have any stars! Al Waxman. He's our only star!"
But even Brigitte has personalities she admires in Canadian showbiz, like Ernie Coombs, better known as Mr. Dressup, whom she worked with recently. "That was such a huge thing for me; it's like 'Oh my god, it's Mr. Dressup! I can't stand it, he's right there in the flesh!'"
She also enjoys the work of Sandra Shamas and actor/comedian Mike Meyers, both of whom are personal friends. "I can look upon what they do and their body of work in their life and say, 'Wow, here's two people who are fiercely independent and are willing to fight for what they have,'" she explained.
As for retirement, Brigitte plans to one day relax and enjoy life in Fairy Glen, Saskatchewan ("I just like the name") where she will take up farming.
Sort of.
"I'd probably have just a little hobby farm," she says. "And all my neighbors could look at my pitiful garden and say 'Oh geez, eh? Somebody help 'er. Christ look, she's planted everything all wrong!'"
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