Comedian Marcel St. Pierre returns to Fredericton for a special performance at STU. Also, his new book is hilarious!
Matt Carter
Theatre St. Thomas begins its 2016-2017 season with renowned improv artist and St. Thomas University alumnus Marcel St. Pierre, performing a one-time only show, Whose STU Is It, Anyways? on Saturday October 1.
“I am a former Theatre St. Thomas performer, and was a Calithumpian one year, so my Fredericton and New Brunswick roots are deep,” said St. Pierre. “Back in the day at STU, I used to produce coffee houses and variety shows and so after years of being ‘out in the wild’, I just wanted to come back home and play for a home crowd.”
St. Pierre, now based in Toronto, got his first taste of comedic notoriety after placing first in the 1989 Atlantic Campus Comedy Contest in Moncton. He has since performed all over North America as an actor, an improviser, stand-up, sketch comedian, has written and produced work for theatre, television and radio and has “done bits” on Kids in the Hall, Rick Mercer Report and Air Farce New Year’s Eve 2016.
His upcoming Fredericton performance is the first in show in Theatre St. Thomas’s new season, which will include three shows over the course of the school year.
“For the format [of this show], well, it’s improvised so it could go anywhere,” said St. Pierre, “but I’m planning to do a little stand-up, share some stories and laughs about my time away from New Brunswick and STU. Maybe a little bit of solo improvisation based on audience suggestions. Then I’ll be joined by six current STU drama students who I’ll put through a series of improv competitions, where the audience decides the winner.”
Earlier this year St. Pierre released his first collection of humorous short stories, Vengeful Hank and other Shortweird Stories. The book is an impressive collection of obscure, off the wall humour and may just be the strangest book you’ll ever read. With over 50 short stories (including several one-pagers, which also makes this book the ultimate bathroom reader), and forwards by Colin Mochrie, Don Ferguson, Peter Wildman and Sheree Fitch, Vengeful Hank and other Shortweird Stories is a great introduction to the inner workings of one of Canada’s funniest oddball authors.
St. Pierre’s list of writing accolades includes everything from plays to radio and television. Vengeful Hank… is the result of 365 days of consistent writing, a personal challenge that began in 2013.
“In a nutshell, a few of the stories have been rattling around my brain for years, but the majority of them were written during a year-long improvisational creative writing task I gave myself,” said St. Pierre. “I used to write every day and hadn’t been doing so for a few years, so back in 2013 I challenged myself to write one new piece, every day, for a full year.
“There are 365 days in a year, and each story had to have the corresponding number of words as the day of the year that I wrote it,” he said. “So, January 1st was one word, ‘Yes’. By the end of that year, I had written The Last One which was 365 words. Some were poems, or very Kerouacian stream-of-consciousness blurts. But little by little, most of them turned into actual short stories, some with recurring characters, some stand-alones that just wrote themselves, and others of course that I reworked before inclusion in the book. But all of them were conceived during that one year burst of writing, and I probably have enough left over for another book.”
A book signing will take place following the afternoon comedy show on October 1. Don’t miss this opportunity to get yourself a signed copy and meet one of New Brunswick’s funniest exports.
Whose STU is it, Anyways? – An Improv Show with Marcel St. Pierre | Saturday October , 2016 | Black Box Theatre, James Dunn Hall, STU | 2:00 p.m. | $10 ($5 students) | Everyone welcome
