Debra DiGiovanni says there are times in her act when she thinks she might be sharing just a little too much about herself.
“I do have moments when I’m like, ‘I shouldn’t be telling these people this, but it just kind of happens,” said the comedienne.
DiGiovanni, who spent most of her life in Toronto but for the last five year has been living in Los Angeles, said her material comes from a personal place, and “whatever’s happening in my life is going to be happening on stage.”
“I know that a lot of comics, they kind of keep it about their life, about their families and whatever and I do the same thing except I don’t have a family so it’s all really selfish, to be honest,” Giovanni said. “It’s all about me.”
She said her act draws on the feeling of being the odd one out, watching her contemporaries become domesticated while she’s “struggling along in a world where people are at this point mature and settled and I’m not.”
“At this age most of my friends are married with children and I still live a very kind of college lifestyle, if you will,” she said. “Like I never really know where I’m going to be and I work at night, so I’m just not on the same page.”
This winter, and again in the spring, DiGiovanni will be joining fellow Canadian comics Paul Myrehaug, Dan Quinn and Pete Zedlacher on their nationwide Snowed In Comedy Tour, which features nearly 30 dates across nearly every region of B.C. in January and February.
This is DiGiovanni’s second time on the tour, after being asked on short notice to fill in for a comedian who had to drop out last year.
“They called me on a Wednesday and I joined them on a Friday,” she said. “They were just like, ‘Can you drop everything and come do the tour for a month?’ So last year it was a fluke but then we had so much fun that they are kind enough to bring me back this year.”
She said the four of them fit together well. She said Quinn discusses life as a newlywed, Myrehaug talks about living as a Canadian ex-pat in Europe and storyteller Zedlacher closes the show.
“Sometimes comics are too different on the bill … Like the people are really dirty and then really deadpan or something,” DiGiovanni said. “There’s got to be a flow to the show. So we have good flow for sure.”
The tour stops in Trail at The Bailey Theatre on Jan. 30.
