Is stand-up comedy a form of theatre?.Some would say no, but I would beg to differ especially in the light of the work of Ola Dada,  one of the newest and most talented stand-up comedians who comes out of Fort McMurray by way of Nigeria.   I  have just seen a performance by Ola at the Absolute Comedy Club in Ottawa  where he had the audience howling with laughter and the actor was good enough to grant me this  interview the morning after his opening show.

A.R.  Your   talents are so diverse that it is difficult to define the nature of this special sort of “stand-up” but what emerges is both the way you  deconstruct ideas that appear unacceptable  and the way you  show your  great gifts as an actor. You not only speak beautifully but  you also use your whole body  on stage including your facial expressions. and even your eyes. You change your style of speech at the drop of  a hat. As well, when something strikes you as problematic  you unexpectedly  stop what you are saying   and suddenly laugh at the audience . You break the tension by changing  the tone and style of your speech with a huge smile. You are  a perfect  verbal and corporeal mimic and consequently, you are clearly an excellent actor!  It is quite amazing.  How is it that you perform this  way? Is it something you picked up naturally or was it a technique  you were taught?

O.D. Actually I speak very quickly and I can tell that if people are laughing very hard. they will not hear my response so to break the rhythm , I breathe for a second and that moment of change is as much for myself as for the audience. It comes down to creating a space  for people in the audience to reset their  reactions. Sometimes I stop completely if I have made a very funny joke.   These jokes are quite loose but when I’m on stage I could very well come up with a new line as opposed to the one I had already prepared.  That  depends very much on the audience reaction. Sometimes if it works very well I will expand on the joke or if it is not closely related to the punch line I don’t expand  anything but  just keep my lines moving.  The audience neither knows what is coming nor what is supposed to be a big laugh so I have to change the script based on their spontaneous reaction to the joke. That is how I gage my interaction with them….it is actually a little dance that we do. I know I don’t always talk about things related to the experiences of a lot of people but what I try to do is to describe the event  and then bring the audience into it.

A.R.   Do you improvise a lot on stage

O.D. All the time. I don’t have a script but I have a set list of jokes that I intend to  go through but within the jokes are set up in such a way that the “punch line” is at the end  but when I enter that joke I haven’t completely memorized the way of saying it. What I do is try to get to the next joke with as few  words as possible.  The thing is to keep the audience engaged. That makes it possible for a person to watch the show one night and then return the next night and laugh at different parts of the same joke because that content always seems to be changing.

A.R. I like the way you seem  to be speaking very seriously and suddenly you stop, change the tone;  then you  laugh, look at the audience  and say something that is ridiculous  and the audience howls. If  you connect  with the spectators is it based both on what you say or on your physical reaction and your mime? I had the impression it was based on everything given the fact that you are not just a stand up comic but you are a real actor and a very good one.  For example all that business about pigeons was so funny.

O.D.  Pigeons are scary!

A.R.  What is scary about pigeons?

O.D.  The eyes! They terrify you .  But mainly they poo on your head!  There are a lot more pigeons  in Toronto than there are in Vancouver, because people feed them in Toronto.  It was very concerning for us. Pigeons there seem to be so comfortable with human beings.  I had never seen that before, honestly. There was a regular guy  sitting on a bench talking on the phone and a pigeon sat right beside him for such a long time and the fellow wasn’t even feeding it. The pigeon  just watched him talking and I asked myself…What is happening here?

A.R. Your talent for mime was revealed at that point because when you explained how you didn’t like pigeons. You started twitching your head back and forth like a pigeon, in fact you became a pigeon.  It was absolutely fantastic. You are almost as good as Marcel Marceau!  did you study mime?

O.D. No. Its just that in terms of stand up comedy, the people (or animals) I watch have to provide a visual description in terms of how they express themselves and what they do. It is also necessary to do that to get  to the next level of  stand-up  because the people who decide feel it is important for the audience to see what you are talking  about and that way it is easier for the spectators to laugh so  I try to become  the character (whether its my mom, my father my manager, a pigeon or a horse).

A.R.  I gather audiences are different  in each of the cities  where you have performed:  Vancouver, Fort McMurray, Toronto and Ottawa. If so  what are the differences?

O.D  I found that people are more relaxed  in Vancouver and  they  laugh differently.   There I get the feeling that  they aren’t  sure they should laugh at different stuff but I do understand when people are enjoying themselves  when they smile or cover their face. Its because the culture is different in each city. In Toronto people give  big loud laughs to represent their expressive personalities. Las night in Ottawa people gave a whole body laught!.

A.R.  Chris Timms, the host of the evening, also a very professional comic delivered his speeches in a very  definite rhythm  so what he said almost sounded like poetry and your work has a lot of that quality. You maintain a rhythm even when you are interrupted by the physical or vocal reactions, sudden  spurts of loudness or swearing but the rhythm was almost hypnotic and quite extraordinary.

O.D You have a good ear because a lot of people who come to stand up don’t catch that.  The rhythm is like the timing up to the punch line. If you watch a stand-up comic you can tell where the joke is going and when the  punch-line is about to hit  and you obviously caught that yesterday.

A.R. Is there anything else you would like to say about the way you work?

O.D   Oh man! I listen a lot to my jokes. Usually I  record them and listen to them afterwards because  writing down my jokes slows down the creative process as opposed to recording them and then adding  verbally what I want to do.  I will watch the film (also recorded),  listen to the joke  change it and record it again and listen to it again. so I have the new version immediately  without rewriting it.

A.R.You do that at home after the show.

O.D. Yeah!  And sometimes watching these recordings I do realize where I should pause or what I should emphasize.  For example, the joke about going into a public  sauna naked with your friends.  When you start the show you want to get the first laughs as quickly as possible.  And when I make fun of a place it isn’t in a malicious way. For example. when I spoke of Saskatoon ….I try to find a factual issue  with which no one can disagree.  I said  Saskatoon is flat whereas Fort McMurray is cold.  A lot of times people will  say “so you hate fort McMurray?”  and I answer “no I hate the cold”…which  doesn’t upset anyone.

Actually I love stand-up comedy. It’s a very versatile kind of performance that can be represented in any shape or form. And even though I think I have learned everything about it I watch someone do something  I haven’t seen before I learn new things.

When you start with stand-up you do 5 minutes,  then a strong 5 minutes, then 1 0 minutes , then a strong 10 minutes,  then a strong 20 minutes but the leap from 20 to 45 minutes is big leap..You might even perform those 20 minutes for a couple of years before you graduate to 45.   I finally had enough contact with the audience for a  45 minute set but I did not have the rhythm nor the pacing . Also when people are sitting down listening to stand-up and laughing for 20 minutes or more, they get tired so I had to learn to slow down because if I came in and immediately  started pushing one joke after another, you can end up talking through the laughs and one has to learn to pace the jokes so as not to “step on the laughs “ as they say but you have to learn to slow down  and then speed up  and then slow down and continue changing like that so the people are given time to laugh. It all concerns ones sense of rhythm and the fact that the comic keeps  the energy in the room alive.

A.R. Your ear is very good, you have the ear of a musician orchestrating  your voice.

O.D  Yes,  because you have to listen to the type off laugh  that includes the energy and the mood  of the audience. Finally tell what was your favorite joke?

A.R. I liked  the way you portrayed your parents when they expressed their concern about your becoming a stand-up comic. They spoke english with a Nigerian accent and your father had a low gruff voice.

O.D. My dad’s voice is much deeper than mine.

A.R   But you brought yours down.  and then I also liked the performance of the friend of yours “Mista Dray”.He obviously didn’t have the same amount of experience you had  but he showed a lot of promise.

O.D.  He drove three hours from Oshawa just to be with us last night. He has worked in Toronto and in Ottawa and will soon be performing as I am.

A.R. Thank-you so much for  this interview  and   we hope you return soon to Ottawa,  perhaps performing on the larger stage of a legitimate theatre like the GCTC  or  the Gladstone.

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