INTERVIEW | PUMP TROLLEY COMEDY

PUMP TROLLEY: Ruth x Thirteen. An INTERROGATION.

For comedians, these guys sure lack a sense of humour and it doesn’t help that they’ve gotten their entire collective beyond botoxed, in an attempt to become ‘mature’ performers. Read along anyway. Pump Trolley is bound to get you in the mood, for something.

“Basically we use multidisciplinary ‘stuff’ to entertain.”

DEV(I)ON

Lex: Give me the background info on Pump Trolley and tell me why you decided against becoming individual human beings once you left UBC.
Devin: Essentially, a lot of us were UBC Improv Alumni that felt really good about what we had going, and the people involved, so we decided to create a collective outside UBC. We’ve recently brought in more ‘outside’ members, Warren Bates, and Ember Konopaki.
Ben: And as far as working collectively, the Soviet Union might have fallen, but we were able to borrow a few ideas from them. There is just a lot to be said about how different brains work, and when you get all of us in a room together, it’s really magic. I can’t think in any way remotely similar to Devin or Devon or Devon or any other Devons in the collective.
Devon: We’re all named Devon, except Ben. Not a real team player on that.

Lex: Are you changing your name to Devon?
Devon: No, he’s not.
Ben: Devon Eugenovich Gorodetsky.

Lex: Do you keep your last names to maintain some individuality?
Devon: Our last name is Pump Trolley. Actually, our first name is Pump Trolley and our last names are Devon.

Lex: I thought those were your middle names.
Devon: Our middle name is Ruth.

LAYERS, CUPCAKES & COLLECTIVES

Lex: What is unique about the collective approach? The way it makes your mind work vs. when you’re by yourself? What makes creating as a group so great?
Devon: We do a lot of back and forth, and we do a lot of… What’s a nice way of saying one-upmanship? It’s not necessarily trying to outdo each other, but it’s more of making each other raise the stakes on something, taking an idea one might have and blow it up huge. Or bring it in, and make it possible when it’s too huge.
Devin: What’s really cool about collaboration, is that we’re all very strong individually, and we know that, so when we bring our strengths together this kinda’ fills in the holes of what would be lacking in one person’s individual sketch; having someone else polish it a little bit, giving ideas and working together to make the piece fuller as a whole.
Ben: And we’re coming at it from the same background, and we’re going towards the same goals. We’re all basically the same generation, from Vancouver. We grew up watching these amazing groups: The (Sunday) Service, Instant Theatre and Cody Rivers, or whoever else rolls through town. So we’ve been fed the same breast milk. As much as we like to think that we’re all these different people that are getting together, and we’re making this crazy pastiche of bs, we’re all still fed the same nutrients, and we shit the same shit. This is what I like.
Devin: Well put. And all of us come from an improv background, and in improv it’s all about trusting the others on stage and creating a piece together. That adapts itself quite easily to writing sketch collaboratively.

Lex: Do you have any advice for others working together in other disciplines?
Devin: You mean if someone is trying to work collaboratively and they’ve never done it before?

Lex: Yup. A lot of people just can’t do it.
Devon: It’s tough. We’ve really lucked out.

Lex: And you’re a really huge group, not just a couple of people.
Devon: Yeah, and some of us have huge egos too.
Ben: (makes giant farting and/or hot air balloon calamity noise)
Devon: Some of us. We’ve really just lucked out, in our case.
Devin: You just have to learn to let go a bit. Learn not to be the sole creator of a piece. You have to allow for ideas and see what the positives of that can be, but also stay strong and do the best for the piece as a whole. And just allow yourself to drop the ego thing. Drop the fact that it’s your project on its own, and let in different influences, so that it just comes together creatively.
Ben: I think a pretty good idea in general is that when you’re in it, when you’re creating, take whatever is given and whatever comes up collaboratively as fact. You can’t fuck with it. That’s been done. That’s been said. Whatever someone throws out there, that is now level one. And then you can add onto that, and that’s now level two. But you can’t destroy whatever’s already been laid down as foundation.
Devin: This is with improv…
Ben: …but taking this mindset and applying it to a different medium: once you’ve built up to level ten, then you can take a step back from it and go “Oh, that’s really cool. I really like these parts and these parts, and I like how those work together”. Then you have the luxury of hand picking the good stuff out.
Devin: Polishing.
Ben: If you’re constantly re-adjusting and re-thinking what you’re doing while it’s happening, that’s inhibitive to the creative process. Especially when you’re in a large group. If you’re in a large group and your ideas can just start rolling, then you can later step back and see what you’ve got. But while you’re in the throws of it, if possible, just keep going, and build on what you have. If that can make any sense…

POLISHING

Lex: And how do you polish it all at the end?
Devin: Polishing is basically presenting it to the group. Usually by the time we’re presenting it to the entire group, we’ve got a pretty solid base, and then everyone throws in ideas and things like that. It can be just little things, maybe adding a joke, or blocking-wise, figuring out something like “oh, you should be standing on this side of the stage”. So, it’s just opening it up to the group. That’s how you polish it. Then it’s just rehearsal after that. (laughs) As much as possible, in a one to two week period. Which often isn’t much, but …

(All giggle)

BANANARAMA

Lex: So what was it like to do it every week?
Devin: What was it like to do it every week? It was crazy!!

Lex: I’d love it if you could relate some of that crazyness.
Devin: Basically what we were doing, right after the end of our show on Thursday, we’d start writing. By the Friday and Saturday we’d have emailed in a pitch idea. An idea for a sketch. Monday night we would meet. At that Monday meeting the sketch would be written and kind of put into concrete, rehearsed by the time that Thursday came around, and then “repeat”.
Devon: It was super hectic, but also inspiring in a way. More time is nicer, ‘cause it gives us a chance to polish the stuff, but it also…I don’t think I’ve been as productive in terms of comedy writing, as I was during that time; just really trying to keep the ideas coming at that rate, and up the polishing and the selection process.

PREHISTORIC ELATION

Lex: How about dinosaurs? How much do they play into your creative process?
Ben: Actual dinosaurs? The kind that can fly?
Devin: We keep a pterodactyl in a cage, in the back. And that’s just to assert our human dominance over the well-extinct, inferior species.
Ben: We try to taunt the bird as much as we can.
Devon: I like to pronounce the P when I’m talking to it. “Hello PPPterodactyl”. It really is annoyed by that, ‘cause it’s supposed to be silent.
Devin: It’s also fun to dominate something that’s basically a flying lizard. It’s not even that it’s so extreme and out there. We’ve just never seen one before so it’s nice.

MULTI INTER DISCIPLINARY HILARITY

Lex: How is comedy multidisciplinary and how has it become even more multidisciplinary these days? You use video, music, projection…There have always been costumes, sets, lights, but you guys draw a lot on other disciplines as well, on top of tackling multiple styles of comedy. Does that enhance your comedic stamina?
Devon: A lot of the people in the group come from another discipline, and were creative in another way before even getting into comedy, so there are musicians, and filmmakers, and writers. It’s natural, especially in a group environment, that we draw on those skills. I can’t really make a video, but Devin is our sort-of video headmaster. Through knowing that, Ben and I for example, can talk about ideas involving video and filmmaking that we could not pull off on our own. From my end, the music has been a big part of the comedy, and the comedy has also fed back into the music, which is interesting. Watching the two interact is great.
Ben: And as far as the official outcome of our art, it’s the performance. The live experience of being at the Cottage Bistro. Hosting is where stuff gets shown off sometimes. My favourite hosting experience was a very very physical dance based show that wasn’t inherently funny. It wasn’t comedy or jokes, it wasn’t Carrot Top, but the intensity that we brought to it is vital for our audience. They’re familiar with it all and they want us to challenge them, and if we don’t, we’re not doing our job right. We need to be looking outside of ourselves and the “joke”.
Devin: Basically we are using interdisciplinary stuff to entertain. That’s the goal. As much as it is comedy and that’s what we do, this also entertains people. And one way to entertain is to give them a taste of music, and video, and maybe really bizarre costume and stage settings, along with conceptual ideas for sketches, mixed with the standard forms, like stand up and other old-school types of comedy.

THE ‘VIEWERS’

Lex: Who is your audience? Who still goes to live shows beside music fans?
Ben: My parents.
Devon: We actually have a pretty good audience.
Devin: We have a really interesting audience.
Devon: It’s very diverse.
Devin: There are old people and there are young high school kids that are into it. I think that we attract artists, and also people that are failed artists, wanting to see something interesting. We attract the theatre crowd too, because we perform so theatrically. Our audience is a mystery to us too. They just show up.
Ben: We think we have one.
Devon: The numbers seem to suggest we do.
Devin: Yeah.
Devon: I don’t know who they are, but I love them.
Ben: And as cliché as it is to say this, it’s an irreplaceable experience. No amount of high def, titty tickling monitors will replace the actual experience of seeing someone on stage, and having a visceral and immediate reaction that is temporary, that is not permanent. Something that can never be re-created.

LIVE MERRIMENT

Devin: Especially in our case, because these are all one-off sketches and jokes we’re doing. We’re putting a lot of effort and energy into each week, but then it all culminates during the show and then it’s over. Sometimes we’ll bring back sketches, when we get other ‘corporate’ gigs or things like that, but usually that’s the sketch, and then we’re creating new content for the next week, so it’s a very special show. Every show is special in that sense.
Ben: It feels great. Very Buddhist is some sense. Create something. Put in so much time and shit into it, to then be like “Good Bye”.

Lex: Does that differentiate it from theatre in a way?
Devin: Yep. That’s one way for sure. Also, it’s not hitting that level of rehearsal or time being put into it to be “theatre”. Not to take away from what we’re doing, ‘cause it’s all very good (smiles), but we’re just creating so much and so often that it can’t compare.

IS IT?

Ben: I think that what we are doing is theatre. We’re on a stage. We’re performing.
Devin: To an audience.
Ben: There’s word. There’s movement. There are lights. People clap at the end sometimes. That’s theatre. It’s not Singing in the Rain.
Devon: I think people have to be looking at it through opera glasses to be theatre.
Ben: Little things on a stick.
Devin: Yeah, yes.

BINGO SLOT

Lex: I’m curious, do you gauge your success based on the audience’s reaction, or based on how you guys feel at the end of a sketch?
Devin: There’s both. And because we have so many members, there are many different ways of praising a situation. Often, the clearest indicator that it went well is that the crowd is loosing it and applauding and laughing at the same time and all that. But what we also enjoy is when an entire show runs very smoothly and it’s riding at a high. When there’s a technical proficiency, as well as a narrative to the entire show, or some theme that works very tightly throughout. It might not be the funniest show, but it feels great to put on a really solid, rehearsed show.

Lex: Does that bring it closer to higher artistry? Better craftsmanship? A better finish?
Devin: Yeah, for sure.

GLEE

Ben: This goes against saying how we said we are theatre, and one should stop calling us ‘not theatre’. But yeah, again, we are a thirteen person collective, so take what I’m telling you as one thirteenth of the eternal truth and knowledge. The process is so important to the overall; the rehearsal, the writing going into it. It’s this huge success for me, when you can build upon yourself, find something interesting…
Devin: In a way it’s something very selfish we’re doing, because we’re getting so much joy out of creating these pieces together. And then the show is just the icing on the cake, as we get to share it with everyone. But really, we’re all engaging creatively and really exercising our minds by coming up with these pieces.
Ben: No, our mind.
Devin: Our hive mind. Our throbbing brain.
Devon: On the same token, we also love entertaining and that’s what drew me to comedy. Nothing beats being onstage.

Lex: Does that dynamic change when you feature guests or out of town performers?
Devin: We have a guest from out of town on almost every show; but usually from in town. Ha ha. It’s a nice break from our style of comedy I think. It’s also an opportunity for them to showcase what they’re doing and to make friends, because it’s all about creating this community and being known in this community. In this case, the comedy community.
Ben: What I have to say about guests, is that…

Lex: What do you have to say about guests?
Ben: Fuck you all!!
All: laugh

YARRRSS

Ben: It’s someone to steal from. It’s someone to be inspired by. It’s an extension of this idea of filling in your understanding of the world, with other people’s flavours, like someone who is not necessarily even a comedian and probably not from our ‘nursery’. We have a magician coming in this week and…I just don’t know what I’m trying to say.
Devin: But, if you’re taking about the form of the show, and about flow, how it works is that usually we have our stuff in the first half, and in the second half we’ll have a showcase feature of an outside act. So it gets broken up in that sense, although our good friends, who do shows around town, will often be put in the first half too, because they’ll just seamlessly work with us.

Lex: Can you give me some examples of favourite guests and how they’ve influenced you to get better or worse, or get confused, or…
Ben: We had a bunch of Edmontonians come in and do a bunch of sketches that blew my mind. An entirely different vocabulary than what we had.
Devin: We’ve also had amazing stand ups like Marc Little from Picnicface, and Phil Hanley. Their professionalism, when it comes to comedy, was really great to see on our stage, in a show that we’ve created.

Lex: Do you feel like you grow from that? How do you evolve in such a big group?
Devon: Well, we grow individually and we grow as a group.

Lex: Do you even have time apart between the shows? How do you deal with that? Do you cry?
Devin: Well, it’s not like we live in a commune together.
Devon: Yeah, but it’s not like we don’t live in a commune either.
Ben: It’s not like we don’t not live in a commune.

TROLLEY

Devin: We have members in Burnaby, North Van, East Van, Downtown, Kitstilano…
Devon: South Granville
Devin: South Gran
Devon: Sogra
Devin: Sogra and…how do we grow and evolve?
Ben: Well lately, just as an example of change, we’ve started doing these sessions where we sit in a circle and create a show from scratch. From the ground up. All as a group. Everyone hearing every idea and shaping it as it comes, as opposed to people coming in with conceptualized things and then sharing them. Building it up together. Which is crazy awesome. We haven’t done that before. It’s been very satisfying. We’ll see how the show goes tonite. We’ll see how the audience likes it. Individually growing? People are going outside of their comfort zones. We’re doing a show where it’s all stand up. A bunch of us are improvisers or playwrights or musicians who have never stood behind a microphone and told jokes. Not like that. So pushing yourself, trying to re-asses what’s important for this art, for this thing, for the audience to keep coming back, and for ourselves to remain interested.
Devin: I think we’re all just getting better at what we do and finding new things that we can do better. Being able to run your own show gives you the time to be onstage and just experiment a bit, fine tune what you’re doing, and have that confidence.

FUNNY COMEDY

Devon: Comedy’s a funny thing. You have to test it out in front of an audience. You can’t just write jokes for yourself and claim: “Oh, I’m a great comedian”. We’ve basically been running a test lab for six months and the results help us shape up what we’re gonna do in the future. I think I’ve gotten two inches taller since we’ve started too. So that’s growing.
Ben: My titties have gotten waaaay jigglier.
Devon: I got breast implants.

Lex: I was gonna ask you if comedy was like a pastry, but I think you answered that.
Devin: Why it’s like a pastry?
Ben: We have a few pasty members, if that answers your question. One of them is in fucking Bangcock.

Lex: So how do you deal with that? People going away?
Devon: Just replace them.
Devin: Haha. That’s true. Our model, so far, has been to just replace them. And it’s worked.
Devon: Yeah. Hahah. So far, so good.
Devin: Yup.

DAS IS EXOTIC

Lex: This one is just for Dina (the other half of Skewed): how many pandas does it take to screw in a lightbulb? And I want it calculated down to…
Devon: …no remainders.
Devin: We feed all our pandas to the pterodactyl.

Lex: So he flies and puts the lightbulb in with a heavy belly?
Devin: How many? Who’s a funny person here in this group?
Devon: It’s for you isn’t it? Didn’t she say Devo?
Devin: No, it’s for Dina, the editor.

Lex: That’s true. She’s not here doing the interview with me because she’s a panda, and pandas don’t know how to speak Canadian.
Devon: Is it a standard lightbulb or one of those new curvy ones? Cause pandas can’t actually grip… You know what I mean? Those energy saving ones? Pandas can’t grip those.
Ben: How many pandas does it take…? Pandas are crazy for scented candles. They prefer…

Devin: We’ll take that answer.

(Everyone goes HA HA HA more than once. Thrice even.)

SPACE

Lex: Most artists agree that the working environment affects the work. What’s that like for you, since you’re always changing venues and sometimes you go on tour?
Devin: It’s amazing. For us there are two different spaces. There’s the space where we’re writing, at our friend’s place. There’s a huge open living room with lots of couches that’s become our spot for writing, and it’s condusive of these things because you see everyone. There are also a bunch of smaller rooms where you can go and work more succinctly on little bits. But then our performance space… Well, this is obviously not a spot that we’ve created. It’s not a theatre we’ve built. It’s just what was the best option for us when we started our show. So it is theoretically a jazz bar, with a pretty small stage, and the door, the entrance to the restaurant, is right beside the stage. This door… it’s not ideal for a theatre space. What’s happened is that it’s been incorporated in a bunch of sketches and improvised standup bits.
Devon: The space is not without its foibles, but we’ve tried to make it work.

Lex: What would be the best case scenario for a show, an audience, a space?
Devin: I think different people would have different opinions, but I would say: a little black box theatre that has a bar. That’s my ideal.
Ben: I like doing a lot of mountain top environmental work, so I would prefer just up on top of the Golden Ears National Park, on a glacier.
Devon: I’m sort of convinced by the argument that “life would be better, down where it’s wetter. Under the sea. Take it from me.” Right? So I guess. I mean…

No one is laughing.

LOVE

Devin: It’d be nice to have a space. We don’t really have a space. That’s the thing. We finally get to test our thing out when we perform it at the actual show, but while we’re creating it, we’re just adapting our living rooms, because it’s all that we can do. So it’s not like we’ve never not had a space. Our space is in the collective unconscious of the group. We make our space whatever one or more of us is thinking about while rehearsing.
Ben: Our hive minds.
Devin: Yeah, a few of us have done rehearsals in parkades and things like that. Just open public spaces. We’ve done rehearsals in parks. This is mostly Alex and I. While we’re in public, people look at us and question it, but you get over that.
Ben: It is kind of the nature of what we’re doing.
Devin: And filming video stuff, we’re often out in the public sphere shooting video, doing crazy things.
Devon: Like a cemetery.

Lex: How was that? Shooting in a cemetery?
Devon: It was fun. I wanted to get in and out. I felt like being there with a camera was just kind of …
Devin: Disrespectful?
Devon: …a douchey move; but at the same time, it had to be in a cemetery. The whole thing depended on it. I put the camera away at some point, when a very sad old lady stood there, looking at a tombstone.

GRUNT

Lex: Maybe we should talk about respect for two seconds. A lot of the time, people don’t necessarily equate comedy with respect. They may think that you can just walk all over whatever content. How do you define respect? And how do you keep your work relevant? ‘Cause you’re definitely not ‘safe’ comedians, but how do you keep it respectful?
Devin: Well, as much as we don’t know our audience, we do know they’re very intelligent, and I think that’s what attracts them to our show, because our comedy is intelligent, therefore they know that we are respecting these different kinds of …hmm… how would you say…?

Lex: your content?
Devin: Yeah, our content. When we reference, say, a race joke, or feminism for example. We’re all very respectful of that, and we’re thinking about it intelligently when we deliver it. It’s not meant to reflect us as people, but more so the character work we’ve created for the show.
Ben: Which some people might interpret as hiding behind a mask that we have crafted ourselves. But I think you need to give your audience the benefit of the doubt; that they know what you are doing. In order to maintain respect for ourselves and for all the comedy that we know and has come before us, if you’re not doing slightly offensive stuff, then you’re not doing very interesting stuff. You’ve gotta be hurting someone’s feelings in order to be doing something of worth, otherwise you’re just walking, holding hands and eating donuts.
Devin: That’s offensive to fat people.
Devon: And hand holders.

BACKGROUND CHECK

Devon: I’m a pretty firm believer that when it comes to comedy, nothing should be off limits, as a rule. That goes along with the rule that there are better and less skilled ways to handle topics, so I think where respect comes in a lot with us, is that we try to write from the standpoint where we acknowledge that we are not getting up and telling dick jokes.

Lex: Do you think it’s important to do research, and have a better understanding of the topics you cover? Like racism or feminism. Or do you just go for it when you write, or improvise?
Devin: Well, yeah. When you improvise, you definitely just go for it.
Devon: The rules are a bit different.
Devin: That’s all you can do.
Ben: But what you’re working with is everything you’ve ever heard, and everything you’ve ever seen, so you have a pretty strong bank. It might be a biased understanding of the world, but we’re not approaching something like Southeast Asian economy, if we don’t know anything about it. We’ll be writing the stuff that interests us and that we know.
Devin: I did a solo sketch where I played Mike Tyson, and I researched Mike Tyson quite extensively, and then wrote the entire piece about his life. We research when we need to research, otherwise, we trust ourselves.

PHIL

Lex: Have you ever done Oprah?
Devin: I have not.
Devon: I don’t put drugs into my body.

LEFTOVERS

Lex: Let’s talk about humanity?
Ben: My nipple. I’m missing my nipple.
Devin: I took the whole nipple off.
Ben: With an exacto knife?
Ben: I love body hair.
Devon: I get cold.
Devin: Just describing ourselves.

ARTCORE

Lex: One last one. What’s the point of comedy altogether?
Devin: Should we all say it in one voice?
Devon:…
Ben:…
Devin: What’s the point of comedy?
Devon: To balance out the tragedy in the world; to maintain the balance.
Ben: I think it can also work as a crowbar to open people’s minds to things that they would normally have their guard up against. It’s a tool of information, espionage and catharsis. Tension release. It’s something that can be very serious. If it can be correctly attacked and ripped apart onstage, then I think the audience and ourselves will have a better understanding of it.
Devin: Comedy is very similar to art, in the way that it presents this … skewed… version of reality. It’s like art in the sense that it shows this different way of seeing everything that is real. In that way, it’s interesting and dynamic, and you learn from it, because you think about normal things in a different way.

Lex: Your two cents, Devon?
Devon: I’ve got a deeply firm belief that comedy can change the world if we do it right, so I’m just spending my life trying to figure out how to do it right.
Devin: Or if it can’t change the world, at least it’s funny.
Devon: At least it’s “LOL”.
Ben: At least you can say a dick joke.

THE END

TRUTH

Pump Trolley Comedy is a 13-member comedy collective Pump Trolley Comedy is a 13-member comedy collective dedicated to fresh sorts of funny from the abstract, to the absurd. Catch them live at Cottage Bistro, or in your big butterfly net when you walk down the street. Beware, they are quick and will pose a threat to natural fibers.

NEXT SHOW

GUNS ‘N’ ROSES: APPETITE FOR DESTRUCTION
MAY 25, 2010
COTTAGE BISTRO
4470 Main St. Vancouver

A PRESENT

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www.pumptrolleycomedy.com

|skewed|

Interview by Lexa Naicu | Photography by Lexa Naicu and Lord Loxley

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