Preview
LAMONT FERGUSON
Comedy Cave
Wednesday to Sunday until March 27
Days Inn on Macleod Trail
Stand-up comedy is what Lamont Ferguson loves to do. He’s got more than two decades invested in the craft; he’s performed on The Tonight Show and opened for comedy icon Bill Cosby. What motivates him to get up onstage night after night in town after town?
"I enjoy learning," replies Ferguson. "I look at comedy the same way a fireman looks at fire – it’s something you can look at and respect but you know you’ll never control it. I enjoy making people laugh and finding new ways to do it."
Being such an admirer of the comedy trade, the San Diego-based Ferguson is not a big fan of the performers who approach it with less respect or with an outside agenda. "If you’re really an actor, but you get in as a stand-up comic because you know that’s the shorter line to stand in and you’ll get seen quicker, that’s really annoying," he says.
Spotting the actor in comic’s clothing is a no-brainer to Ferguson. "It doesn’t look natural. It looks like they have memorized this particular piece of material, this monologue, and they’re just doing it, not feeling it," he says. "I have seen some people who have become really good at it, but you can still tell. They turn it into a performance type of deal and comics for the most part are just going up there being themselves."
As Ferguson takes to the Comedy Cave stage for a two-week run, Calgarians can expect to see a performer with a far-ranging, observational, social-commentary style. If there is something screwed up or just plain annoying about our modern society, sooner or later Ferguson is going to pounce on it.
"The whole idea is, I’m just cranky," he says. "I have been doing this for more than 20 years, I have got three kids and I’m just a cranky guy. When you’re a little kid playing outside, I am the guy who keeps your ball when it comes in my yard. That’s who I am."
Ferguson’s trick is taking that irritability and turning it into something identifiable and welcoming to comedy audiences. A two-time selection as San Diego’s funniest performer, Ferguson‘s onstage presence has been compared to the likes of Cosby and Jerry Seinfeld.
Having played Canada many times since 1994, Ferguson feels he has a special rapport with Canadian audiences. "I always tell the crowds that my only objective while I’m in Canada is I do not want to be the ugly American. I want to be a guy from the States that cares about the (Canadian) culture, kind of pays attention and isn’t going up there with the, ‘Oh, I am better than you,’ or ‘What’s going on here?’ attitude."
As comfortable as he is in Canada, Ferguson does admit to having one of his worst experiences as a performer right here in Alberta. "I did a show in Drumheller and, after it, I had to host a joke-telling contest," he recalls. "It was just a horrific evening." Imagine the self-professed cranky dude being forced to listen to locals deliver material of marginal quality and taste. And that wasn’t the worst of it, he adds. "The fact that it was on my birthday didn’t help." |
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