Arctic Representation: A Conversation with Peter Igupttaq Autut

A conversation with comedian and writer Peter Igupttaq Autut. Read some of his writing for Up Here Magazine here: https://uphere.ca/articles/winter-chesterfield-inlet

This is Episode 1 of the mini-series "Arctic Representation: Conversations with Inuit Artists," produced by Clara Wilch, a Postdoctoral Fellow at Vanderbilt University and LENS scholar who earned a PhD in Theater and Performance Studies at UCLA. 

Episode cover image: photograph by Clara Wilch. 

Sound credits: BCO - tram ride on a sunny day - 2022-08-12 by brylie -- https://freesound.org/s/646626/-- License: Attribution 4.0N

Brylie Christopher Oxley - Ardour and Helm - 2018-05-16 by brylie -- https://freesound.org/s/428616/-- License: Creative Commons 0

“Between Moments” by Amber Glow from Epidemic Sound

“Fauna” by Bomull from Epidemic Sound

Parallel Universe by Andrewkn -- https://freesound.org/s/404458/-- License: Creative Commons 0

Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:07

Hello, listeners to Lenscast. My name is Clara Wilch and I am a scholar of the environmental humanities. I am a postdoc at Vanderbilt University and an associate of the Mahindra Center at Harvard. My specialty and PhD are in theater and performance studies. And I've been really interested in the Arctic and the Subarctic for the past 20 years as a place that I care about. A socio-political region that is composed of indigenous lands, but also overlays a lot of national borders and is subject to a lot of competing interests, and also as an imaginary. By imaginary, I mean a web of ideas, images, feelings, values, and social practices that shape and reshape what a place means to people, and in turn what that place is. So the creation and circulation of art and other media are a big factor in the formation and maintenance of different imaginaries. A key factor in the formation of the dominant Arctic imaginaries is the history of climate change communication. I would argue that no region is more closely associated with climate change than the Arctic. There are a lot of reasons for that. For one, the Arctic has been warming at a rate that is about four times faster than the average warming elsewhere in the globe. Because of that, polar ice has melted at an extraordinary rate, which has cascading effects in and beyond the Arctic. Simultaneously, images of polar bears, melting glaciers have been internationally circulated for decades as the sort of mascots of climate change. They've been the entities most relied upon to convince people that climate change is real and is happening in the face of very well-funded campaigns of climate denial. So it's almost impossible to think about the Arctic without thinking about climate change and vice versa, especially for people without ties to the far north. An unfortunate feature of these climate awareness campaigns, as important and as effective as they have been, is that in many cases they've continued a longer history of colonial imaginings of the Arctic as an archetypical wilderness that is mythically outside of human history or culture. There's a lot of media that propagates the idea that the Arctic is hostile and uninhabitable, or that it is pure and magic and ethereal. The Far North might bring to mind nature documentaries that depict Arctic foxes and pharmigans struggling to survive, or Santa Claus and the elves, the menacing beginning and ending of Frankenstein. Now consider how rarely popular media include stories or images of people going about their day-to-day lives there. So it's a place that's often imagined as both vulnerable and valuable because of its wildness and otherworldliness, because of its supposed separation from human activity and history. This has very serious consequences, one of which is playing out now in how common sense it seems to be to many people to think about large swaths of the Arctic as being available for sale and exploitation, as if at present they are on or underutilized spaces without any kind of personal or political claims being made to them. This is, of course, patently false and erases the presence and hard-fought sovereignty and stewardship of predominantly indigenous communities throughout the region. It also misrepresents the environmental issues that activists and scientists want to draw attention to in that it naturalizes a tendency for many people to imagine climate change as separate from social concerns and histories with which environmental issues are in fact intimately interwoven, including in the Arctic and Subarctic. I understand climate change as a socio-environmental issue because its causes and consequences have a great deal to do with human actions, including the greed-driven domination and exploitation of people and lands by governments and corporations. The absence of people in most imagery of the far north, especially Inuit or Alaskan native people who comprise much of the population of the North American Arctic in climate change coverage is conspicuous and part of a long, deleterious history of erasure, which has important downstream effects for the policies that are taken up or not in the Arctic, and in the face of rapid climate-related changes. This is relevant for artists and humanists. It's also politically significant. The Americas were colonized by European settlers through acts of genocide and the mass theft of land, but settler colonialism also relies upon and has been maintained for centuries through other structural means like denying or restricting the representational autonomy of indigenous peoples. This has led many indigenous studies scholars and activists to advocate for the need for more and better supported indigenous self-representation. In much American commercial film, television, and music, indigenous people and stories were historically relegated to the settler colonial gaze, where they were flattened, distorted, or erased. Indigenous people are changing all that happily and reshaping media at every stage of production. So for the remainder of this podcast and two other podcasts to follow, I'll be sharing conversations that I was fortunate to have with artists who are from the far north and who are currently living and working in a Halloween. That is the capital city of Nunavut, and Nunavut is the iniquit name, meaning our land. It's the northeasternmost territory of Canada. As a small contribution to greater efforts to nuance and correct understandings of this important and beautiful and dynamic place, broadly known as the Arctic, I wanted to share these conversations with visionary artists who have lived and worked there. A stand-up comedian, a musician, and a filmmaker. We talk about their art, some of what they're working on and want to represent. We talk about some of the challenges as well as opportunities that come up with living or working in the far north and how that environment has and has not informed their work, a little bit about each of their unique relationships to their own identity and settler colonialism in Canada, the expectations that sometimes come with identity, the artistic challenges of that, about the efforts that they've contributed to to build creative and technical networks and communities that can access larger and more international audiences, and other anecdotes from their lived experience of and beyond the far north. I hope you enjoy these conversations as I did, and most of all, that you seek out the creative work that we talk about here and other excellent creative work being produced in Nunavut, in Greenland, and other places in the far north. These artists challenge and move audiences in a great many ways, one of which is by guiding us to better understand the many-dimensional far north and how across the world we might confront and correct some of the social and environmental violence and injustices of the past and present. For the remainder of the episode, you'll hear my conversation with the writer and stand-up comedian Peter Gupdak Auret, who I have seen perform at Just for Laughs Arctic Festival, at Open Mics. He is incredibly funny and generous and observant. Peter has also worked as a cultural guide for visitors to Nunavut, so he's particularly skilled at helping outsiders understand things about the land that they wouldn't otherwise. I wanted to start this series with Peter's interview for that reason. He finds a lot of humor in the outsider and their curiosity about Nunavut. Throughout this interview, he brings vivid life to different kinds of cold and winter, to the long nights of the far north, and to the lives and personalities and the delights of the animal world that Peter has come to know intimately as a hunter and fisher in ways that go beyond the declensionist climate narratives that often frame the far north. This recording was made inside of a restaurant that becomes increasingly festive throughout the conversation. Apologies for the less than pristine sound quality, but we hope that you enjoy a textured illustration of the larger community of a Halloween and especially Peter's storytelling.

SPEAKER_03 9:37

Thank you so much. It's nice to be here. So would you mind just introducing yourself, first of all?

SPEAKER_06 9:43

Yeah, Peter Igukta Coder from Chesterfield. That's Igupta, Bumblebee.

SPEAKER_03 9:50

Oh really? Yeah. I like that. That's nice.

SPEAKER_06 9:57

Get named after you know animals and birds and things in our culture anyways.

SPEAKER_03 10:02

And the colour means like fish, right? The place of many fish.

SPEAKER_06 10:07

Place of many fish, yeah. That's the other thought of the chart now, right as right as we speak.

SPEAKER_02 10:12

You have a very sort of hypnotic way of like going back to certain phrases and certain like elements of very long jokes.

SPEAKER_06 10:22

Yeah. Like I can't see one line is and say I gotta do a whole like uh process to it. And I'm a writer, but okay. I love writing. I don't I write about my growing up in Chesterfield, the kind of fishing, hunting, and boating trips that my dad and I used to take, and back then there was no phones to take pictures and whatnot. Spice to recapture those moments by writing that writing them down for the families. Um I've been doing that since I was 13, 14, and I was. I didn't know that was gonna help me or support me later in life. And if people come up here with nothing and they wanna be they wanna join that group, I watch and I pay attention and when I see something like I'll put it on my phone and I said, I just saw this. I don't know how I'm gonna use it, but you know, they're gonna cherry can in the Honda. I don't know how, but I'll I'll make it work. With my comedy when I started loving the stage and going on and being invited, reinvited, and it's the I really started paying attention three years ago. And of course with COVID, it it kind of subsided for a little bit, but now it's coming back. It's like even through like this for me, it's like you know, probably this is somehow some way down the road. It's not as late from LA.

SPEAKER_03 11:50

How do you be funny?

SPEAKER_01 11:56

Side note here, I recommend looking up Peter's short stories. They're available online and they're wonderful. We did want to provide listeners with a little sample of his writing about Chesterfield Nunavut and his young years. So here is a reader's rendition of an excerpt of the short story Happiness is a Cold Day that Peter contributed to the April 2016 issue of Up Here Magazine.

SPEAKER_00 12:30

One time we were heading home, and the blizzard was so bad I had my old man lead the way. If I were in charge, we'd probably end up in Hawaii. He used snowdrifts in his cigarette pack. He placed the pack on the ground and watched it move to tell the direction of the wind. He would then see how the snow blew over the snow drifts. We would use this as our eyes, so long as the wind was hitting you, and the snow drifts in the same direction, in the big picture, you were heading in the right direction. He'd stop every so often to make sure the wind wasn't doing funny things, like changing direction. It's pretty interesting to be traveling blind. You really start to question after some time if you're heading in the right direction. Finally, sometimes after 12 hours in the blizzard, you'd see a landmark that you knew was so close to home, it was like winning the lottery. Even better when your mom knew you'd be home about this time when there was hot food on the table.

SPEAKER_03 13:33

Yeah, I had a question about that. So you do you go back to Chesterfield?

SPEAKER_06 13:37

Well, my my dad's 87, he's still over there. And yeah, but I mean I haven't gone back in like two years, but I'm due to go back. Like I'm older now, and it's uh I really appreciate the fact that people who when I come there people go out of their way to go say hi.

SPEAKER_01 13:52

And what's what's like a it's like 400 people? Is that right?

SPEAKER_06 13:56

About 450, 400, but when I was near it 350. Because I remember because I when it was moving out, I told my brother, now there's 349.

SPEAKER_03 14:04

You counted.

SPEAKER_06 14:09

They've done well though, because it's at least 100 people more since I've been there, so that's pretty good.

SPEAKER_01 14:14

Is it alive, like subsistence, like people living off of hunting?

SPEAKER_06 14:17

It's a mix of both, you know. There's two, there's there's a lot of work there for like GN jobs and whatnot, and you know, private sector studies like but uh the con itself, yeah. Even the people who work love to go out fishing and hunting, still very much alive, uh the traditional ways, and you know, and you can see that like coming to color it is of course respect to the column myth that they do. There's a handful of people who are very traditional and whatnot. Yeah. And in general, it's hard if you see that, and like you have to go like a microscope to see it. But if you go to Chesterfield, it's just like it's in it's alive, it's right in front of you. Like you're gonna see somebody drive by taking off, and you're gonna see somebody coming back with a harvest of some sort. Like it's so just right in your face, kinda. It's like, oh yeah, this is this is real. I'm more of a fisher, but before back in the day they were hunting carrier was very common, like going out and with my dad and had sleeping in igloo and between thirteen to nineteen, very common. They were sleeping eggloo and put out another fishing that's in January, February, or March. But I thought everybody was doing that.

SPEAKER_03 15:37

That sounds so nice.

SPEAKER_06 15:39

Um It's it's nothing compared to what my ancestors went through them at ginger. Even my dad and my grandpa had soft of real estate. They would spend weeks and months out there. So I'm just very appreciative and lucky to have seen that and have a taste of that and see it with your own eyes. Yeah, yeah, I remember a time we were in this little island out in the bay somewhere outside of Chesterfield. And I really felt that I was in a small room with all these lights, the lights being the stars and the northern lights, and I felt like I was in the smallest room because they were so close to me, like I I could reach out and feel like I could touch them. That's how I mean that's how like it's powerful, like and so I didn't I look just in awe the fact my dad was just doing his thing, having a secret baby, and to him it was regular. To me, it was like it was the first time I saw it like that, and I was like, oh my god, like we live in paradise.

SPEAKER_05 16:40

It was probably minus 35, but but I never forgot that.

SPEAKER_02 16:46

I love that. How do you feel about seals? I know that they're very important as like food, re all all kinds of ways, right? Probably.

SPEAKER_04 16:57

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 16:57

Do you what's that like? Like when you see a seal, what is that? What do you feel?

SPEAKER_06 17:03

I I don't have no big spiritual, but you know, I respect the fact it's an animal. I respect that, you know. There's some days maybe I could catch four or five, but I'll catch one because what am I gonna do with four or five? It just won't work for me.

SPEAKER_04 17:16

Yes.

SPEAKER_06 17:16

And I'm not gonna be able to just breed it as quick as I want. But if I want one and somebody in the family or somebody has to friend request I want a one. You know, I'll get it for that. But I you know, as a spiritual guy and all that like I respect the fact that they enable us to fit like worms, they get oil, they're fat, and they're you know, like all good, all green. But to me at the end of the day, like part of me, some of I don't know how to explain this to you. I'm gonna catch it.

SPEAKER_05 17:49

Yeah.

SPEAKER_06 17:53

There's many stories where I can tell you the stories of what sea ones. There's one particular one I remember just two minutes outside of Chapter Food in the bay. And uh when the ice was breaking the sea ice, it's uh because it's not salt water, it doesn't break like lake water. It it's kinda it's very uh what's the word? It's uh very elastiky. Yeah. The ice doesn't break because of the salt. And I remember one time we were hunting this particular tree which was really close to the community, um it wouldn't go down the hole with it, would it? And I was I had no rifle, I had no heart from my hand. What I had was this two by two by two stick of maybe about four feet long. And me and my brother Paul and I was going to it not really thinking, well it's gonna go down anyway, so we're not really hunting it, we're just I'm just trying to see what I can do here. Yeah. And I would say, hey, hey, whoa, and when he when he was put his head down towards the hole, the ice of the hole, like to go into the depth of the water, I would shout out a hee hee woo. Like, you know, there was no real connection of this. I didn't know what I was doing, and he was like, what the f are you doing? And anyways, I'm going up to it, I'm going up to it, I'm going up to it, I get closer and cleaner. I'm like, oh my god, I might be able to get this guy. Without a rifle, without a harpoon, without a meeting the stick finally when I got close enough to put the stick in between the circle in the hole where it when I put it in the sealers couldn't couldn't go in but I caught it. Like and I felt so oh my god, I'm I'm a freaking hunt, I'm a freaking awesome, I'm the best so many I was so proud of myself and stuff, and we're looking at my brother's hole. He came over, he was just like, Are you down if he was all proud of me? Yeah, it was all moon, it was all me then you were standing here with the seal, uninjured, just looking at it. He's healthy, it's not sick, it's fine, he's good. And I looked at where our snowmobile and slits are and I could see the ice was um waving, like the waves of the water, and I realized I thought follow, look, look at our snowmobile. And we were minutes from the ice shattering, breaking. I threw the sit down, it was life or death now.

SPEAKER_05 20:32

Yeah.

SPEAKER_06 20:33

So I'm running to the sled, he's running to the snowmobile, and we turn around and we zip back to the land, which was about maybe two minutes at the most. When you zip back to the land, the ice is close to breaking up like crushing, like a glass. And once we got back on the land, five minutes later he was shattered. And I realized it wasn't so much what I did to this. He was like, I'm gonna be up here for another five minutes. So all that stuff I did was he was so easy. I think he kind of went the option. This guy's not gonna kill me.

SPEAKER_03 21:15

But I might be able to get in. So yeah. Wow. What kind of seal was that?

SPEAKER_06 21:22

The ring seal.

SPEAKER_03 21:24

He was much sure, he was good and just did he did he look at you during that?

SPEAKER_06 21:29

Well he was looking at me the whole thing because he was he was kinda he was he was thinking about going under the ice, but I guess for them I look back in the animals, they know the land, they know the ice damn. They know what's gonna happen to the ice and I guess it was better for him to stay up there as long as possible.

SPEAKER_05 21:46

Uh huh.

SPEAKER_06 21:46

And then uh when the ice starts breaking and moving around, I mean it's it's hard for them to get back up and breathe.

SPEAKER_05 21:52

Yeah.

SPEAKER_06 21:52

So they have to kind of wear the officers, okay. This is the very last moment, okay.

SPEAKER_05 21:58

Yeah.

SPEAKER_06 22:00

Right. You know, but at the time I didn't know that.

SPEAKER_03 22:04

I'm glad you're okay. No, fine, yeah.

SPEAKER_06 22:08

My mom was mad because we said you won't feel one thing we didn't can't force.

SPEAKER_03 22:13

Oh. You're like, but we did. Do you ever have like a comedy teacher or like comedians that you watched and admired?

SPEAKER_06 22:42

Of course I enjoyed comedy like the Robin Williams, Eddie Merck in both cases, and I followed them religiously, but I, you know, enjoyed when I could yeah when I could see them and what nonsense prior to that way back when they had these Peter Stages and they had uh I forget the title, but they had the section of comic stuff and I really enjoyed that as as a kid. But it never made me think, oh I want to be a comedian, I want to do this again. Like that just came like five years ago where it was just like there was a future for Ottawa, that's all I wanted. And when you want something bad and I'm I I I was hungry that time for that.

SPEAKER_03 23:24

Yeah.

SPEAKER_06 23:25

My comedy came from being about, I don't know, like my flavors of people coming up to the north for the first time and seeing what they're eyes and and seeing when they work up here for the first first year, first six months. I like to think that I understand what they do through. I've seen so many of them. And when I when they go to the show, if they see themselves and laugh, laugh at themselves and laugh at each other and say, Oh my god, that's so true. And that's what I like, you know, like just to let them know that hey, people are paying attention.

SPEAKER_03 24:01

Your comedy is like it's allowing people to laugh at themselves and sort of poking fun at them, but also like welcoming people who are outsiders and making them feel like they're a part of your show too.

SPEAKER_06 24:10

Right. So I like to reflect on them to think to appreciate. I mean like people in general, I'm like it's it's still still surprising me. I'll be walking down the streets and say, hi Peter, I'm like uh I don't think I'm famous or anything, but just the it's funny when people are just buying me a beer and they're sick here you go and they thank you.

SPEAKER_01 24:32

My perception as a southerner in the US about the Arctic and the subarctic is that it's changing a lot because of local warming, and that's a lot of what we know about it.

SPEAKER_03 24:41

Do you have concerns about that or of course, yeah.

SPEAKER_06 24:46

My people, when I say my people, my family and stuff, they it especially in Chester, I feel like all of the changes that are happening in these are my family, and these I hunt and fish with, and they're feeling me it's like this or it's like that now in April or May. When it should be in June or just like so it's uh it's it's concerning. It's it's changing so rapidly, like if there's certain ways that we grew up with and were come from our ancestors that you know you have to do this at April, you have to do this at mean, but now that's being disrupted. And uh the customs are slightly changing, and you you can it kind of makes you wonder like melting so rapidly and so quickly, and the changes so fast. If it's like that now, what it's gonna be like in ten years. Like we're talking ten years, but ten years is like it's skipping a half way thick.

SPEAKER_03 25:44

Right, but you haven't noticed it so much in a cow week. It's happening.

SPEAKER_06 25:47

Yeah, it's happening a lot quicker, and and it's not just the melting, it's just the changes in the weather, and say some days we it's so mild in March or April, like it's like it should it should be later on, but it's happening, and it'll rethore a one-week period or and it just fluctuates, and you like you can't really tell how it's gonna be, or you used to be able to uh predict but no, it's just too bad. It's just inconsistent. Right, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 26:19

A quick editorial aside, our conversation about climate change now segues into a conversation about comedy and the role that that mode of art plays in brokering dialogue and better understanding between people of different backgrounds, which I think is meaningfully related to how climate change has become a force for increased interest and movement and potentially tension in the far north. In other words, climate change is one, albeit powerful, component of a larger socio-ecological web in Nunavut, in which there are other forces. This web has also been shaped by settler colonialism and by indigenous land stewardship and the lives of the animals that Peter talks about and his relationships with them as a hunter, the maintenance of cultural practices like these, and the creative work of people like Peter, who uses stand-up in writing to communicate about and shape these socio-ecological realities to show their connections and find more hopeful ways of managing challenging conditions of rapid change. Peter addresses some of these connections in a story for the regional newspaper Nanatiak News. He wrote, With climate change going on, we have more and more newcomers, and they are welcomed. It's just Inui were nomadic people who love the great outdoors by themselves out there over the hills and glaciers, maybe following the caribou or the Charizard or the migratory birds' nest. We still need to recharge out there on the land where Horizon meets the land. I believe the land will change, but it will still carry that source to recharge the people here that will enable them to live here and strive. And now back to the conversation.

SPEAKER_03 28:19

No, I really I got to see your set at the Just For Laughs Arctic Comedy Fest.

SPEAKER_01 28:25

And it was a lot about sort of like the mating rituals of temp workers in this town, of which I know there are a lot, right? Like a lot of people come to work for the government for like a year or two, and it was really hysterical, and also seems like a really good, like there's a there's a lot of history of people studying the north, right? Yeah and like just sort of turning that camera around in a way.

SPEAKER_06 28:48

Exactly. Yeah, I mean like I like to think that there's one particular joke that people I don't know why they particularly remember all the time because like uh people coming up north for the first time, getting off the plane on their own, you alone, you're so far from home, you're far from family. But you know, there's a group of people who can hear for three to five years and they've they've already measured you, weighed you, and they know where you're they know where your pay skill is. We know where you're going. So I like to, you know, then in that sense it's like you're not really a They're looking at their binoculars. Yeah, basically, yeah, the grandma with a window and stuff, you know.

SPEAKER_03 29:34

Yeah.

SPEAKER_06 29:35

There's people who are like uh really interested and keen on learning more and stuff, those go those are the ones they know I like as a local, you know, when people I appreciate that, like they want to learn more, they want to learn, you know, they're part of my culture. I'm happy to give it to them. And uh there's uh another group of people just you know maybe traveling alone is not is intimidating. It's traveling alone up here, like as comfortable as I am. I remember going south for the first time, and I was like, hmm. It's a little bit challenging.

SPEAKER_02 30:09

Yeah, you don't always know where to start the movie. Comedy seems good at like just shooting across those lines sometimes.

SPEAKER_06 30:16

Just like opens up a little space for people when they laugh to like be present, be your step back and relax a little bit, and okay, that's okay. Okay, just for one second when people see a different perspective. Like sometimes we're so geared on how we think, and I like to think that, okay, that's the way I think, but let me see how Trevor thinks. And really open up with that idea and that concept of what do you see, just so I can have a better perspective. You can bring up certain subjects like of course in the sensitive, but if you can throw it off in a certain way that people can appreciate it, you know, it's tasteful and it's not just disregarding one side or the other. Like it's possible, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 31:08

This conversation ends with Peter telling me a little bit about his experiences as a performer across Canada, and he talks some about arts infrastructure in a Halloween. It's a territorial capital with a diverse population and global access via the internet, but it does lack a dedicated performing arts venue at present, which is something a lot of artists and performers and audiences know would be justified and well used. There is an organization working to build that venue according to the needs and vision of the community, and a link in the show notes in case you're interested in finding out more about their work or donating to support them.

SPEAKER_02 31:58

Is there anything you'd like to see like change in a Cow Wednesda comedy scene?

SPEAKER_06 32:03

I mean, like we should have an artist complace a building just for that kind of type of not just for comedy, but for artists and stuff to be able to perform yourself. Because we always end up using like conferences rooms, and if I go to Ottawa and I go to a show, like the room is set up so that you it feels you know that way, that it feels like oh, this is for this. Why can't we have it up here? I mean, I mean I'm still in Canada. It would just be that much more for the community.

SPEAKER_02 32:35

Yeah. Is there an open mic here on Wednesday?

SPEAKER_06 32:39

When I'm not sure if it's tomorrow, like when for tomorrow or when next week.

SPEAKER_03 32:43

But you're not planning on on going up or anything.

SPEAKER_06 32:46

If I'm here, I go up anyway on open mic. I love the mic. Yeah, yeah, I can't. I can't, yeah. Yeah, they know that like whenever if it's open mic night, if I'm here, they know I'm way up. I love I love the stage.

SPEAKER_03 33:05

What is the stage here though?

SPEAKER_06 33:07

The floor?

SPEAKER_03 33:08

Okay.

SPEAKER_06 33:11

I always joke about that. People like they work their way up and get bigger stages and bigger and bigger and bigger. I started with a big stage here in Nunavut, and I seem to be working the other way around to smaller and smaller to no stage. So I gotta change my strategy.

SPEAKER_01 33:33

What are your goals as a performer and a comedian?

SPEAKER_06 33:38

Well my like uh of course you want to get bigger, you wanna get, you know, you want to get out there and you wanna do my dream is to be in a big big freaking stadium. Of course, uh I'm in the north and there's only so many shows, and they'll show us the shows that are being open and they already have a headliner even before you they ask you. So it's a little challenging. If I was in Toronto, maybe LA and you know, I could work my way, you know, like but at the same time I'm just like, you know what? That's my little channel. That's my little, you know.

SPEAKER_04 34:11

Yeah.

SPEAKER_06 34:12

I gotta figure that, you know, route and figure it out. You know, I've been I've been hunting enough to know what long enough. I was kind of confused that when I get back home, if I don't get back home, maybe I'm not gonna make it. You know, that was more that was more life and death. This is just an obstacle that I'm looking at and at first it was daunting, but now it's like, you know what? I gotta stop being sorry for myself and just, you know, like okay, how do we change that? Yeah, because reality. And I'd like to work for that. Let's build on that. I mean, it's like anything, you do it more, you do it, you know, if you love what you're doing, if you're happy with what you're doing, you do it more and you people appreciate it, and people let you know. I mean the real rewards are people for randomly come up to you and just want to shake your hands and you're really good at that.

SPEAKER_03 35:02

What is the difference between like headlining and opening?

SPEAKER_06 35:06

For myself. For driving a boat, I want to drive the boat. I don't want to be the second hand or you want like I should be the captain because I know every dent cracks and cranny and corners and I know those areas, like there's something there to expose and to have fun with, and for me that's you know, up here, yeah. I just want to drive the boat.

SPEAKER_05 35:30

Yeah.

unknown 35:34

That's great.