Just before she headlines the Chemainus Comedy Club on Thursday, April 24, Erica Sigurdson will finish a 68-show, cross-Canada tour, performing the same set each night. It might be the four months on tour talking, but the comedian said she’s ready to cut loose.
"I’m looking forward to being off that script and having a really fun set in a very charming place with friends. Who knows what wild things I’ll get up to!” she said from the back of a tour truck in snowy Ontario during the final stretch of the Snowed In Comedy Tour.
Sigurdson is one of the country’s top comedians and has performed at every major comedy festival in Canada as well as in Singapore, the Philippines, Thailand, Afghanistan and Iceland. She has also been featured more than 50 times on CBC Radio’s hit show The Debaters and is an in-demand comedy headliner and public speaker.
Touring has evolved for the comedian over the past two decades. Early in her career, touring meant “weeks in a car with another comedian staying in questionable motels, all for the glory of performing in a bar for $100.”
“That was rough,” she said, “but at the time I was in my 20s and it felt very cool to struggle. That wears off pretty quick.”
These days, she said touring is “a lot more flying, nice hotels, theatre shows, and four friends having a great time while doing what we love, so that’s a blast.”
Sigurdson will perform in Chemainus along with host and fellow Vancouver comic Katie-Ellen Humphries and featured act Henok Meresa from Victoria.
“I’ve worked with both of them numerous times and love being on shows together,” she said. “They’re both very talented and super fun people to hang around with as well, so it promises to be a great night.”
While it’s her first time performing in Mural Town, Sigurdson already knows a thing or two about “the little town that did.”
“I know it’s quiet and has a cool barge dive site that I once looked into as an experience gift for my husband,” she said. “And then the murals, of course.”
Comedy is absolutely where Sigurdson belongs.
“When I’m on stage, everything else disappears and I feel like the truest version of myself,” she said. “It’s also kind of an insane thing to do for a living. Sometimes before a show I peek out at the audience and think, ‘What an absurd thing to think I can walk out and make these people laugh.’”
Absurd or not, Sigurdson has been making people laugh for more than 20 years. On April 24, Chemainus gets its turn.
Tickets are available online or in person at Doc the Barber, 9745 Willow St.
