Rosenort Fair |  Westfield Community Park |  August 9, 10, 11
rosenortfestival.com

Kleefeld Honey Festival |  August 9 + 10
kleefeld.ca/festival

Plum Fest |  Plum Coulee |  August 17 + 18
townofplumcoulee.com/plum

Local comedian Matt Falk is a busy guy. Yeah, we’re all busy, but Falk is really busy.

He’s currently writing his latest Celebrations Dinner Theatre show, The Big Boom Theory 2: Time Traveling Geeks (and also wrote Best of Friends Reunion, on now until August 10). In July he’s remounting a show that premiered last fall with magician Chris Funk, Wonderfully Amusing, at the Winnipeg Fringe, and in August he’ll be hitting Rumors Comedy Club and playing a few Manitoba festivals in Rosenort, Kleefeld and Plum Coulee. In September he’ll remount another show, Poof (a play about a family of magicians) throughout the province.

“It’s complicated, especially when you have to jump back and forth from project to project, but that’s where having an organized wife comes in handy,” Falk, 24, says.

At the risk of this article simply being a list of Falk’s accomplishments, we’d be remiss not to mention his album, Apple Pie & Scars, which came out in November of last year and quickly hit number one on the iTunes comedy chart.

“My wife and I were sitting in our car in the driveway - we live in a basement apartment - waiting for the FedEx guy to show up with my box of CDs because we had missed him once before and if we missed him again we’d have to drive to the FedEx place,” he says. “This was also the day it was released on iTunes. As the day progressed it was in the top ten and it kept rising and rising and when it hit number one I was blown away.

“You never really expect that there’s people that actually like you and listen to you. Even though people show up to your shows, you never expect people to go out and buy the CD.”

Much like a band’s first album, the disc is the culmination of the first five years of Falk’s material, as opposed to sitting down and writing specifically for a record.

“If I were to do another album I think there would be more of a process,” he says. “I used to memorize Ellen Degeneres’s special, Here and Now, she’s a brilliant comedian. I loved Robin Williams’ Live at the Met, that was interesting because there’s some jokes there where you’re like ‘what happened?’ You can’t see it and some people say that you shouldn’t do physical comedy on your CD but that always intrigued me more.”

Speaking of big names, some the nicest guys in Canadian comedy, from Brent Butt to Gerry Dee and Ron James, have taken note of this clean cut kid’s act (James calls him a “genius child”).

“Having a clean act opens up the door for writing for theatre and television because you can’t be dirty there - unless you’re writing for HBO,” Falk says. “You can play any venue you want because you’re not limited by the words coming out of your mouth. More people enjoy the act and less people walk away spreading bad things about you.”

This comes in handy when getting booked for big, family friendly festivals.

“There’s a massive difference between playing an outdoor festival or fair and playing a comedy club,” Falk says. “A comedy club was designed for one purpose - comedy. It’s a small, packed room. The audience is close together, there’s a little stage with all the lights focused on that one person and you have nothing to do but stare at that comedian and laugh. At a festival it’s designed so that there’s always something else to do. When there’s a comedian on stage there’s also a ferris wheel and juggling and 200 screaming kids between you and the stage, so to grab someone’s attention there is way more difficult.

“That being said, if the environment is right and the audience is in the right mood it can be, for lack of a less cheesy term, completely magical.”

Check out mattfalkcomedy.com

Part of the series: Summer Festival Guide 2013

Published in Volume 67, Number 27 of The Uniter (July 17, 2013)