Isabel Zaw-Tun

[00:00:00] Speaker A: Hello and welcome to Storyteller in Depth, a podcast where we go behind the scenes to learn more about the school of Communications Media Arts and designs people, places and things. I'm your host, Pat Quigley. In today's episode, we dive deep into the world of comedy with Isabel Za Tun. Isabel began her journey in fine arts as a graduate of Centennial College's program and has since developed an impressive career as a comedian. In this episode, Isabel discusses the connection between fine arts and comedy, provides insight into the creation of her stand up comedy album, God's Perfect Bee, and shares valuable advice for aspiring comedians. Plus, you recount some more memorable moments from her career that you definitely do not want to miss. Without further ado, let's get started. [00:00:42] Speaker B: Thank you so much, Isabel, for being on the podcast today. [00:00:45] Speaker C: I'm so excited to be here. [00:00:47] Speaker B: Yeah, no, we're going to have an amazing conversation and in just a bit, we'll get into discussing the exciting news about your debut stand up album being available on streaming platforms. But first, let's get into your journey from the fine arts program at Centennial College to comedy. So what kind of inspired you to get into fine arts in the first place? [00:01:08] Speaker C: It's a very, it's a very long story. I mean, I could tell you my whole life story, but basically I, I love to draw. It's always been one of my talents. And my mom, uh, when we were little she was a stay at home mom. And one of the things that she loved to do is she would draw with us, she would paint with us. Uh, so it's always been a big part of my life being visually creative and I'm a very visual thinker as well. And so it just felt natural to go into fine arts. I had gone to the fine arts program kind of in a roundabout way. I did my undergrad in playwriting, actually playwriting and costume design at Queen's University. And then I got. Because that was not a. Not an easy thing to transition into paying job. I got my bachelor of education and I taught for a while and I kept going back to, to the art piece. My favorite part about getting my costuming degree was about the, like the drawing of the designs. And I kind of lost interest in the play after that was over. I'm not a theater kid. My personality is not theater kid at all. Did not enjoy my undergrad, but I love doing comics and I drew cartoons. I had my own little web comic that nobody read except for me for a while. And it felt just inevitable doing fine arts. So that's what drew me to the fine arts program in general. And then when I was looking for where to go when I was in Toronto, I picked Centennial because they had, I think at the time. So I had two kids at the time. I was a single parent and I think they had a good. They had a child care program or something like that in their brochure. And I was like, oh, that's interesting. And the fine arts program at Centennial at the time was run by a man named David. And he was. I'm trying to remember his last name and I don't want to get wrong. And it started with an M. I feel terrible for forgetting it. McClimate. David McClimate. He was the head of the fine arts program. And when I came to do my little interview for the program, he was just, he was so charming, he was so warm. Someone commented. One of my classmates later commented, saying, I feel like people take this program for David because he was, he was so wonderful and I'm so glad. I'm very lucky that I got to do the fine arts program when he was in charge of it because he was just such a kind and encouraging man. Shout out to David McClyment, what was. [00:04:00] Speaker B: Your medium of choice? Like, I know you said you liked comics and drawing comics, but like, is that. Did you like pencil, pencil work and graphite or like, what did you like to do? [00:04:09] Speaker C: I always loved inking, like with a brush, pen or sometimes with like a. With a brush and ink. I love line work. When I was a child, my grandma gave me this book. You know the weird books your grandma gives you where she's like, has a vague idea of your interests. And one of them was this book called so youo Want to Be a Cartoonist. And it was by a British artist who did primarily caricatures. And I remember he wrote a lot about like, line is the most important thing. If you have your line work then that means you're an artist. And so that really sunk into my, what, like, seven year old brain at the time. Um, and so yeah, I love, I love a good line. I love graphic stuff and I love the way that working with ink feels. Now I do most of my work digitally, so it is a different feel in the hand, I guess, but. But I try to use like brushes and stuff that can emulate that feeling. I love, I love ink work. I love line work. [00:05:14] Speaker B: That's awesome. Now, fine arts and comedy might seem very different, but both are very deeply creative fields. How has your background in fine arts shaped your approach to stand up and do you find any overlap in the creative process? [00:05:27] Speaker C: Oh, there's so much overlap. Just practically. If you have training in caricature, roasts will be very easy for you. If you train your eye to see see what's weird and distinctive about people's appearances, roast comedy will come very naturally to you. Also, because I'm such a visual thinker, often when I'm producing shows, I'll think of the poster first, and then the show will kind of follow. I produce a show, it's not a monthly show because it's a lot of work. So I kind of do it every two or three months. It's called WOC Women of Comedy. I run it out of SoCap Theater, and I got the idea for it when I just wanted to draw paper dolls. I had this, like, mania where I was just drawing paper dolls all the time. And so the poster is like, different women of color as paper dolls with, you know, comedy and clothing accoutrement around them. So, yeah, I always feel like when in producing, I start with it with an image, with a poster. And because I'm in the. In the comedy world, it's actually granted me a lot of opportunities for commissions because I'm able to collaborate with other comedians, and I do web comics with other comedians. I do other people's album covers, I do other people's posters, I do other people's merch. So that's been really nice. And it's kind of the. The perfect way to be a working artist for me, because I'm only working with people I like. I'm able to turn down any work that isn't for me, which is a huge privilege that I'm able to be like, oh, I don't think I would be a good fit for that. Um, or sometimes I'm just like, sorry, I'm so busy right now. I'm not able to take on more. Whereas if it was like my primary thing was making money with commissions for comedy, I wouldn't be able to say no to anything. So I just get to make make fun money by doing the thing that I love, which is. Yeah, I recently did a, like, a pin design for an English comedian, actually, and that was a lot of fun. I just got to draw her as a. As a penguin. [00:08:03] Speaker B: That's awesome. So what led you into the world of comedy? Like, it. You know, as we just said, they seem different. Both are deeply creative fields. But, like, what was the turning point? What made you want to change to that direction of things? [00:08:20] Speaker C: I don't even know if Change is the right word, because I feel like I should have refocus. Yeah. With the art. At the time when I got into comedy, I was really trying to do illustrative work, like, for children's books, which is a sweet gig if you can get it, but it's very hard to get into. And so I was trying that, I think, with. With me and my art. I. I like a narrative. So I was at the time doing a lot of comic books and again, like, illustrations of stories. And so the. The narrative aspect of storytelling was always a big part of my particular artwork. And I got invited to an open mic by a friend, and so we went and they wanted to sign up and do a little bit, and they chickened out. But I still had so much fun at the open mic, which is rare because it just so happened that the open mic we went to was one of the few nice open mics in the city. I don't know if you're familiar. I don't know if this is too inside baseball with the comedy scene, but open mics are not a great place to go if you want to hear good quality jokes, necessarily. I mean, even with established comedians who are good and very funny. And open mic is where you go to kind of throw things and be like, does this work? Does that work? You're just kind of working through all the very rough stuff. But open mics are also notorious for people who. How do I say? Not even people who aren't funny, but people who are just bad, like, who maybe don't. Men who don't like women so much or white people who don't like non white people so much, are very drawn to open mic sometimes. But I lucked out. I ended up going to my first ever open mic, was run by two women, and men were welcome to perform. But it was like, this is a place that is for primarily female comics to try out their new stuff. And if you're a man, you can come. You have to be kind of man who is respectful to women, which filters out a lot of comedians. So it was really nice. And I was like, oh, this looks like a lot of fun. And I started doing it, and I realized I was good at it. And comedy in Canada is very hard to do as a. Like, as your primary source of income. Just the other day, I went out with a friend for brunch, and our server was a friend of ours, also a comic, who also is, like, has starred in TV shows. And we were kind of laughing like, this is Canadian comedy. If we were in the States, you would be on a red carpet, you know, you'd, you'd be famous, you'd, you'd have made it. And then in Canada you get the same amount, but, you know, you still have to have a day job. So come. Comedy was never something where I was like, oh, I can transition to this and pay my bills. But it was a big source of, it was a big source of joy for me. And I never saw it as giving up art for comedy, really, because I was able to still do art at the same time. That's one of the really nice things about knowing visual art, learning visual art, is that you can always keep that with you. I remember because I was a very young mum. I had my son when I was 19 and I got a lot of pushback, I guess, from my peers and being like, oh, well, you have to give up on your life now or things are over. I remember always feeling like, well, I'm an artist and nothing's ever going to stop me from being an artist. And that was true. I also learned so much about myself as an artist through being a mom, and I learned so much about myself as a comic through being a mom. I think that if I didn't have my kids, I wouldn't be where I am today in terms of. I wouldn't be as motivated, that's for sure. And a lot of my work that I'm really proud of, like, I wrote and illustrated, self published some children's books. They were stories that I wrote for my kids and then illustrated them to make it fun for them. So they're big sources of inspiration for me. And I, I feel like I'm really wandering from what your original question was. I guess this is my roundabout way of saying that I never feel like I, I never felt like I had to give up art in order to do comedy. It was just kind of like, oh, here's a, an extra thing. And then I was able to use that for my art as well because I was in a space suddenly, like, I went from everyone was an artist to I was the only artist. So suddenly I was able to be like, oh, yeah, I can draw that for you, or oh, yeah, I can, I can paint that. Or so it was a way to get my hustle on as well. [00:13:52] Speaker B: Has that instilled in your kids, like, the comedy and the art? Have they kind of been like, hey, that's a really cool thing Mom's doing. Let's, let's see what we can do with that. [00:14:02] Speaker C: My. So I have three Kids. My. My oldest, two, especially when it was just me and them, we did a lot of things together when they were young that were very creative. We would go to the ago and I. We'd bring little notepads and pencils, and I'd be like, okay, go find your favorite artwork and try to recreate it. And we always had paints in the house. We have, like, murals. All My Landlord Loves Me. We have murals in the apartment that are like, I painted, like, a big tree and then they painted all the leaves on it, and they have, like, murals in their room and things like that. And it really rubbed off on my daughter, my older daughter, she's 13 now, and she's so much better than I was when I was 13. I'm so impressed by her drawing. She really is my. My daughter. It's so fun seeing how your kids grow up and seeing what they take from what you gave them and seeing how they make it their own. And. No, I'm. I'm really blown away by her, by her drawing talent. She's so good. And my son is less interested in it, but I still think he's very talented and wonderful and perfect. And then my youngest, she. She's three, so it's hard to tell what she's going to be yet. [00:15:24] Speaker B: She'll get the comedy. [00:15:24] Speaker C: She'll get the comedy. Oh, I hope not. I hope not. Got to spare my children. [00:15:33] Speaker B: So you've had a great comedy career so far, performing at festivals like Just for Laughs, Toronto Fringe Up Front, Festival of Indigenous Music, Art and Culture, and more. And now you're releasing your debut standup album called God's Perfect Be where listeners can hear your set. But let's rewind just a little bit. Take us through what your first ever standup performance was like and how it influenced your path in comedy. [00:15:59] Speaker C: My first ever standup set was awful. For me, it was a fun experience, but for everyone listening, it was probably terrible. It was at that same open mic that I'd first gone to. I went back a couple times, trying to, like, get at my courage and. But I didn't plan a set. I don't know what I was thinking. I was like, oh, I'll just figure it out when I'm up there. That was a bad idea. I remember I talked about. I ranted about how I didn't want Leonardo DiCaprio to win an Oscar, and it would. That was the weekend of the Oscars where he won an Oscar. I think that was what gave me the. The courage to go up where I Was like, all these jokes that have been bouncing around in my head. This is my one time to say them. Maybe. Hopefully he doesn't win. He did, but I ran the light by a lot. I remember the. The patient, saintly woman who ran the open mic was like, calmly kept showing me the time being like, you gotta get off. But I didn't know what that meant yet, so I was just kind of like, oh, she's just showing me your phone. Like, I. Good Lord. I. It's so embarrassing to think about. The funny thing is too, that the woman who ran the open mic, her name's Courtney Sky. She's in this. She. She was an indigenous comic. I think she doesn't. I think she stepped back from doing comedy. She does a lot of really important and very good social work and. And work for her community. But her name was Courtney sky. And she was so supportive of me after that. Which, looking back, shocks me. What a. What a patient, understanding woman. If someone came to an open mic, I ran and ran the light by, like, 10 minutes, I would be like, get out. I never want to see you again. But instead, she was like, okay, come on, I'm going to show you how this works. So very grateful to her and her generosity. People talk a lot about in the industry. There's a lot of gatekeeping, and there is. But now and then you meet individuals who are just so warm and welcoming and are there to help everybody. Like, there's a lot of. A lot of really good, good people, and I was lucky that I met one of them early on. [00:18:17] Speaker B: Do you have a famous memory, looking back in your comedy career, that stands out to you, like something that you find yourself thinking back to every once in a while? [00:18:26] Speaker C: It's probably recency bias, but I just did the Debaters this past fall, and it was so fun. It was one of those comedy bucket list items for me. When I was in university, I remember I was hanging out with my friend Michu, and he was saying something about, oh, I found this radio program. It's really funny. It's called the Debaters. And I remember, like, locking that away. And when I started comedy, I was like, oh, I want to get on the Debaters, because that's something that people have actually heard of. And I. After he recommended it, I'd listened to a couple episodes and I was like, oh, this is funny. This is cool. So just the fact that it was something that I had heard of and, like, I knew other people had heard of, because in Canadian comedy so many times you get these Exciting opportunities, but a lot of people might not have heard of them again. The Canadian entertainment industry doesn't do a great job of promoting itself. I had so much fun at the debaters because it's something that people know about. The crowds are huge and they're all already fans, which is wonderful to experience where you get on stage and the crowd is with you immediately instead of that normal comedian experience where you have to kind of win them over a bit. So just walking on stage and everyone being so warm and like laughing and cheering was so much fun because it was for CBC for radio, you know, it had to be all clean and everything, which is fine. I have a ton of clean material. But it was also a lot of fun knowing, okay, my parents can listen to this and my grandma can listen to this. And they did. My whole family was so excited. My aunt texted me, she was like, I was in the car and I heard you on the radio, which is the nicest feeling. And it was so much fun. I think about it a lot. I really want to do that show again. If the producers for debaters hear this, let me do your show again. [00:20:35] Speaker B: Is the show. And this is just for my own nerdiness because I grew up, my dad loves cbc. So it was constantly on every single show. I know in the back of my brain a little bit from Vinyl Cafe, you know, Q all this stuff. And debaters was always one of them that we would listen to on a drive every so often. Was that. Is it like a pre planned show so like you kind of know what you're going into or is it all like improv and you just kind of fly off the seat of your pants? [00:21:04] Speaker C: It depends. There are comedians who've said that they improv their debater sets. I don't know if you know, I'm going to mispronounce his last name, but Derek. Derek, Is it Chauvin? He's a Quebecois comedian. I think his first name is Derek. He's very popular in the debaters and he has improved a lot of his debaters things before. He's very, very strong. And some people choose to improv certain bits. For listeners who might not be familiar, the way the debater debaters is structured, as you have your opening argument and then you have a bit of a, like a more freeform Q and A style piece where the host asks questions and you can ding in with little joke answers. And then there's a portion where you go back and forth with your debate partner kind of more conversationally and then you have your closing statement. So there are some comedians who write their opening and closing statement and improv the. The middle sections. There are some comedians who write their opening closing statement and the joke answers for the firing line, but they improv with their partner. So it really depends on who the comedian is and what their comfort level is, and also how well the debaters like how well the debaters producers know them. Because I'm sure me going in for my first time, if I was like, I want to debate, I want to improv the whole thing, they might be a little nervous because they're like, well, we haven't seen you before. That's also not really my style. I love. I love getting to write out my opening closing statements. I love debate. I'm a typical Gemini, so I love arguing. I love thinking of different pretend arguments that I might not even believe in, which makes me a very good comedian. I love getting to stand at a podium and shake my fist in the air. You know, all that stuff. But they. It's timed so you can't go too long. And if you do write out your opening closing, there's a word limit for those, so they are pretty strict about, you know, you can't run the light by 20 minutes like I did at first. [00:23:23] Speaker B: That's awesome. It's cool to find out these things behind the memories you had when you were a child or when you were younger. And, you know, I. Looking back, I'm like, oh, okay. So that's. It's a lot simpler than I thought it was. Being in television production now, of course, that makes sense, right? You're like, oh, yeah, of course. That's how it all works. It's not just how it perceives on the radio. [00:23:46] Speaker C: Yeah, it's. It's weird looking at, like, behind the curtain of even simple things. Like, because I'm. This is a podcast. This listeners aren't going to know, but you can see now, and I do mention in my comedy, I'm very ethnically ambiguous, which makes me perfect for commercial acting. When I was in my 20s, I got a lot of work doing commercials. Now that I'm aged, now that I have some gray hairs and under eye bags, maybe a little bit less. But seeing the way that they film commercials and what goes on behind there is very eye opening. I had a moment, it was last year actually, where I was in a mattress commercial. It was lovely. I just got to lie in bed and I literally fell asleep. It was so comfortable while I was getting paid to do to act in this commercial. But the house that they rented out for this couple that we were billed as like, you know, the everyman. Every, every man, every woman were a totally normal, relatable couple. And they filmed it in a mansion in Rosedale that was the size, like it could have been Professor Xavier's school for specially gifted children. It was enormous. The backyard had a gazebo, a hot tub, a pool, and a yard that was big enough for all the cast and crew to have lunch set up on it. Like enormous. I remember thinking, isn't it wild that every time we see a commercial that's being sold to us where they're like, this could be you. It's actually like a billionaire's house. It's. It's truly wild. Anyway, I'm sorry I go on tangents so often, but it's interesting seeing how things actually go and how things are actually set up and the. And the very specific way that things are arranged that the viewer gets a very curated impression to bring it back to debaters. If you or anyone who's listening ever gets a chance to see debaters live, I would really encourage you to do so because they shorten it for radio. You can listen to an extended version on podcast, but it's a lot of fun to see live and get all those extra bits and, and get to have the more interactive. Like for. For me, for my debater section, it was all about should you move for love? Because I have a bit in my. In my act where I talk about how my husband moved to Canada so we could get married. So the debaters producer saw that and they were like, oh, we can. We can do a debate centered around that. So anyway, the. The host was introducing the topic and he was like, up next relationships. And then before he could even say anything further, someone in the audience yelled really loud, went like, ha. Like just on that. And then everyone laughed and we were like, well, there we found the divorce guy in the audience that didn't make the final cut, but it was very funny, you know, things like that. [00:26:48] Speaker B: So we'd love for you to take us through creating a set such as for this album. You have material from your perspective on parenthood, to identity, to discovering your narrow diversion, neurodivergence, and more. How do you decide what topics to share? And what's the process of turning more personal topics into accessible and relatable humor? [00:27:13] Speaker C: This is a really good question. I like it a lot and it's kind of got like multiple different answers. When picking topics, I like to think of things that I'm Insecure about a lot of my jokes are kind of me bullying myself. The joke about I have a joke about having a gummy smile, which is actually my number one insecurity. So then being able to write that joke and say it and record it and be like there, it's dumb, was my way of really owning that. And I was happy about it. I find that the best place for jokes to come from is from like insecurities. We have like little frustrations. An easy place to start for a joke obviously is like a funny story, something funny that happened. But sometimes those are not as like, they're great as an anecdote at a party, but they don't make for the best stand up joke. And when I'm writing out my. In my little joke notebook, writing out all my premises, all my jokes, whatever, I try to organize them by what point of view I'm going from. So I have, you know, these are from the point of view of me being a woman. These are from the point of view of me being a mom. These are from the point of view of me being not white. And then I have kind of a miscellaneous, just kind of general observation or more general joke POV as well. And then when I'm putting a set together, it depends on who the audience is. Because sometimes I do, like you mentioned, for example, performed at the Upfront Comedy Upfront festival, which is not a comedy festival. It was a festival for indigenous art. So there was a whole bunch of stuff at that festival. If it gets put on next year again, go check it out. It was so much fun. I got a VIP pass cause I performed it. I took my daughter to a puppet show. She still talks about it. It was a blast. So I knew that the audience was going to be indigenous or people who were aware of indigenous issues wanted to hear about indigenous issues. So I crafted my set all from that point of view. And I will say those are my favorite shows to do. And at those shows I get to do jokes that are extra spicy that with another crowd. Indigenous people have the darkest sense of humor of any group that I've come across. And so I get to do all of my kind of dark stuff that can kind of scare people off otherwise. So yeah, sometimes if you know the audience is looking for a certain thing you've been booked for a certain thing you put together that there's. There's a show in Toronto that pops up occasionally, really fun to do. It's called Mommy Needs a Drink. And it's all comedians who are moms. So Then I put together all my mom material. Being a mom is actually what inspired me to go into comedy because I. I think my kids are the best. And all the mom humor that I was hearing was moms being like, I hate my kids. I hate being a mom. And I was like, but I like it. So, yeah, you. You form your set often around what the audience expects of you. For my album, that was hard to pick. Originally it was only going to be half an hour, and then it ended up being 40 minutes. I'm very grateful to the comedy label for being like, yeah, you can do 40 minutes. I was like, maybe a bit too long. And they were like, no, go for it. We trust you. And that one. A lot of the material was stuff that was aging out, like, topical things that weren't going to be topical anymore. Or I have one joke about how I just had a baby and my daughter is three now. So I was like, that one. I gotta tell it now. I can't keep telling it. And then you just kind of. I wrote all my jokes on little cue cards and then moved them around, try to arrange them so that the flow was. Was even and it didn't feel too choppy. You don't always have to have a seamless segue from one joke to the other, but I just wanted it to flow. So it's like, okay, this. This bit we're talking a bit about motherhood. And then this bit we're talking about, you know, adhd. And then this bit we're talking about, you know, autism. And then this bit we're talking about dating. So it flowed and it didn't go back and forth too much. And then you figure it out too, from just practice, practice, practice, practice saying that set over and over and over again. Hopefully not until you're sick of it. When I was teaching stand up very briefly to children as one of my many comedy side hustles, a lot of the kids are really surprised that you practice the set. They're like, oh, I thought they just got up there and started talking. And I was like, no, no, no. You. You practice the same five minutes over and over and over again. Comedians are the most neurotic people you're going to ever meet because we just have to say the same thing that's three minutes long. We have to say it over and over and over and over again until it's perfect. [00:32:32] Speaker B: So how do you know when it's ready to go on stage? Like if you're creating a new joke or a bit. When. When is that Ready to go? [00:32:40] Speaker C: It depends on the joke, definitely. And I'm one of. I'm a community who I'm really guilty of. I have to stop myself from saying super new on polished material when I'm. When I'm on stage and save it for an open mic. Like, I'll be driving to the gig. And I'm like, this is funny. I should say that. And I have to be like, no, no, you have to. The polished stuff. If you have a new concept that's really exciting to you, sometimes you can do it right away. The fastest turnaround I've had on a joke is probably I. So I got booked to do the Winnipeg Comedy Festival last year. And they book you around. I'm trying to remember. They reach out to you normally around, like, November, December, if I remember correctly. And then you go for the taping in May. I should remember this. It was a big moment in my life. I think you go in May. And then my album recording was in June, so it was a really big spring for me. And so I got into the New Economy Festival with my. Like I said, you submit a certain set, you're allowed to make changes. You just have to submit them in writing, and then they have to approve them. I had a conversation with a friend in, like, February where I mentioned offhandedly something that they said was very funny. And I was like, I wonder if I could turn that into a joke. And then I said it, like, once or twice in a part of that set, and it was like, okay, this has legs. It's good to go. And then it was recorded for Winnipeg Comedy Festival in May, and then it was on my album in June. So that's the fastest I've gone from, like, just a couple months from thinking of the initial idea and then writing the joke and then performing it. Normally, I would say I'm happy with things after, like, six months to a year. So when things start to get really polished. But it depends on how much you're. How much you're pounding the payment, how many times you're saying it now. [00:34:41] Speaker B: What about, like, a creative block? Like, do you ever have moments where you just kind of can't think of any jokes or, you know, have you had any experiences like that? And how do you get through that? [00:34:54] Speaker C: Oh, definitely. Especially after recording my album where I had, okay, here's my best 40 minutes. And then after that, I felt like I couldn't say those anymore because I'd already recorded them. They're on my album. And so I felt like, okay, I'm Starting from scratch. And I did have a bit of writer's block around that time. It's actually funny because you say, how do you know when a joke is ready? There's one joke from the album that I kept telling because I liked it so much, and then it evolved, and then I added a whole other piece to it that I almost felt sad, like, oh, I wish I had thought about this before the album. But now it's just a fun new joke that. That I can say, you know? So, yeah, jokes are always evolving, but when I. When I get writer's block, it is really frustrating because you always. There's always this panic of, like, maybe I've said everything that I have to say. But then the fine arts training actually comes in handy for that because just like with. With fine arts, you get creative block. So I have a lot of the mechanisms that I developed in art school, and I use them for comedy, which is just like, change your environment, get out. Just look at something new, have a new experience. Go to a. Go to a gallery, go to a movie. Just do something that's going to expand your horizons and give you new ideas. And just be patient, because trust yourself that if you're creative enough to come up with it before it will happen again. When you start to panic, then you really block yourself because everything you're like, could this be something? Could this be something? So just knowing, okay, just relax and do something that you enjoy. Focus on your other hobbies, worry about it less. And I really. I love going to the Ego and just wandering around and looking at paintings and, yeah, things. Some things come to me through that lens that. That don't work, that aren't universally relatable. I had one joke that I tried that not all people got about the Venus of Willendorf. You know, the little. The. The little statues of the. The women that are, like, really, really big. And I had. I tried it at an open mic and I tried it. Like, I. I pitched it to friends for comics and they were like, yeah, it's funny, but, like, maybe you should. Maybe you could hand out visuals. Like, maybe you could. You could have, like, a PowerPoint where you show what you're referencing. Because in my mind, like, as someone who has a degree in fine art, I just assumed, oh, this is universally. Everyone knows the Venus of Willendorf. And then they were like, no, you're gonna. You're gonna have to explain. So, yeah, sometimes the things that I get inspired by are necessarily helpful. But I think just if you write one thing and get the ball rolling. It helps to get your mind in that space. The key is just don't panic. Just don't panic. And have fun with your life, and then it will come. [00:37:57] Speaker B: It's very good advice. And before we wrap up, let's speak to those listening right now who want to follow a similar career path to yours. If you could teach a workshop on comedy, which you kind of said you did with the kids earlier, what would be the very first lesson you'd want every aspiring comedian to know? [00:38:18] Speaker C: Well, I'd want them to think about why they want to do comedy. And if you could only say one thing that only you can say, what would it be? What. What do you have to say? That. Yeah, that only you can say. And let's figure out how to say it in the best way possible. A lot of people starting out comedy do it because they're like, oh, my friends tell me I'm funny, but, like, I don't know. And that's valid. A lot of funny comedians start that way. But it's a hard point of view to start with because then you're like, okay, well, what do you like about your. Like what. What do your. What do your friends find funny? And, like, what do you like about that? And they're kind of like, I don't know. And I'm like, okay, well, did you bring your friend then, so they can give some insight? Because I don't really know where to go from here. And also, I guess I should. I shouldn't disparage anyone, but in my experience, the worst type of comedian is someone who. Okay, let me rephrase this. To be more charitable, there are kind of two types of comedians. One is the kind that's like, I'm doing this because I'm great and funny, and everyone wants to hear what I have to say. And when I get on stage, surely they will all be interested in what I have to say, because I'm amazing. And the second kind of comedian is kind that's like, nobody likes me. I have to get on stage and convince them that they should like me. So one is like, I'm doing this because everyone loves me. And the other is, I'm doing this to make people love me. I, um. I think the better comedian is the second one. The one that's like, let me convince you. Um, because the first. I don't know. I think the first type of personality is probably more suited to improv, but that's a whole other can of worms. But, yeah, if you're just starting out, think about what your, what your voice is and what special thing it is that you have to bring to, to this, to this world of comedy. David McClimate. When I was in the fine arts program, I remember, not to get too personal, but when I started the program, I was a big old wreck, personally. Like, I, it was a hard time in my life. And I remember him saying, like he said. What did he say? I'm trying to get the words right. I remember him just saying, like, your, your personality, you like, you sparkle. And it was so such a small, little cutesy thing, but it made me feel so nice. So, yeah. What is it about you that makes you spark, Sparkle. [00:41:31] Speaker B: That was some amazing advice for anyone aspiring to be a comedian in the future. Isabel, thank you so much for being on the podcast today. [00:41:39] Speaker C: Thank you for having me. I had so much fun blabbing on about myself. So if you're listening, go. Go and find my album, God's Perfect Bitch. I hope I'm allowed to say that on the. On the air. [00:41:59] Speaker A: Thank you so much, Isabelle, for being on the podcast. Be sure to listen to Isabel's album, which you can find on Spotify, Apple Music, and other places where you can stream comedy albums. If you like this episode, please share with a friend and let us know on our Instagram storyartcenter. Until next time, I'm your host, Pat Quigley, and this is Storyteller in Depth.