Four years after leaving the National School of Humor in the middle of a pandemic, Mégan Brouillard is supported by an impressive number of subscribers on TikTok and on Instagram: “I never had a strategy. When I started, there was no one on TikTok. The risk was rather limited. I just needed something to do, some structure, some purpose. This is why I decided to publish as often as possible. I used what I had access to at my parents’ house: a sewing machine, a dog, a shed… I learned a lot by doing that. It gave me rigor in my work, a keen sense of self-criticism and serious editing skills. »
Proud of her Drummondville origins and her accent, the 24-year-old comedian is determined to deconstruct prejudices towards the regions and rurality: “When I leave Montreal, I am extremely happy. But when I come back to Montreal, I am just as happy. Why would I have to choose? One of the things I like most about touring is discovering people, their different realities, their history, their cuisine, their crafts, their sense of humor. I feed off all that. »
After almost winning The next stand-up on the airwaves of Noovo in 2021, after touring the province as the opening act for Ève Côté, Laurent Paquin, Adib Alkhalidey and Katherine Levac, Mégan Brouillard is ready to unveil her first solo show, Quackgrassof which Charles-Antoine Des Granges provides the first part. To date, the comedian has had the chance to present his show in training, in the most diverse configurations, a record number of 78 times! “The second one will really take me less time to get used to,” she promises, laughing. I allowed myself to write, to throw away, to rewrite. I kind of continued to learn my craft on stage. »
Mégan Brouillard compares her humor to a wool blanket: “It’s comforting, but at the same time, it stings. I also see it as a quilt, an assembly of more or less long stories, not anecdotes, but real-life facts about which I have opinions to express. » Endowed with a refreshing frankness, a freedom of tone that some will describe as vulgarity or impoliteness, Mégan Brouillard takes great pleasure in tackling angry subjects, for example the devaluation of women’s hockey in a Just for Laughs Gala or the disinterest (or even disgust) of men towards menstruation in an episode of Mammoth Weekly.
“I think that being there,” she explains, “doing this job, as a woman, is a gesture that is in itself feminist. I don’t feel obligated to label my work, but everything I do is necessarily feminist. The most important thing is not to censor yourself. There will always be someone to take care of it later. If I address young people, it is because I find that we often overprotect them. There are so many things that I think are essential to tell them. I try to do it with humor, but straightforwardly, to prepare them for what the future holds for them. »
Who I come from
While the first solo show forces several comedians to break the ice by recounting their childhood, their adolescence or their entry into adulthood, Mégan Brouillard chose to do things differently: “I decided to introduce myself through intermediary of the people around me, my family and my friends. They say that we are the sum of the five people who are closest to us. It seemed to me that talking about these people, and even having their words heard on stage, said a lot more about me than recounting anecdotes from high school. Rather than trying to define who I am, I preferred to ask myself who I come from. »
The comedian, who often appears where we least expect him, whether it’s commenting on a hockey match at 5 to 7 of RDS or playing a game of bingo in a residence for the elderly, explains to us the meaning she gives to the title of her show: “Quack grass is weeds. But there is no such thing as weeds. It’s all a question of perception. Just because it grows where you don’t want it to grow doesn’t mean it has no reason to grow. It allows me to talk about people in the show who behave in ways that annoy me, but that others might find completely normal. And, conversely, of people whose actions I adore, while others consider them completely absurd. »
Mégan Brouillard offers Mathieu Pepper his first directing experience. “He hesitated at first,” she explains, “but once he got started, he was there 100%. He writes to me after each show, his comments are enlightening. Sometimes he asks me to move more, other times to explore a subject or to be more vulnerable at a given moment. I especially needed him as a script-editor, that is to say I wanted to persist with him, debate, put my texts to the test. In short, I wanted him to “challenge” me, and that’s exactly what he did. »