In Live, Simon Gouache’s third solo, which he has been honing in on for around thirty dates, for the moment there are “businesses that work, businesses that need work and others that we don’t yet know where to put” , explains the comedian. We visited him as he was happily toiling through the puzzle of creating a new show.
Posted at 10:00 a.m.
In a studio at Studio Bizz on avenue du Mont-Royal, script-editor Pascal Mailloux, director Marie-Christine Lachance and Simon Gouache try to improve a passage from his third show in which the comedian, raised in Montreal, recently installed in the suburbs, is surprised that there is such a thing as firefighters… volunteers!
“Is that your hobby, fireman?” Do you want me to offer you another one? “Launches Pascal first. “Yoga, the ultimate Frisbee! adds Marie-Christine, but we’re not quite there yet. “If you feel like socializing, you can do it in a less suffocating place! exclaims Simon, emphasizing the adjective “suffocating” impeccably. Everyone bursts out laughing.
If he does not write any number on paper (“It is not normal”, according to Marie-Christine), Simon Gouache is an incurable perfectionist, who writes constantly in his head and tirelessly moves bits of sentences, even commas , until it achieves the optimal effect. These encounters, during which the trio dissects recent performances of the artist, often turn into similar comic ping-pong sessions.
PHOTO ROBERT SKINNER, THE PRESS
Pascal Mailloux, Marie-Christine Lachance and Simon Gouache
But a few minutes later, faced with the enthusiasm of the journalist, as excited by the joke of volunteer firefighters as if Yvon Deschamps had just laid Unions, what does osa give? under his eyes, the director goes there with a warning: “There are so many lines which made us laugh here and which did not work on stage. His wisdom is confirmed the next evening, at the Golden Lion, where Simon Gouache tests the gag in question, swinging it a little quickly. The result: a confused reaction from the crowd.
“It’s sad that you didn’t come the next day, I think it was one of my best performances in four years,” he confided in an interview a few days later. In addition to one or two lines, obviously new, which came up against a library silence, he had nevertheless offered during the performance to which The Press attended a solid performance, allowing us to hope for the best for the media premiere of Livescheduled for February 2023.
“When it’s been a few days since I’ve given a show, I do everything faster and I don’t always take the time to play all my gags”, explains Gouache about one of the greatest strengths: his unforgettable issue of CrossFit was as much about text as pantomime. “The next day, Marie said to me: there, this evening, you take the time to play ALL your gags. I listened to it and we got what. »
endless ideas
The son of a doctor, Simon Gouache ended up at the National School of Humor, almost out of spite, after a brief and stressful university career. Graduated in 2007, he only really met his audience about ten years later. Little present on TV or on the radio, the 36-year-old guy nevertheless belongs to the elite of Quebec humor – observing his tenacity in the rehearsal room allows us to understand in part why –, although on paper, few elements make it unique.
No crazy stage character or remarkable presence on social networks: like Jack White, who rocks like everyone else, but better than everyone else, Simon Gouache intertwines observations, reflections and anecdotes like dozens of other comedians, but with the precision and flexibility of a goldsmith, allowing him almost miraculously to extract material from seemingly worn-out subjects (his life as a young father, dating apps, the baldness).
PHOTO ROBERT SKINNER, THE PRESS
Simon Gouache
Often, in a comedy evening, a comedian will say to another: “Well, you have a number on carnivorous plants! I won’t be able to do my number on carnivorous plants. But that’s irrelevant! The important thing is the angle. The topics are limited, but the ideas are endless.
Simon Gouache
He questions, in one of the best segments of Live, the well-worn sentence that “we can’t say anything more”. “But it’s a number that changed a lot during the break-in,” he says. When I started, I used to do it in a very moralizing tone, I said “We can’t say anything more” with a settler voice, and it took me a few months to realize that I was alienating everyone in the public who had already said so.
“And when I stopped, it changed everything, because I was no longer in judgement. Again, it was all about the angle. »
Live
On tour everywhere in Quebec