Mark Little rocks The Making-Box, talks new projects
Actor and comedian Mark Little performed a stand-up comedy set to a sold-out crowd at The Making-Box on Friday, Sept. 22. During his set, he joked about Thomas Edison’s influence on Hollywood and how the soundtrack for Disney’s Beauty and the Beast is full of top-to-bottom bangers, and played interactive games with the audience like: “Justin Bieber lyric — or something a demon would say to a small boy he wants to consume?”
The basketball-themed show (the character Little plays on the CBC show Mr. D is a big fan of basketball) was hosted by Making-Box education director Hayley Kellett, and featured local comedians Cas Knihnisky, Suzie Taka, Jason Dalgleish, and Rob Lewin.
Before the show, we asked Little about his upcoming projects, his advice for young comedians, and what he’d take at U of G.
Karen Tran: In the next few weeks, you’ll be performing in a comedy musical called The Adventures of Tom Shadow, which is advertised as Peter Pan meets Taken. What inspired that production and how has that experience been, given your background in sketch comedy?
Mark Little: Well, I wrote a sketch a couple of years ago that starts with a Peter Pan-type magical boy named Tom Shadow flying in through two children’s windows at night and magically whisking them off — and then cuts to the next day when the parents panic, police are searching the room, and they all start screaming at each other about who’s to blame. It just keeps cutting back and forth between these kids having these magical adventures and these parents having a harrowing experience.I met with some people and we were trying to figure out a play that we could do and I was like, “Well, I wrote this six-minute sketch that could probably be 90 minutes,” and we thought that would be a fun idea. So we just turned it into this musical where — I’m going to spoil it — during the first few minutes there’s this magical Peter Pan kid coming in, and then we never revisit those kids. We just stay with the parents and have this long play about a marriage falling apart in the wake of a tragedy.
I feel like it’s such a generational thing because some friends and I did an early run of it — just a few shows at the Bad Dog Theatre in Toronto. Some friends of mine saw it and afterwards were like, “We leaned over towards each other at the 45-minute mark and said, ‘This play is called The Adventures of Tom Shadow, but we haven’t seen him in 40 minutes. We’ve just been following his sad parents.’” And I was like, “Yeah, that’s the joke!” So we all just laughed about that kind of bait and switch.But when I told my parents about it, they were like, “That doesn’t sound like a comedy. That sounds very sad and dark.” And I was like, “Yeah … I guess it is.”I don’t know why it is. You can just describe something this dark and sad to me and my friends and other people who are a similar age and it just makes us laugh, whereas my parents hear that and think, “No thanks.” But I might be using a sample size too small to make that generational observation.
KT: What are the songs like in the musical? Do you sing in it?
ML: Yeah. We’ve got a couple people who have great voices. And then there’s me and a couple other people who know how to carry a tune, but don’t sing well.
The songs are all Disney-inspired songs. There’s one song that’s a lot like the song where Belle is just prancing through the village in Beauty and the Beast. And there was a song in the last version that was very much like “Poor Unfortunate Souls” from The Little Mermaid.
KT: Who do you play in the musical?
ML: I play the dad — the weaker of the two parents. The mom’s a cop, the dad’s an English professor who just falls apart after everything happens. Then, in an effort to not confront the tragedy, he gets really into extreme sports. He ends up befriending a bunch of 19-year-old kids. And they form a Seadoo club, and then it turns into Point Blank and they rob banks….It’s a weird play.
KT: Do you have a favourite sketch you’ve done in the past?
ML: I did this old sketch with Picnicface where I’m giving a presentation on trucks — it’s just boardroom gone wrong. And then I also like “The Button” one I did with Andy Bush [of Picnicface], where we did one joke early on and then we play the string for two minutes.
KT: Any plans to return to sketch comedy in the future?
ML: Yeah, I made a sketch demo for Bell / CTV / Comedy Network last year, so I’m waiting to see if I can still do something with that. I mean, I’m always just trying to convince Andy Bush to come back and do stuff with me.
Then I had a group last year in Toronto called Get Some and we did a bunch of live shows, but when it came to trying to make a show we were like, “Well, we’re a 14-person group, this might not work…” and sort of went our separate ways.
KT: Is there any advice you can give to any budding comedians?
ML: Save yourselves! I don’t know. Almost every piece of advice I’ve ever heard seems overly narrow. It’s just trial and error. There’s no secret to it, there’s no right way to tell jokes or write them. If you really want to do it — if you’re crazy enough to want to do it — just immerse yourself in it and figure out what you like.It’s like the only craft where people are just dying to give away what they know for free. There’s so much free information out there. You can go up to anyone at a comedy club and ask them how they got into it and they’ll be so flattered, they’ll talk your ear off for an hour.
I find when I’m giving advice to people — like some sweet kid — I feel like I’m just playing defence to all the bad advice they’re going to get from others. I just don’t want to see people get fucked up by the many weirdos in this business. I want people to take the time to figure out what they actually like before they dive headlong into it.But then again I might be too overly worried. It’s not like I know a lot of 18-year-old kids that went into stand-up and at 22 they’re living in a ditch — it doesn’t ruin lives. But it can warp who you are a little bit.
KT: What are your plans for the rest of the year?
ML: I’m writing a cartoon that’s about a 45-year-old demon hunter doing a teenager’s job because they haven’t found a teenaged replacement yet. He’s depressed and mad that he has to keep fighting demons — literally everything I do is a combination of fantasy and sad men.
I’m also doing a voice on a kid’s cartoon where I play a dinosaur. It’s the best job I’ve ever had in my life. I hope every kid sees it and I own a little piece of their hearts.
KT: Do we get to know the name of the show?
ML: It’s called Cupcake and Dinosaur: General Services, and it’ll be on Netflix maybe next year. It’s very cute, sweet as hell.
KT: If you had to go back to school, what would you major in?
ML: Well, I majored in English lit last time. What do I feel most guilty about not knowing enough about in my day-to-day life? Maybe history. My dad’s a history professor so I think it has always been a small thorn in his side that I had no interest or aptitude for history. But now that I’m in my 30s, I find myself consistently embarrassed by what I don’t know about the past.Yeah, that’s a good way to stave off embarrassment — take history. Drop out of comedy and take history.
Feature photo by Karen K. Tran