MABOU: Jeff Leeson is sure to leave audiences laughing with his standup routine that includes his off the cuff, improvisational style that leaves crowds not only wanting more, but amazed at what they just witnessed.
Being described as a human fireworks display, Leeson uses his surroundings and people in front of him to create a unique and personal comedy show.
Leeson, who is from London, Ontario, has been a standup comedian since the ripe age of 14-years-old and has spent the past 23 years touring across North America.
“My initial introduction to comedy was every day after school I would watch these two shows that were on back-to-back, one was Just For Laughs and the other was Comedy at Club 54, with Ben Guyatt” Leeson told The Reporter. “It was the first thing I did when I got home from school, and when those shows were on, I was just absolutely enthralled by the arts and the craft of stand-up comedy.”
Nobody could bother him during that hour of time, and he found himself falling in love with standup.
“I watched it as much as I possibly could. I started watching HBO specials, and things like that that I could get my hands on,” Leeson said. “I started off buying VHS (tapes) and then eventually DVDs of standup specials, and just absolutely fell in love with it.”
As a 14-year-old living in Ontario in 1999, the comedy scene was very bleak.
“When I first started, there was literally me who was 14, trying to start comedy, and there was one other guy who was in his 40’s who started comedy just before me, but that was it for London,” Leeson said. “The people that I looked up to the most were the people I was watching on television. I saw all kinds of talent, they had different styles of comedy, and different ways of performing, so I learned so much about the art and craft of comedy.”
Leeson suggested when he first started doing amateur nights, he had to be driven by his mom because he was so young, and had nothing in common with anyone in the room as they were all at least 10 years older than him, if not more.
The person that really changed things for Leeson comedy-wise was Jerry Seinfeld.
“The Seinfeld Show, and then his standup and his approach to standup, I was basically almost doing a Seinfeld impression my first two years of performing,” he said. “He was really the biggest person that I emulated.”
While some comedians dread the thought of having a heckler at their show, or even the idea of crowd work, Leeson addresses it head-on, which has developed his signature off the cuff style.
“I often talk to some of the comics who are coming up now, and I get asked a lot about crowd work and I tell them ‘First of all don’t feel like you need to do it, and secondly, don’t attempt it too quickly,’” the veteran comedian said. “I spent the first 10 years of my comedy career doing nothing but written jokes and scripted material. For me, what ended up happening was, organically, I would be doing a show and my setups would become a question basically to the crowd.”
Sometimes, Leeson explained the crowd would provide an answer that he had a response for, and those responses would get a bigger reaction than anything he wrote.
“I had a friend come to a few shows, who wasn’t a comedian, and he said the moments I was going off-script were getting a bigger reaction than my jokes and suggested I do a whole show like that,” he said. “I told him ‘You’re insane. There’s absolutely no way to do that, in comedy you have to know where you’re going, you have to know what comes next,’ but little by little I started to get tired of my act and doing the same thing over and over.”
Saying the same jokes with the same punchlines night in and night out, Leeson explained he got bored of his act and contemplated leaving comedy altogether in 2010.
“I said ‘Why don’t I try to make it a little more fun,’ and see how much of the show I can create out of nowhere and use the audience,” he said. “to not only come to a show, but to also be a part of the creation of it, basically from the first time I did it, it was a rejuvenation for me, it was absolutely liberating, it was exhilarating and almost felt like my first time on stage again.”
That’s when he knew he was onto something.
“For the people that come to the shows, they can really feel a part of it,” Leeson said. “I always say regardless of whether people leave and found me funny, because comedy is very subjective, whether you think it was funny or not, you can’t argue with the fact that you will never see it again.”
Each show, Leeson explained, is specifically for that audience in that town on that given night.
“It’s more than a show for me at this point, it’s really an experience. That’s what I’m getting from people afterwards,” Leeson said. “They really get into it because once they realize that I’m not your typical set up, joke, punchline guy, and they see that I am making this up, and for the entire show, they really get into it wondering who is going to be next.”
What he likes to do each and every night, Leeson said, is create a very unique and personal experience for each audience in attendance.
When asked what it means being on “The Non-Virtual Comedy Tour,” which is getting him into small towns on the East Coast, he suggested smaller towns are his favourite venues.
“For me, it’s always a great thrill to first of all be in a new town,” Leeson said. “It’s always really exciting to go to a new place, especially a small town, and try to figure out the overall nature of that town, and there’s always a vibe you can pick up on.”
The most rewarding thing for him as a comedian, especially with the content he posts online, is if somebody comments or messages that his content brightens up their day.
“That is my greatest joy, that’s why I do this, and that’s the biggest reward,” Leeson said. “As far as biggest achievement goes, it would probably have to be filming a Dry Bar Comedy Special in the United States back in 2020 and I also got a chance to open for Norm MacDonald a few years ago.”
To purchase tickets for the Aug. 18 show, people are asked to visit the Strathspey Performing Arts Centre’s website at https://www.strathspeyplace.com/ or they can purchase them at the door.