Based on the popular award-winning CraveTV Original Series, ‘LETTERKENNY Live, the Encore’ lands in Red Deer Dec. 15th at the Enmax Centrium.
Created by Jared Keeso, produced by New Metric Media and the follow-up to the 2018 national ‘LETTERKENNY LIVE’ tour, the tour stars Keeso (Wayne), Nathan Dales (Daryl), K Trevor Wilson (Dan) and Mark Forward (Coach), and delivers a 90-minute comedy experience featuring sketches performed by the LETTERKENNY favourites, additional sketches and video not seen on the first tour.
According to a release, LETTERKENNY revolves around the, ‘Dust-ups Wayne and his buds get into with their small-town Ontario rivals; the Hicks, the Skids and the hockey players’.
“It’s so nice to hear that people enjoy something that we are putting on the screen,” explained Dales during a recent interview. “It’s not often that I or any performer gets to put out something that they are really, truly proud of. And this is certainly something that I am more than proud of,” he added.
Created by Keeso, the first original series from Bell Media’s streaming service CraveTV quickly garnered national attention and earlier this year took awards for ‘Best Writing in a Comedy Program or Series’ and ‘Best Direction in a Comedy Program or Series’ at the 2018 Canadian Screen Awards.
As to its start, Dales met Keeso in Vancouver about seven years ago through mutual friends.
“We were both actors, and we were both Calgary Flames fans, so we kind of bonded over that,” he recalled. The guys got a kick out of each other’s humour, and decided to put together a few short videos, throw them up on Youtube and gauge the response.
They did a couple of sports-themed spots, but didn’t garner the reaction they had hoped for – at first.
“We were looking for home runs, and I think we got bunts at best.”
The idea to shoot a few several short episodes later surfaced, which ultimately grew into a full-fledged season.
“Here we are in the middle of shooting our seventh season! It doesn’t even feel real very often; and it’s fun to look back and see where it came from.”
As to the formula, Dales said it all begins with Keeso’s very creative imagination.
“He thinks up these ideas and comes up with these scripts and puts them on the page, so that is step one for sure,” he explained.
”Step two is trying not to burst out laughing every time you are around your friends telling jokes. And I also happen to think that Jared is one of the funniest people on the face of the planet,” he added with a laugh.
Meanwhile, the original tour took over venues across the country this past spring, holding sold-out shows over its 26-city run which kicked off in Halifax before wrapping in Surrey in April.
“It’s a totally different animal,” said Dales of taking the show on the road.
“Adapting the scenes again starts with Jared. He’s the architect of everything creatively that we are going to put onstage. So if he does his job correctly, which he always does, it’s seamless. The great thing about doing the live performances is you get that response from an audience right away. When we film, we often have to wait about seven months before we are going to get a response from critics or the audience.
“Onstage, you know right away. If you bomb on a joke, the audience isn’t going to say anything. You’ll know right away that you have just laid a big, fat dud onstage.
For ticket information, check out www.ticketmaster.ca.
