A weird night out

Comedy sketch duo Two Weird Ladies host their first variety show

Indecisive folks — or those who like everything — are sure to enjoy The Everything Show with Two Weird Ladies.

Two Weird Ladies is a sketch comedy duo composed of Mandy Sellers and Laura Salvas, and this is their first time producing a variety show–style event. “The artistic talent in this city is as varied and exciting as its cuisine,” Salvas says. “We see this show as sort of a tapas menu of the arts, where you can fill up on your favourites while also trying something new.”

Sellers and Salvas first teamed up after completing a course at The Second City. Salvas was intimidated by Mandy’s improv reputation, but one night they went out for drinks. “Mandy told this story about how she punched somebody in the face on a public bus for smoking, and I thought, ‘I like this girl!’ I was just jealous that she’d punched someone in the face,” Salvas says.

Their comedy is based primarily on awkward real-life experiences. “We take real experiences and make them more insane,” Salvas says. “I realized that we both have a lot of rage, and if we didn’t harness that and put it into comedic form, there’d be a lot of face punching on our behalf.”

They debuted at the Fringe Festival in 2012 with the show Two Weird Ladies Bomb the Fringe. Since then, they’ve performed at the Toronto Sketch Comedy Festival, NXNE, the Boston Comedy Arts Festival and the Charleston Comedy Festival.

The Everything Show will include experimental folk band O Frontera, folk-rock act JJ Thompson and the Pillars, a reading by author Matthew Trafford, musical comedy by Carson Pinch, improv from Plan B, and sketch comedy from Sketch Sketch Goddamn. Two Weird Ladies will intersperse their comedy throughout as part of their hosting duties.

The show will also feature a performance of Tina McCulloch’s short play The Object of Her Attraction, which debuted at Gay Play Day in 2012.

The Everything Show with Two Weird Ladies is Tues, Oct 15, 8:30pm at Measure, 296 Brunswick Ave. twoweirdladies.com

Jeremy Willard is a Toronto-based freelance writer and editor. He's written for Fab Magazine, Daily Xtra and the Torontoist. He generally writes about the arts, local news and queer history (in History Boys, the Daily Xtra column that he shares with Michael Lyons).

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Culture, Toronto, Arts, Comedy

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