{"id":13091,"date":"2016-12-15T09:00:43","date_gmt":"2016-12-15T17:00:43","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/?p=13091"},"modified":"2016-12-16T11:10:16","modified_gmt":"2016-12-16T19:10:16","slug":"canadian-comedians-have-fun-being-british-with-christmas-show","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/2016\/12\/15\/canadian-comedians-have-fun-being-british-with-christmas-show\/","title":{"rendered":"Canadian comedians have fun being British with Christmas show"},"content":{"rendered":"

For comedians Alastair Knowles and Aaron Malkin, who play the British comedy duo James and Jamesy in O Christmas Tea: A British Comedy<\/em>, there is no better time to pretend to be British than the holidays.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019re British Columbian,\u201d says Knowles with a laugh. \u201cThe show has been described as \u2018walking out of a Monty Python<\/em> film into a Dr. Seuss book,\u2019 and it\u2019s a celebration of imagination and friendship that spills from the stage into the audience.\u201d<\/p>\n

The show\u2014during which Knowles and Malkin interact with the audience\u2014is a perfect vehicle to encompass the Christmas sprit, says Knowles.<\/p>\n

\u201cEveryone is able to get on board with the idea of Santa Claus, and the sort of mystical magical nature of Christmas,\u201d he says. \u201cOur shows are facilitators of that experience.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>
James and Jamesy and their Christmas tea are coming to town (photo by Thaddeus Hink).<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Although they are Canadian born, the pair put on British accents for the show, and even sometimes slip back into them in their personal lives when they are talking to each other offstage.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019re British about eight months of the year,\u201d says Malkin. \u201cWe love promoting in character and we even teach workshops in character. Off the stage, we\u2019re frequently in our British personas and it makes the persona on stage just very natural.<\/p>\n

Knowles says it makes for a fun time offstage when the two begin conversing in British English.<\/p>\n

\u201cIn addition to our public Britishness, often in private when Aaron and I are chatting into the night we\u2019ll find ourselves slipping into British accents and staying there for a long time,\u201d he says. \u201cWe swing back and forth between British and Canadian accents. It\u2019s one of the ways we have fun together.\u201d<\/p>\n

The inception of the characters in O Christmas Tea<\/em>\u2014James and Jamesy\u2014came when Knowles and Malkin were working on getting material ready for a cabaret show they were producing with other comedians. During an improvisation session, a fellow comedian wanted to see the characters put in a show.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe audience response was unlike any we\u2019ve ever experienced,\u201d says Malkin, adding that a mentor told the pair, \u201cYou\u2019ve struck gold. If you want, you can mine this.\u201d<\/p>\n

O Christmas Tea: A British comedy
\n<\/em>7:30 pm Monday, December 19 and 5 pm Tuesday, December 20
\n$19.50 (student rate), McPherson Playhouse
\nrmts.bc.ca<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

For comedians Alastair Knowles and Aaron Malkin, who play the British comedy duo James and Jamesy in O Christmas Tea: A British Comedy, there is no better time to pretend to be British than the holidays. \u201cWe\u2019re British Columbian,\u201d says Knowles with a laugh. \u201cThe show has been described as \u2018walking out of a Monty […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":13092,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-13091","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-webexclusive"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13091","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=13091"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13091\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":13094,"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13091\/revisions\/13094"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/13092"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=13091"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=13091"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=13091"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}