Mavis Picket Learning to laugh again By Alfie Lau, Record reporter Move over Chris Rock, Bill Cosby and Bob Newhart. Mavis Pickett is gaining a cult following. Pickett, a 72-year-old Royal City resident, teaches osteofit classes in Burnaby, New Westminster, Coquitlam and Vancouver by day and wows comedy clubs at night as a stand-up comic with her own brand of humour. “You know you’re a senior when things dry up or leak.” But Pickett didn’t come by this vocation willingly or even knowingly, stumbling into it after tragedy hit her family. In 1996, her daughter, also named Mavis, was killed in a skiing accident in Whistler. Trying to find a way to cope with the grief, she came across a brochure for a course on grief management through humour taught by comedian David Granirer. “I signed up and went to the first class,” Pickett remembers of the 1998 class. “There were about 15 people in it, all very bright and witty young people, and then me. I just about died. I told David that I had registered for his course, but they didn’t tell me he had two courses. Here I was in his stand-up comedy group.” Pickett wanted to leave, but Granirer convinced her to give it a try, as many of the techniques he was teaching these aspiring comics were also applicable to his other course. She did just that for the first month, but in week five she was informed the “final exam” was an eight-minute stand-up routine at Lafflines in New Westminster. “Jeepers, holy moly, I’m not doing that,” Pickett said. “This is not the sort of thing seniors do. I want no part of this.” Granirer countered that Pickett should finish what she started and, somewhat tentatively, Pickett made her debut. “Seniors are always suspicious that mechanics are trying to dupe you. I once had a mechanic tell me that I had to rotate my tires. I told him, ‘Dear, isn’t that what happens when I drive?’” “It went amazingly well. Here I was, this little old lady telling jokes, and people were laughing,” Pickett recollects, adding that from there, word-of-mouth has been her only advertising vehicle. Perhaps it’s the novelty of having somebody not inserting f-bombs and obscenities in every joke, but Pickett performs an average of three times a month all across British Columbia, with forays to Alberta, Manitoba and Ontario. “Humour has provided a new perspective for me. When different things happen, you become enclosed and end up going around and around. You need something to break you out of that vortex and humour was that for me,” Pickett said. Without even taking the course she had originally intended, she had learned how to cope with the grief of her daughter’s death and broken out of the circle of despair that had enveloped her. Her shows or “gigs” as she lovingly refers to them, are often at seniors’ centres like Century House, the Kerrisdale Community Centre, the Dufferin Lodge and the recent Senior’s Festival, but she’s widening her sphere, performing both last month and on Nov. 19 at the Laughing Bean in North Burnaby. “When I perform at a club, I’m usually third or fourth, following people with ‘blue’ routines or stories about younger people,” Pickett said. “But what I’m trying to do is tell stories about what it’s like to be a senior _ and the crowd can relate because who hasn’t had a parent or a grandparent who does the same thing?” “Life gets tough as you get older. All this pulling and tugging, and that’s just putting on your tights in the morning.” Pickett has also gained notoriety through an appearance on Rick Cluff’s CBC morning radio program, which led to an appearance on Vicki Gabereau’s talk show and then being asked to tell her story for a recent Global Television documentary, Laughing Through the Pain, which ran in August nationwide and is scheduled to be repeated before year-end, date not yet announced. In the documentary, Pickett’s story is one of three showing how humour can be one of the greatest healing forces. Concurrent with that appearance, local author Arthur Black, in his new book Black and White and Read All Over, told her story in a chapter entitled “Say Goodnight, Mavis,” which ends with Pickett’s signature goodbye. As the audience roars “Goodnight, Mavis,” Pickett is saying those words to someone who isn’t physically in the audience but is always with her, her daughter Mavis Anne. Black was so impressed with Pickett that during his barnstorming to promote the book, he often refers to Pickett’s chapter. It is indeed through laughter that Pickett has laughed through the pain of death and come through a different and, as audiences could attest to, an even better person. “I had a friend who said that, when she dies, she wants to be laid beside her family. I said when I die, I want to be laid beside Sean Connery.” Pickett characterizes her routine as one that everybody can listen to, as she refuses to swear or use language that might offend her audience. She freely admits that the butt of her jokes is herself and the things that happen to her and seniors on an everyday basis. “I like to talk about problems that seniors have, and I rely on wordsmanship and puns to get my joke across,” Pickett said. She added that her comic heroes include Gracie Allen and George Burns, who also relied on puns, and Bob Newhart, who she credits with leading the movement of “self-deprecating, never mean or cruel comics” who rely on comedic timing and the right words for their laughs. She doesn’t deride comics who rely on obscenity or “shock value” for their jokes, explaining that people laugh at different things, so comedic routines should be radically different. She draws the line in performing that way because that’s not what she’s comfortable with. Pickett said while it takes “so many hours” to write her routine, she is never short of material because of the osteo-fit classes she teaches. Whether it be the Edmonds Community Centre, Pinetree Community Centre or the West End Community Centre, she has more than 100 seniors who have amusing anecdotes to tell her. They are also increasingly coming out to her performances, no small task considering many seniors are reticent to venture out when it gets dark, but they’ll do so to see Pickett perform. Pickett is proud to say that she has been asked by North Island College on Vancouver Island to perform and lecture on Dec. 4 as part of their 55-plus series. Not only will she perform a routine in the campus theatre, she will give a talk on her journey to this point in life where her business card now says “Senior Comic.” Pickett’s Nov. 19 appearance at the Laughing Bean at 2695 East Hastings St. starts at 8 p.m. with more information available by calling 604-251-5282. More information about Pickett is available at her website at seniorcomic.
Posted on: Thu, 16 Jan 2014 00:04:17 +0000