Pillitteri tunes up for comedic debate on CBC Radio

Joe Pillitteri, Niagara-on-the-Lake’s very own home-grown comic, has been invited to perform on The Debaters, a popular CBC radio comedy show that features Canada's hottest comedians, hosted by Steve Patterson, two-time winner of Canada’s Best Male Stand-Up.

Pillitteri will be performing before a live audience at the McIntyre Performing Arts Centre, located in Hamilton’s Mohawk College, with seating for more than 1,000 people. When he spoke to The Local last week, the orchestra was almost completely sold out — his family and friends bought up most of the tickets, he jokes — with only a few left in the balcony.

It’s a show he has wanted to do for a long time, he says, and is particularly excited to be working with Patterson, “one of the best in Canada.

CBC’s website describes the show, in its 18th season, as a “battle of laughs and logic,” with a format that is “part stand-up, part quiz show and part comedy competition,’ with a live audience picking the winners.

While debating another comedian, “you’re basically trying to land as many jokes as you can in favour of your topic,” says Pillitteri, which in his case, is arguing for kids working at after-school jobs. Although he didn’t get to pick the topic, he was able to choose which side he is on. And it’s no accident he was invited to debate that particular topic, given his performances that include jokes about some of the jobs he had to do from the time he was a kid, working for his father on the family farm.

It seems the show’s producers felt the same way. “They heard me on CBC’s Laugh out Loud, and they thought it was a good fit,” Pillitteri says, referring to a show that was recorded at the CBC Radio Gala at the Niagara-on-the-Lake Court House, on the final night of this year’s Icebreakers Comedy Festival.

“It wasn’t a random choice. The producer felt my material would work with this topic.” And Pillitteri says he felt it would be his strength to argue in favour.

He will be debating Courtney Gilmour,  a JUNO-nominated comedian, and a finalist on Canada's Got Talent. “I’ve seen her performing in festivals and on TV,” he says. “She a great performer, and very funny. And I love the opportunity of doing anything with somebody funny.”

He explains that when two comics work together, “my experience is one plus one equals three,” as they feed off of each other, “making the whole greater than the sum of the parts."

“Truthfully,” Pillitteri adds, “I’ve wanted to be on this show for quite some time. I love the format. It’s genuinely funny.”

And host Steve Patterson “is hilarious in his own right. I’ve met him at corporate events, and I’ve always said ‘hey, if there’s ever a chance to work with you,’ but I think waiting your turn is the way to go, waiting for a topic that suits your material. I’m super excited to be doing that.”

The choice of the debate argument offered to him was definitely not random, he says. “One of the producers pointed out that she really thought my material would work well with this topic.”

And with Patterson “a master moderator he will know how to make the debate better, and livelier.”

The format for speaking “is pretty much down to the minute,” he says, consisting of two rounds of two-to-five-minute bursts, with an opening and closing, so by the end of the debate the two comics have had about 20 minutes each.

“You have to submit a draft of your jokes with a word count so they’ll know it will fit into the allotted time for the show,” he explains. “Some of it is improv, depending on the way it’s going, or you can write it down, whatever you choose.”

Pillitteri says he genuinely believes kids should work after school and learn the concept of earning money to buy what they want, but also sees that it’s not the same as what he experienced growing up.

The jokes are going to be about “the expectations of our own kids,” he says, and that “there are downfalls to not working for every single dime they spend, and not understanding why it’s insane to have concert tickets priced at $800. I think there is a commonality these days, that kids today work less and get paid more when they do work, but they work in a different time than we did. I’m trying to get humour out of that.”

The work he did on the family farm, especially alongside Jamaican farmworkers, contributed to the person he is and his comedy, he says. “I feel like work for me was a gift.”

“I’m also exceeding conscientious when I’m performing outside of our town,” he adds, “trying to really find ways that whoever I’m in front of, I can make my comedy relatable to them.”

He says with a full-time business to run, rather than making comedy a career, he can look at it a little differently — it’s more about having fun being able to do something he loves to do.

However he’s learned from his early years on stage, when he didn’t take it seriously enough and didn’t prepare enough, “that you only make those mistakes once or twice, until you realize if you have the opportunity to perform you have to prepare for it, with the goal of making people laugh. And if you succeed, it feels really good.”

To buy tickets for the March 19 event, if there are any left, visit https://ci.ovationtix.com/36734/performance/11391703