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Whistler Town Party explores 'love in a fishbowl'

sketch comedy hits Millennium Place Friday, Jan. 3
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Photo by Joern Rohde / wpnn.org

Yeah yeah, Whistler's great and all but there are some serious problems with it. For instance, it's a small town, right? And in small towns, finding love can be hard. There aren't too, too many options so it's nearly impossible to find a mate who hasn't slept with at least one of your friends.

"It's like by six degrees of separation you've slept with everyone in the room," says local lover of love, Michele Bush.

It's not exactly a problem for her. It's funny, if anything, which is why she's decided to explore the concept in the second Whistler Town Party production, entitled By the Time Cupid Got to Whistler He Was Drunk — an hour and 15 minutes of comedy sketches exploring the challenges of finding love in Whistler.

"It's love in a fishbowl," she says.

This will be the second of three Whistler Town Party installments, following a sold-out Christmas show last December. This production will include most of the "usual suspects" including Chris Quinlan, Monique Davidson, Cheryl Massey and more. G.D. Maxwell reviving his Whistler Update sketch for the second time, as well as Don Stevenson reviving his Rev. Don character who will peddling miracle love water.

The programs are targeted largely toward Whistler locals, specifically those who have been in town for a long time. Bush, who's been involved in the performing arts in Whistler for about 25 years, says that there's a formula for making a successful program.

"And local people like local and they like funny," she says.

They appeal to a narrow swath of Whistler locals mainly because it's the same old people (pun intended) contributing sketches.

"It just seems to be us aging population that's doing it. It would be nice to see some young people," Bush says with a laugh. "We have a couple but none in their 20s."

With that said, there will be three Chippendale cupids in white fur diapers, which Bush says, "will be something to see."

She says the whole Whistler Town Party project is "just an experiment" that, so far, has been working out "quite well." Even still, when Bush made a call for submissions for anyone and everyone to submit their own hilarious Whistler-centric tales of love, she received a grand total of zero — a telling display of the universal timidity of people's personal lives.

Either way, Bush says with a laugh, "I'll make that part of my monologue."

She made another call for submissions via Facebook for people to finish the sentence "Love in Whistler is like..." in their own way. She's already received some "good" responses, which will be read aloud at the show.

The third and final installment of this grand experiment is slated for April, sometime before the TELUS World Ski and Snowboard Festival, and will likely be themed around that event. After that, Bush-produced sketch comedy will be put on hold indefinitely, or at least for the summer.

"What I've learned over the years of beating my head against the wall every year trying to do shows at Millennium Place is that winter is the only time to stage show," she says.

Tickets are $20 at Millennium Place.