The Great Depression

[Ian Boothby]

I don’t know if there are more depressed people in the arts than other professions or if being part of something where expressing and tapping into your feelings is encouraged means it’s more obvious.

I’ve worked professionally being an actor, other times being a touring stand up comedian and from being an improviser. There were times those jobs mixed but there were also months to years when I’d just be making my living off one of those three. I currently make my living as a writer and use the money to create comedy projects.

As an actor you audition and get rejected constantly. Most of the time with no reason given and so your brain decides to help you out and give you a bunch of reasons why. Maybe you should lose some weight, maybe you stuttered, or maybe the casting director has something personal against you.

At a TV or film audition, you’re herded into a waiting room with a group of people who look like you and who you’ll be competing with. You all look at your scripts, pace, try not to look nervous, go to the bathroom if they have one, wonder why they’re running so late and if your parking is still valid (the auditions always are late and they seldom apologize). Maybe there’s a water cooler but probably not. You go into a room, state your name, very little small talk if any, probably don’t shake anyone’s hands, do your lines and off you go with a quick “thanks”. You exit and the folks in the waiting room gaze up at you hoping you don’t look too happy.

You probably booked time off your day job for this. It more than likely cost you money to do it and you get treated poorly. That is unless you get the job and then it all flips. You get paid a lot of money to do very little work on a set. People do your make up, dress you, the director talks to you, everyone asks how you’re doing, they give you free meals and constant access to beverages. There’s a table filled with just snacks! Maybe there’s a stand in for you if your part is large enough. The hours are long but the worst thing they make you do is wait in an air conditioned trailer with your own TV.

The problem with this life is the lack of a middle ground. You’re nothing or you’re royalty. Feast or famine. When the auditions dry up as they do in cycles the mind goes wandering again wondering what you did wrong. It’s got to be your fault right? Maybe you’re getting too old, maybe you said something that offended the director. Maybe you’re a terrible actor and everyone has finally called on you on being the fraud you’ve always been.

You’re like a glass full of water going from the fridge to the microwave and back. If you base your self worth on your success or what casting directors think of you you’re going to end up broken.

I didn’t feel like this was healthy for myself, stepped back from that world and stopped auditioning. For me that worked out because I started writing parts for myself on a local kids’ show called Switchback. Then I got cast in Happy Gilmore because the director liked a live show they saw me in and I ended up getting a string of commercials because the casting director lived in my apartment building, knew I was kind of funny and would cast me in things as I was going down to do my laundry.


I’ve never been more depressed than being a road comic. I did stand up comedy at a club called Punchlines in Vancouver and was what you’d now call an alternative comic. I wasn’t great but I was given some good advice when I started by a comedian named Mike Cliff to never do generic material and that it was a waste of time. So my act was weird. I’d turn the audience into a giant 3-D movie while wearing glasses and getting them to lunge towards me. I’d pretend it was my birthday and have them hide under their tables to surprise me when I reentered and did a ventriloquist act with a sock puppet that just did mime. I’d drink a glass of water while it walked against the wind.

This was a time when other comedians like Dean Haglund and Janice Ungaro would also be doing things like dressing up like a moth and during their set get closer and closer to the spotlight.

My act was fine for the clubs and I started get some MC work but to make any real money you needed to tour. These tours were to bars in small towns, most of the time people who didn’t know there was comedy that night. My artsy fartsy comedy was the last thing they wanted to see. I’d been performing for years doing different things but never faced that kind of pure fucking loathing from an audience.

At the end of one tour as I wrote in another essay I thought the other comedian I was with had died in his bed. I didn’t feel anything except a mild sense of relief that the tour would be over. I was told by the comedians I was touring with that this was the only path to being a professional stand up. You had to do the road gigs and toughen up. I couldn’t take the road so I quit stand up to focus on sketch and improv comedy.

I got back into it after seeing a film called The Comedians of Comedy which was about four very different stand up comics touring together. Two of them were nerds, one did hilarious characters and the other played piano while doing jokes and constantly confronted the audience. They were all weirdos! And they weren’t being assholes to each other. They weren’t trying to be cool! It was an eye opener and I’ve gradually been getting back into stand up. There’s a golden age of talent here in Vancouver that’s a lot like the comic book scene was in the city in late 90s. In both cases it didn’t seem like there was any real hope of success so the artists involved just did the stuff they wanted to do. And so the work they did got really good.

If I kept to the road and kept working on my craft I don’t know how dark things would have gotten for me mentally. I used to live with a comedian and she would often be talking about how she was going to commit suicide. It was that dark artist mindset mixed with depression mixed with anti-depressants mixed with white wine.

I stopped drinking on the road after touring with Colin Campbell, one of the greatest stand ups to come out of Vancouver. He’d take me aside and tell me over and over how he was the best stand up around but his drinking kept killing his career. He was drinking to fight some demons and in the end they won. It’s so easy to drink when you’re working in a bar with free drinks offered and often in a town where you don’t know anyone and with anything else to do.

Improv for the most part has been a more positive experience at least on the surface maybe because you’re not alone in it. There’s always a couple of other people who’s job it is to have your back on stage and that can carry over after the show. After a show you usually talk through what happened and that leaves a lot less room for your brain to make up what went on.

As improvisers you want to make each other look good and that’s a pretty positive place to come from. This is what I dislike about the Keith Johnstone books where the word “stupid” is used so much to describe performances. Also Del Close’s famous verbal abuse of his students just feels wrong to me. It seems to go against the core of improv and what makes it unique. It gives it the same problems stand up and acting have.

It’s that boot camp mentality that you’ll find in most of the arts. The idea that you need to learn to take a punch. The idea that if you can take abuse it’ll make you better later as an artist doesn’t fly with me. Practice is essential but playing piano in a foxhole during a war doesn’t make you a better piano player because you’re ankle deep in mud with bullets flying overhead. It’ll probably make that gig playing the wedding not seem so bad unless your PTS kicks in and you snap the best man’s neck.

This is where I’m going to tie things into depression. If you’re in a profession where you’re told you need to suffer for your work and in the arts that’s a common theme then when a mental illness like depression shows up you’re less likely to try and treat it. It feels like you deserve it, like it’s part of the artist’s process. Also how can you complain to your friends who have a “real” job about how you’re bummed out doing commercials, telling jokes or doing comedy? You’re doing something fun right? What right do you have to whine doing what you love?

You feel like the girl who’s told she was asking for it. The depression you’ve got is your fault and it’s part of your path. You deserve to feel this way and you’ll stop as soon as you get that next commercial, that next big gig, that house, once you show your parents this wasn’t a waste of time…

But it doesn’t work that way. The comedian I used to live with and was in love with, got drunk one day and got violent and I moved out. That night she killed her pet in a fit of depression. I moved on with my life expecting one day to find out she killed herself. In the end she drank herself to death.

The arts can be a great outlet for expression and a wonderful way to make a living but they have a lot of dark corners where bad shit can grow quickly and freely. Not to turn into a PSA but if you’re depressed get help. If not to make yourself healthy then for the good of your craft. Depression seems like it’s a good fuel for art but eventually the car explodes. You’ve got too much to do to let that get in the way.