It was a couple of years ago when Roman Danylo’s wife came home and told him something that got his attention.
“She had gone to a real male stripper show and she said it was packed it there,” Danylo said.
That’s when the veteran improv comedian realized something.
“When we do improv, we are really quite often parodying different genres in my different stage shows that I’ve done, like I did a CSI parody once,” Danylo said. “And I went, well, that is a genre that nobody has parodied and it is a really clear genre that everybody knows.”
It wasn’t long after that the fictitious male stripper improv comedy show called the Comic Strippers was born.
On Friday (March 27) Danylo and the rest of the Comic Strippers will be at the Port Theatre, where they will be cracking jokes and shedding their clothes.
“It turns heads like you wouldn’t believe,” Danylo said.
However, those expecting to see a real male strip show will be disappointed because the Comic Strippers routine is not what it appears to be on the surface.
“Nobody is going to be weirded out by any extreme nudity,” Danylo said. “We play fictitious male stripper characters attempting to get more respect in their lives by putting on an improv comedy show.”
Danylo was born in Calgary and ended up in the comedy industry during the 1980s.
In recent years, he has performed at the Just for Laughs Festival in Montreal and the HBO Comedy Festival in Colorado and he has appeared on a handful of television shows such as the The Debaters, Comedy Now, The Holmes Show as well as his own show Comedy Inc.
The two-time Gemini Award nominee says being able to perform at a venue such as the Port Theatre is ideal.
“People don’t realize that comedians are thrown to the wolves in terrible environments all the time,” he said. “I remember doing a show in a restaurant in Whistler and they had no lighting and they said ‘we’ll just turn up the heat lamp from the buffet.’”
Since the Comic Strippers was created a few years ago, Danylo and his troupe have performed to audiences throughout North America and Australia.
“I think our first audience in Australia didn’t realize that we a parody of male strippers. They thought we were the real thing,” Danylo said. “There was a woman who bounded up on stage at the end and [she] basically tried to rip my pants off.”
The Comic Strippers perform at the Port Theatre on Friday night at 8 p.m.
The show is for people 19 and older and there is no nudity.
Tickets are $35 or $30 for a group of six people or more.
For ticket purchases and more information, please visit www.porttheatre.com or www.thecomicstrippers.com.