Canadian comedian John Hastings has been through a lot.
Focused on his years worth of life up and downs, his new stand-up show ‘Float Like A Butterfly, John Hastings Like A Bee’ playing at the Sydney Comedy Festival will take audiences on a ride of John’s life.
After recovering from a hit-and-run car accident, becoming homeless (his choice) and having a long distance girlfriend (her choice), John has material up his sleeve that will hopefully make you laugh.
“The only thing left from the accident is that I have an excess amount of joint lube on my arm which is fun,” John says, regarding the accident.
Self-describing his show as “a big old hour of dumb storytelling”, it’s stand-up that he thinks is really funny, and hopes others will think the same.
Sharing a tip as to whether to go watch a comedy show or not, John suggests doing your research before he performs.
“If you want to come see [my show], please watch a YouTube video of me and if you go, 'Oh I think I would enjoy that' then come along.
“It's one of those things with comedy where I think people just need to do a bit more research.
“People always say 'Let's go watch some comedy'. I always say, any person you hear that is funny, bring them up on your phone, watch two minutes, and if you like that, then you're going to like the hour.”
In talks about his show, John mentions that many comedians hope that they’re going to have an interesting year, in order to have an interesting show to take on the road.
“Basically what happens is you pray and hope that you're going to have an interesting year to talk about and luckily I have had a very interesting year where I was able to talk about a variety of things.
“Sometimes you're sort of scraping the bottom of the barrel, but this year a lot of this stuff happened and it is something that I can talk about that is unique and different for a whole different bunch of people.
“They can hopefully relate and enjoy.”
Trying to stand out compared to other comedians, John tries to make sure his content is original from his life experiences.
“Some years you're lucky and that is really easy and prevalent, other years you're trying to find stuff because there are so many comedians and so much content being pushed out that trying to find stuff with a unique perspective on anything is a real difficult ask.
“I've lucked out by moving around a lot, and traveling and making a lot of stupid decisions that have provided a lot of material for stage thank God… But I don't know what would happen if I have a boring year, which I fortunately haven't crossed that bridge yet.”
During his time in Australia, John has some great things planned.
“I'm going to do a lot of yoga while in Melbourne. Then in Sydney I am going to walk around the city and tell everyone it is a better city than Melbourne.”
