Laughing through Payne

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This article was published 06/04/2017 (3333 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Nikki Payne, like most comedians, must look out for No. 1 because when she is onstage, she has no one else to turn to except an audience looking for laughs.

But she has learned that looking out for someone else can be even more rewarding than earning a round of guffaws from the crowd.

Payne, who has two performances remaining at this week’s Winnipeg Comedy Festival, donated one of her kidneys to her father in 2007.

“It was really cool because being a standup comedian, you kind of have to be a bit selfish; it’s your career, it’s your business,” Payne said earlier this week from her home “in the boondocks” of New Brunswick. “You’re really singularly focused. It’s quite a beast, a comedy career. Without meaning to be, you can be a little bit self-centred about it.

“I haven’t had any children, so it was really like the first time in my life that I’d done something where there was absolutely no benefit to me,” she continues. “It’s a really cool feeling, you don’t realize how helping someone else can make you feel so good.”

It was about a two-year process, she says, looking back, from when her father was diagnosed until the transplant operation took place. She recalls the extensive testing she undertook to make sure her kidneys were a good match, but “once it got moving, it moved really fast.”

Both donor and recipient are feeling fine a decade later, to the point that Payne can joke about the donor experience.

“You’re tested in so many different ways, you pee in just about every container the hospital has,” she says.

Payne is a four-time winner of the best female standup at the Canadian Comedy Awards and won a 2014 Comedy Award for her work on the CTV sitcom Satisfaction.

5She has toured comedy venues across North America with her standup act and even entertained troops stationed in Afghanistan.

“I’ve travelled a lot doing comedy and it’s really funny — people are way more the same than they are different,” Payne says. “We always think, ‘Western Canada’ and ‘Eastern Canada’ but Canadians in general are quite sweet people and enjoy laughter, are down to earth and friendly. I think we are a lot more similar than we are different.”

Payne hosted Thursday night’s gala at the Pantages Playhouse Theatre, dubbed Lady Like, but is also scheduled for Saturday night’s No Bro Show along with fellow female jokesters Lara Rae, Fatima Dhowre, DJ Lil Win, Robby Hoffman, Jackie Kashian, Shazia Mirza and Ashley Moffatt (West End Cultural Centre, 7:30 p.m.).

Payne is also on the bill for Sunday night’s Best of the Fest show (Club Regent Event Centre, 7 p.m.).

alan.small@freepress.mb.ca Twitter:@AlanDSmall