The power of always saying ‘Yes’
Ron Pederson stars at Second City. It took him 20 years to get there
The mantra for improv comedy is the expression “Yes, and …”
It means accepting any offers you get and running with them. And that’s something Ron Pederson has followed his entire career.
Perform theatre as an Edmonton teen for stage greats Robin Phillips and Stewart Lemoine? Yes.
Join a weekly improvised soap opera called “Die-Nasty,” directed by Second City/improv guru Dana Andersen? Yes.
And when “SCTV” great Joe Flaherty sees you in that show, accept an invitation from him to travel to L.A. and work on a similar improv show? Hell, yes.
We’re sitting in Second City’s oneyear-old new space at One York, the night after Pederson and his talented troupe members have premiered its 88th mainstage revue, “Chaos Menu: Disorder Up!” And Pederson is telling me about how his life took a big turn back in the early 2000s, all because he said yes.
“I went out to L.A. for about a month and did a series of shows as part of Joe’s show, ‘The Soap Also Rises,’ ” he explained.
“Catherine O’Hara came and improvised one night. Martin Short came and improvised. Fred Willard dropped by. I was in heaven. After one show, Martin, Joe and I went out for drinks and Joe said, ‘Marty, don’t you think Ron should go to Second City?’ And Marty said, ‘Yeah, he really should. You’re funny.’
(I need to point out here that his impressions of both actors are uncanny.)
The next day, Pederson got a phone call from Second City’s Andrew Alexander, who wanted to fly him in for an audition. Amazing, right?
“I hung up the phone, and it rang again and it was Joe, asking if I’d talked with Alexander. He said, ‘Don’t say anything to them yet. Because ‘MAD TV’ was at the theatre last night and they want to bring you in for a meeting.”
He met with both teams. And he got offers from both, within days of each other. He would either be moving to Toronto or L.A. He chose the latter.
“That was an amazing, heady time,” he said about joining the late-night TV sketch show, which was then six or seven seasons into its run.
“I wasn’t that experienced in sketch writing or pitching ideas, and the ‘MAD TV’ ensemble was really mixed: there were stand-ups, some folks from the Groundlings, people from Chicago. It was competitive and edgy, but I managed to have a wonderful time in the three years I was there.”
After that, he got hired by “The Late Late Show with Craig Ferguson” to work on sketches — SNL alum Tim Meadows and fellow Canuck Dave Foley were also coming up with sketches. But soon he began missing theatre.
“I’d be doing these little sketches, character things and impression things, and I missed the excitement of live theatre so much,” he said.
And then fate intervened yet again. Invited by Short to see the pre-Broadway premiere of his show “Fame Becomes Me” in Toronto, Pederson ran into his Edmonton friend Jane Spidell, who told him he should talk with Ted Dykstra, who was casting a 2007 production of “The Rocky Horror Show” for Canadian Stage. He got the part of nerdy Brad. A few months later, he got cast as the lead, Seymour, in “Little Shop of Horrors.”
After that, Pederson stuck around, eventually saying “Yes, and …” to directing, co-founding theatre companies including The National Theatre of the World (with Naomi Snieckus and Matt Baram), as well as stints at the Stratford Festival, Soulpepper and pretty much every major theatre in Canada.
He won a Canadian Comedy Award, and along with a bunch of other improvisers including Snieckus, Baram, Jan Caruana, Kayla Lorette and Rebecca Northan, he helped get improv theatre taken seriously by the Toronto theatre establishment. “The Wonder Pageant,” an improvised holiday comedy show he created with Lorette at Coal Mine Theatre, won a Dora Award for best ensemble in 2019.
“I’m restless,” he said. “If I haven’t done a musical in a while, I get itchy for that. If I haven’t improvised in a while, I need to do that. Improv synthesizes all the things I enjoy, because there’s a directorial aspect to it — you think, ‘How do we stage this? Where do we want the audience’s attention?’ ”
Among his many current projects, he, fellow improviser Ashley Botting and producer Alan Kliffer are developing an improvised musical called “FLOP!” And he’s also begun thinking and writing about his Indigenous background. Pederson is Métis, but hasn’t explored that in his work before.
For now, he’s enjoying being in a Second City show he helped create through its famous improv method. He’s a standout in the revue, channelling some of his personal obsessions — like his love of Stephen Sondheim and old musicals. One hilarious scene, in which he plays an unnamed mayor deflecting press inquiries, evolved almost verbatim from a post-show improv exercise.
Each one of his characters is clearly-defined and recognizable.
“I don’t know that a lot of people have ticked off Hollywood, Stratford and Second City in the order I’ve done them,” he said, laughing.
And oh yeah, he still keeps in touch with Short and Flaherty.
In fact, after he texted Flaherty telling him that he was finally going to do Second City, the “SCTV” star wrote back: “They’re lucky to have you. I’m sure you’ll be great. If not, keep my name out of it.”