Virginia O'Dine is drawing a comedy circle.
She got her start on the stage doing community theatre and improvisational comedy, then evolved into one of the city's best known standup acts.
Now she is doing a standup gig on Saturday but it will be as the opening act for the Improv Shmimprov event at Art Space.
It wasn't as difficult as making the transition a few years ago to lone comedian at a microphone. She was expecting more pre-show nerves, more stage anxiety.
Instead, the challenging part wasn't delivering the jokes, it was inventing them.
"What surprised me the most was how much effort goes into the writing," she said.
"If I do any headlining or a show of any real size, I have to take the day off that day to arrange the material and prepare myself. That's not to write new material, that's just to work out the order of the material. I've now done 70-something shows and other than three of them done in different towns, I've never done the exact same set. I always bring something new.
"That means I always have to be 'on' and writing down ideas when they come to me, even if that isn't at the most convenient time or place. So in that sense, the level of my work is self-induced. But when you have a relatively small comedy community in Prince George, you can't have the audience knowing your whole act because they've already seen it time after time. You have to give them new stuff."
Her first night on stage was an open mic event at Nancy O's. She had attended one as an audience member, and with her background in amateur performances she saw the potential fun in trying this new form of stage art.
"I didn't completely suck," she remembered. And she also has a background in the literary arts (she once owned her own book publishing company), so the next steps came quickly and naturally to her.
"I decided to learn how to write comedy," she explained.
"It is a craft. More goes into that than the stage skills. It is an art form no different than writing an novel or painting a picture or composing a piece of music. You have to learn the structure and the way it moves. You have to approach it as a craft. Because I had the writer's background and the editor's background, it was a mindset I could adjust to."
There are courses in how to write standup comedy. That isn't available in this area. She had to develop her skills by picking the brains of other local comedians with more experience, and attending comedy clubs and festivals in other places.
Mimicking a standup comedian can be learned by watching YouTube clips, but developing the underlying art is best done by being in the same room as quality standups and engaging them in dialogue.
"The biggest lesson was learning to suppress your fear. It is easy to talk yourself out of doing something or saying something, but if you're in tune with your instincts, you'll know to keep the riskier stuff, which is where the honesty is strongest, and that's what people respond to most, I think," she said.
Nothing feels better, not even a round of applause, than people coming up to her after a show wanting to talk with her about a bit, analyze a joke out loud with her, or telling a story of their own about a similar feeling or incident.
"When the truth underneath the comedy comes through for someone, that's when it's most satisfying for me," she said.
"Because I want people to think and laugh."
Her biggest appearance to date was opening for Kids In The Hall and Young Drunk Punk alumnus Bruce McCulloch at Vanier Hall this past September.
Now she is opening for longtime friend Stephan St. Laurent, the leader of the new theatre sports group Improv Shmimprov. Other members of that group include Mark Wheeler, Sabrina Mori, Scott McKay, Kenna Latimer-Jonkman and others, many of whom O'Dine has performed with in the past in plays and improv games.
The event happens Saturday at 8 p.m. for audiences aged 19-plus. Tickets are $10 available now at Books & Company or from cast members.
