Mayce Galoni: Canada’s Comedy Wunderkind

At the tender age of 22, Canadian comedian Mayce Galoni has checked more career milestones off his bucket list than most of will work to claim through the course of our careers. A regular fixture on Yuk Yuks stages across the country, and already a featured headliner on the club’s flagship downtown Toronto stage (club founder Mark Breslin recently wrote that Mayce is “blowing away comics with two or three times his experience” and cited Mayce as a ‘force to be reckoned with’)

At 22, Galoni has already appeared on the big three of the major festivals on the Canadian circuit. Winnipeg, Halifax and the world renowned Just for Laughs in Montreal. This year alone he competed at the Montreal festival’s Homegrown competition – a rite of passage for comics of every stripe, and a widely coveted industry casting call. He was also in the running on Sirius XM’s Top Comic competition, which pitted him against some of the finest and fiercest in Canada’s current crop of comedy talent. And last month he went stateside and placed 2nd overall in Seattle’s Comedy Competition. If that doesn’t sound like a demanding enough schedule, he somehow found time to release his first standup album “Praying to See Boobs” through the independent production label TooFar.Tv – OH, and he also embarked on a comedy tour with two veteran headliners from his native Hamilton (the Steel Town Degenerates tour)… that’s it though, I think? No, wait, he also appeared in a taping on comedian Kevin Hart’s new LOL Network. And appeared on CBC Radio’s The Debaters. Mayce might have had a better 2016 than the rest of us. 

He’s 22, works clean, writes sharp, carries himself onstage (and off, I might add) with the presence and professionalism of a seasoned comic who’s been at it for decades. Did that sentence make me ‘read old’? Fuck it, it’s true. If it wasn’t for the eagerness and perpetual babyface, you’d think Mayce Galoni had been at it since the Reeboks and sport-coat days of old. But no. He’s a card carrying Millennial born and bred of Generation Pokemon.

Is he human? Is he an anomaly? Or is he just that perfect storm of raw talent, tenacity and good naturedness that carries the rare few in Canadian comedy onto greener pastures and eventually away to the “golden coast”. Obviously I think so. Most in this country would agree, and American comics seem to support that notion too.

Standup heavyweight Doug Stanhope had Mayce open for him. So did the infamous and iconic Gilbert Gottfried, at Toronto’s legendary Massey Hall.

Yeah, this kid’s got a few things going on.

Galoni is one of many comics at the forefront of a current generation that’s taking hold of Canada’s standup landscape and ushering in a new era of untapped talent, and drawing on some (sorely needed) fresh blood. At a time when independent producers, comedians and content creators are taking Canadian comedy by storm and kicking down doors that only a select few had the keys to for decades. We’re offering up fresh new voices for an audience that seems to be coming out to see standup again. It’s almost as if comedy in Canada is… wait for it… cool again? And for younger talent like Galoni, the industry is definitely taking notice.

If I had blown away most of the competition before my mid-20s, I’d probably be a real dick about it. I’d go full on, balls to the wall Bieber. But those of us who know Galoni know that just isn’t his style. I don’t think he’s capable of being unappreciative. He’s modest to a fault. Virginal, in the ego department. (Maybe in general, I’ve never asked. He does radiate innocence)

I think he’s really just a genuine fan of comedy first and foremost, and when he isn’t on stage he’s quietly working on his material and honing his jokes, or he’s in the back of the room at Yuk Yuks or some bar show out on the road – watching, and taking it all in. He’s a purist. And a quick study. And maybe that’s the most potent weapon in his arsenal. Aside from the fact that he’s apparently a born joke writer – he doesn’t sweat the small stuff, or get bogged down in the muck and the mire of the politics, infighting or jealousy that so many comics are drawn into. Why waste time? Why worry about what anyone else is doing? Write your material, work it out on stage and always focus on the next big gig or the next big get.  

We all have a bad habit of laughing at the Millennials. But right now, in comedy, it’s a handful of 20-somethings like Mayce who have the most to laugh about. Personally, I’m only writing this article so Mayce let’s me open for him before I turn 35.