By David DeRocco

Comedian Jeff Leeson wants to make you laugh. To do that, he’s going to make you part of his show.

Thursday, October 19^th, Showtime Comedy and Entertainment in downtown St. Catharines hosts the “Off The Cuff Comedy Tour,” a night of interactive comedy headlined by Leeson, a comedy veteran who specializes in improvisational comedy. That means he’s looking to pack Showtime with a group of comedy fans who aren’t shy about interacting with a comic – not as hecklers, but as fresh fodder for the comic’s routine. With the right people in the audience, Leeson says his off-the-cuff delivery can make for an incredibly fun night for both him and the people in the audience.

“It’s so much fun for me because I get to create something new and different every night and get to feed off the energy of the crowds,” said Leeson, who started doing comedy at age 14. “A lot of times they’ll throw something different at you that takes the show in a direction you didn’t really expect and that’s okay. It’s really something magical that happens every night because even I don’t know what’s going to happen.”

The show is being taped for a program pitch Leeson hopes to make to both Amazon Prime and Canadian television networks, which means people who interact with him could become internet sensations if all goes well Thursday night. Ultimately, what Leeson is gunning for is simply to engage an audience looking to be entertained.

“People who come out really feel like they’re part of the show. They’re not just coming to watch it, they’re actually in it. They are the show in a lot of ways. I’m not up there talking about my life. I’m just trying to relate to them and engage them. Then they feel like it was their show. People who walk out at the end feel like it was really a personalized show. It’s not like you can come back to the same venue two or three nights in a row and see the same show. It’s always different.”

Given the uncertainty of walking on stage hoping to perform comedy that relies on people in the audience, Leeson takes a risk each night of being hung out to dry by a crowd of unfunny, unresponsive people. It begs the question, why choose improv comedy as a career style?

“To be honest, I think it chose me,” said Leeson. “I started doing comedy really young, I think I was 14 in high school, so my first few years of doing comedy was just set-up joke punchline. What I noticed was that every time I would veer off and do something with the crowd or do something improvised, it would always get a bigger reaction than anything I wrote. In 2010 I did my first hour of just pure improv. It was so scary but exhilarating. It was probably the most fun I’d had on stage in years. That’s probably when I made the change to trust my  judgement and abilities.”

Leeson headlines a night that includes performances by Tige Wright, a pair of comics from Hamilton and local favourite David Green. The event is a fundraiser for the Children’s Wish Foundation. Doors at 7, show at 8pm.