| When
is a comedian not just a comedian? When he's also
an actor. But seriously, folks, despite his rocket-like
success as a stand-up comic, Peter Kelamis has always
been something of a dramatist. That is, his humour
is based less on jokes than on detailed storytelling,
in which this talented impressionist plays the ensemble
cast. The young Peter Kelamis sorted out life's
cast of characters by imitating them. When Peter
Kelamis ran out of relatives and teachers to imitate,
he resorted to slapstick or whatever was handy,
and he drew on material gleaned from TV. "The
breakthrough for me was watching Rich Little do
impressions on his variety show. I don't know why,
but that just fascinated me. So pretty soon I was
doing his stuff and cracking people up even though
I had no idea who Richard Nixon was!" He made
ends meet as a banquet waiter, kept at the stand-up,
and excelled at improvisation in the Vancouver Theatresports
company. All this led to his first appearance at
Punchlines Comedy Club. Peter Kelamis had his first
headlining spot within a year (extremely fast for
stand-up standards) and eventually he opened for
such comics as Howie Mandel and Dennis Miller. Peter's
highlight of his career to-date was improvising
on stage one-on-one with Robin Williams. "Robin
came up to me after the show and said, 'You're really,
really funny.' I mean, I didn't go to him, he came
to me!" Peter Kelamis began landing straight
roles in films and on TV. He was a hit at the Montreal
Comedy Festival and toured across Canada. Along
with his own Comics special on CBC, and a raft of
on-going voice-over jobs, he has appeared in more
than thirty films, series, specials, and movies-of-the-week,
most of them in the past few years. |
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