Page 31 - 07_October 2024

Gilroy, grew up
in south-side
Edmonton, and
like all true children of the ’90s, still refers to where her family members live by how far they are from the nearest mall. As a kid, her dad introduced her and her sister to the comedic stylings of Monty Python and the Austin Powers movies, and later on Gilroy became even more inspired by the women on Amy Poehler–era Saturday Night Live and The Sarah Silverman Program.
“I’m really drawn to comedy that’s mischievous and playful,” Gilroy says. “I like to watch people have fun when they per- form — like when Sarah Silverman pulls out a guitar and sings about pooping in a mall.”
By her own admission, Gilroy wasn’t much for children’s activities. Her defining memory of her time in Girl Guides was the time she ran around the gym, knocking everyone else’s hula hoops down (“Just a bone-chilling level of annoying,” she says now). But if her attention wandered when- ever there were too many rules to memorize, Gilroy quickly locked in on the idea of performing for others, especially in settings where she could follow her intuition.
During story time at Keheewin Elementary School, she would bring
in magazines from home and make up elaborate stories about the women in the yogurt ads. Later, onstage at Strathcona High School, Gilroy remembers being
so caught up in her first formal improv scene — three witches cackling overtop of a cauldron, a classic — that she had to actively hide how excited it made her feel.
“I walked offstage and thought, Uh-oh, need to do that again,” she says.
Still chasing that high after graduation, Gilroy started performing at shows with Grindstone Theatre Society. But she still couldn’t see a viable path to becoming
a professional goofball in Edmonton. Instead, Gilroy enrolled in the Faculty of Education at the University of Alberta, only agreeing to turn it into a combined degree with theatre at the urging of an insistent professor, Alex Hawkins.
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