Tag: humber comedy

The Toronto comedy scene can be quite competitive.  On any given night, you can be competing with several other comedy shows.  I’m only in year-two on the scene and I regularly get bombarded with Facebook invites to attend  multiple shows that conflict with each other time-wise.

Comedy can also be very selfish.  Your buddies could be putting on the show-of-a-lifetime, but if you’ve got even the remotest chance of getting some stage-time somewhere, you’re going to bid them good luck and be on your merry way.

This can be a bit discouraging for those just starting out – it’s hard to break into a scene that’s already saturated with show after show after show of more of the same.  But it warms me to know that one troupe in town will always make time for the newbies.

Humber alumni sketch troupe Vest of Friends canceled two of their regularly-scheduled weekly open-mic nights this month alone to discourage competition and encourage student and alumni attendance to both the second years’ Ten-Minute Play Festival and the first years’ ongoing Archival Show.

The Vests host an open-mic every Wednesday night at Celtes Pub in the Junction and it is, in my experience, predominantly attended by current and former Humber students.   It’s a great room to try out material amidst a group of people who truly support each other.

The room continues to thrive even after the Vests have left the hallways of Humber behind them and move on to greener pastures.  (Keeping my fingers crossed that they get a spot at Just for Laughs this summer.)

When I was in first year last year, I couldn’t help but be grateful every time the second year students attended our performances, knowing they didn’t really have to be there.  They’d been there in their first year, knew the score and had taken it upon themselves to support the newbies.  But that the Vests (and the few grads who attended the Archival Show tonight–notably Steph) attended a performance for people they rarely see and hardly know,  is really awesome — I think anyway.  I mean, at least they saw us in the hallway from time to time last year!

I’m going to do something that all of you in first year, and those of you in second year should do — out of respect for their support, because they canceled Sirens to see you and us, and because they’re just a damn funny sketch troupe — I’m going to go watch the Vest of Friends shows as often as I can.

Vest kind!

Don’t forget!   The first year Archival Show performances continue tomorrow and Friday night, 7pm @Alumnae Theatre on Berkeley.

Also, the Vest of Friends are performing at Comedy Bar  on Friday Feb 17th – so… yeah.   Remember what I said about “conflicting shows”   Uh, oops.

This post is several weeks in the making – this past January 30th, a Canadian comic icon, Don Ferguson, of the epically successful Royal  Canadian Air Farce came to speak to the students of the Humber School of Comedy.

Here’s what I got out of it:

When I got the music, I got a place to go!

The Air Farce got their start back in old days of r-a-dio…. radio.  Is that how you pronounce that?  Radio?  Ferguson and the late Roger Abbott met in Montreal, where they began performing sketch comedy together in front of live audiences.  They would perform in theatres before they got picked up to do radio, which was advantageous to them because they learned by the reception of the audience what went well, what didn’t go so well and ultimately what worked.

It was then that they understood how much the audience wanted topical, current material. *For those of you who don’t remember, Ferguson took the role of many a politician on Air Farce, including this one:*

(Oddly enough, a similar reaction to that which I had when leaving Ottawa.)

Here’s what you could do with a live audience and with radio vs. on TV with a laugh track:

  • You can hear the audience laughing;
  • You can be plugged in to what they think is funny & relevant;
  • You can go more places (it’s almost like animation the amount of places you can go! But CHEAPER!)
  • Radio gets into people’s head & taps into their imagination;
  • Did I mention how much cheaper it is than TV?  Because it’s cheaper.

Ferguson mentioned how comedy, and particularly Air Farce’s TV sketches, demands precision.  Something can be funny if written a certain way, but then if you re-word it, the message won’t come across quite as clearly.  THIS is something extremely relevant to all aspects of writing for comedy, and probably especially to stand-up.  I’m currently in the process of conducting some massive edits to my stand-up bits.  It’s true, sometimes it hurts to kill your babies, or at least to dismember them, but it ends up with more laughs, then bye bye toesies!

Don Ferguson’s method for making it as a comedian in Canada:

  1. Get a show

  2. Be a hit

  3. Remain a hit

It’s as easy as that!   The pressure, he said, isn’t off as soon as you get a show.

Get a Show

“You can’t let up for a MOMENT.  It’s like being a pro-athlete.”

Crossing the Border = Security

If any of us Humber kids are in the mindset that comedy will provide us with any kind of job security, Ferguson reminded us that his longest contract was one of five years.  That’s it.  Everything else was shorter than that, normally one or two-year contracts with Air Farce.  That might make some people nervous, but Ferguson believes security can breed complacency in a business like this one.  The anxiety, fear and nervousness is what a comedian needs to stay sharp.

How’s that for noble, eh?

Ferguson and Abbott were asked to work on the American sit-com TAXI, but they declined as they’d realized “what Air Farce was doing on Radio was more important to [Canadian] listeners than ANY sitcom would mean to US viewers.”

Writing for Andy Kaufman would have been pretty... fun?

___

At this point, we skipped into a Q&A with Ferguson in which he gave us tips, tricks, encouragement and advice.  Because I pay so much for tuition, I’m going to keep this segment of our Prime Time with Don Ferguson private.  If you want more details, be sure to check this book out; a work that will serve to remind us how relevant; how important Air Farce really was for Canadians ever since their days back in R-A-D-I-O.

... no big deal. (!!!)

(Next on the schedule… Brie needs to dye her hair again!)

So, I’m an idiot sometimes.  Like the times when I shove my foot so far down my throat you can smell nail polish out of my butt.

I’m damn clumsy sometimes.  Like times at open mics when I trip over the mic wire and cause a tragic delay and enables me to say things that force my foot so far down my throat… get it?  It’s a vicious cycle.

All unfortunates aside, last night I performed at a Friday night stand-up show run by some awesome first year Humber students.

O'Gracious Host: Ben Beauchemin

The atmosphere at room-launches is always great, in my experience.  (This is my second room-launch performance.)  Everyone’s so excited at the potential of getting something regular happening and performing with people they know/like/respect/find hilarious.

The show felt like just that, and on a Friday to boot!  It’s amazing to get the opportunity to perform on a Friday because most of the time, it’s hard to find a spot willing to accommodate amateur comedy on a Friday, the busiest drinking night of the week!  And amateur comedians and their friends are usually broke.  The economics just don’t fly.

Doing inappropriate things to poorly drawn paintings of the Three Stooges however, soars… apparently.

Congrats to Cassiee, Troy, Ben & all the comics who made O’Grady’s kick off a great success!  Hope you let me back on next time!

"I sent my brother to Bear Night."

One day, when you’re rich and famous, all I’ll have to say is: “Yeah, I was in Ashley Moffatt’s play in comedy school” or “Yes, I was in an Ashley Moffatt production once. We go way back” and it will – hands down – get me some action.

… but in the meantime…

More than a few times in comedy school, people will ask me if I like comedians, typically stand-ups, about whom I know absolutely nothing.  It’s always brought up the same way: “Are you serious?  YOU haven’t heard of such and such? How can you even be in COMEDY, you IDIOT! ”

Whenever I feel ignorant about the existence or talent of some stand-up comedian I’m apparently missing out on, I have to keep reminding myself that for the six years prior to my enrollment at Humber, I was learning about the political theorists influencing rebellion in the time of Louis XVI and certainly not the comedy of Louie C.K.

What guys?  You’ve never heard of Michel Foucault?   You haven’t critically analyzed his comparison of modern society to Jeremy Benthan’s “Panopticon” prison design?  Psssht!  We can’t be friends anymore.

I was a different kind of nerd, and it’s taking me some time to adapt to this new field of Comedy Nerdom.

The point I’m making is twofold:

  • First, the fact of the matter is, I’ve been out of the game a little while, and I’m only getting back in.  I was never a super-fan of stand-up comedy.  I was always into sketch, and my background is in improv.  So give me a break.  Instead of making me feel like a moron for not knowing someone like Andy Kindler, maybe recommend I go see some of his stand-up on Letterman, or on YouTube, or at the Comedy Bar and;
  • Second, I saw Andy Kindler at the Comedy Bar last weekend

I didn’t get to take any photos, so for any of you who read this blog and like me a few weeks ago, have no idea who Andy Kindler is, feel free to check THIS out.

The program coordinator of our Comedy Program is apparently a big BIG fan of Andy Kindler’s and arranged to have him perform a special show only for the students in our program.  We packed the Comedy Bar pretty well to the brim.  After his hilarious performance (pausing briefly to explain why we didn’t understand some of his references, and why he wasn’t getting the response he wanted on certain jokes – which was hysterical,) Kindler held back for a Q&A with us Humber rats.

He answered a question about how his musical background (he was a classically-trained violinist) helped train his comic rhythm and warned of the damages of censoring one’s thoughts in the writing process (you could be losing a few good gems.)  Also, he mentioned not to worry too much about where your career is and to focus rather on improving on your own terms (OK, Mom & Dad? – //jokes// they’re actually really supportive.)

Kindler mentioned a lot of other good stuff too, but to tell you all about it would be like betraying a sacred comedy oath.  And by that I mean, I’m too tired to activate my brain to remember everything he talked about a WHOLE week ago…Yeesh.

If you were hoping this post would be a review of the Kindler show, I do apologize.  But you can go HERE for that.

Although I’ll try my best to give you my own review:

  • My throat hurt from laughing so much.  THE END.

Good enough?

Now go find out about Foucault.

ASHLEY:  Then how did WE survive?

BRIE:  Wheatgrass.

ASHLEY:  What?

BRIE: We were in the freezer with the wheatgrass.  Haven’t you worked here for like forever?  You should know that not only does wheatgrass prevent cancer and detoxify your body, it’s also resistent to thermo-nuclear blasts when cooled and kept in a confined space such as our refrigerator.

ASHLEY:  How do you even know any of those words?

BRIE:  D’uh.  It’s in the Booster Juice employee training manual.

 

Ladies and gentlemen, the founder of modern planking: Mr. Tom Green:

Every couple weeks at Humber, we have guests, people who have achieved a recognizable amount of success in the comedy industry, come speak to us about their experiences in the business.

See:

Dave Foley & Kevin McDonald

Mark Breslin’s Coming to Town

Last week was no exception.  What a treat to find out Tom Green would be taking a break from his stand-up tour to come talk to us Humber comedy geeks! #fun, right?

Breslin, Green & Clark Ltd.

Now let’s be honest, I’m not the #1 hugest Tom Green fan of all time.  BUT, as a friend (and former girlfriend) to some pretty huge TG fans, it’s fair to say I’ve been following his career for a long time now, I guess since he had his show on MTV. I feel like one of the few people in the Humber crowd that remembered his marriage to Drew Barrymore and his battle with testicular cancer (two issues that were, to my surprise, NOT brought up in the Q&A!) In fact, I’d even met him before, in his hometown of Ottawa.  He was doing a book-signing for Hollywood Causes Cancer at the Chapters on Rideau.  I told him he had a nice suit.  It was pinstriped.  I should probably read that book.

ANYWAY.  Let’s rewind.  Tom Green, Mark Breslin pointed out, is one of the founders of shock humour, reality television (of the non-sociological-research-based-variety) & comedy-rap. He was so influential in Canada that Macleans once had to decide between featuring Tom Green or Jesus as a cover-story!  (They went with Jesus, btw.)

He’s like the precursor to Ali G-type stuff in that he started subverting what TV is and going places TV hadn’t gone before.  (Humping a dead-moose, WHAT?)  Tom Green tapped into the American zeitgeist and started doing stuff that set the precedent for stuff like Jackass and a bunch of other crazy MTV stuff.  And for what?  Because he’d consciously taken note of the funny that comes from unsuspecting people’s reactions to bizarre situations.

Right?  We love that shit!  That’s one of the reasons shows like The Office are as funny as they are!

Sidenote: The main reason I’m writing this is so I can use words like subvert and zeitgeist.

Tom Green encountered some pretty significant difficulties seeing eye-to-eye with the higher ups in Hollywood, who didn’t really understand his vision.  One of his bits of advice to us was to know where to draw the line between keeping your vision intact and handling the bureaucracy of the industry. (Presuming we ever get that opportunity.  Fingers crossed)

Another was to separate yourself from the rest with your hard work.

Green admitted he never wanted to be a big-shot movie star, that he was given creative control of Freddy Got Fingered and that that’s why the movie is how it is.   His ambition was to be a Letterman-style talk-show host, and now he interviews celebrities on his Internet TV channel at tomgreen.com.

He’s also returned to his roots, touring the world performing stand-up comedy.  (Tom started doing stand-up at 15, performing at Yuk Yuk’s in Ottawa!)  I probably should have gone to check out one of his sets, but I was performing one of my own last weekend and I wanted to make sure I was prepared for that.

(It went really well, btw.)

Another great experience with an influential comic, thanks to Humber College.  (If this is the kind of stuff my tuition pays for, it’s totally worth it!)

Stay tuned, as one of my future posts will tell you the tale of the exclusive performance of Andy Kindler for us Humber kids at Comedy Bar!

I totally got him to say "My pie."

I’m excited about all this stuff happening for LaughDraft and I’m simultaneously frustrated.

There’s lots to be excited about.  For one, there’s the upcoming Halloween show at Comedy Bar:

 

This is exciting because:

  • Its’ the first time we perform at Comedy Bar;
  • It’s the first time Humber contributes to our troupe (Free Food, anybody?);
  • We’re performing ALL NEW sketches;
  • It’s Halloween!
  • One of my sketches got in;
  • We might make some money if enough people come, which will help us with future projects, etc.

We were also selected as the one troupe from Humber to be submitted into the Toronto Sketch Comedy Festival (which my class friends and colleagues are quick to point out is only due to the fact that we are currently the only performing-sketch troupe in the program so far this year.  To which I say: Default performance in SketchFest is better than no performance at all.)

Why this is exiting:

  • Two of the Kids in the Hall are performing in this festival. OMG!;
  • Other AMAZING sketch troupes are performing in this festival;
  • Our program coordinator at Humber, Andrew Clark, likes us enough to recommend us to the organizers;
  • We get to showcase 15 minutes of our best material to date (none of which was written by me… sigh.);
  • We get unlimited access to see all the shows in the festival;
  • Vest of Friends got to do it last year, and this year they might make it to Just For Laughs… just saying…;
  • Etc.

For everything there is to be excited about, it’s difficult because there are always some people ready to downplay the achievement, however meager it may be in our just-beginning careers and for what purpose?  I simply do not understand.  Are they still in that “it’s cool to be apathetic” stage?  Do they simply not want to be a part of this but feel obligated to stay on?  But again, for what reason?  I just don’t get it.

I wonder if it’s to do with the fact that I’m older.  Or  that apathy has naver been in my nature. I crave DOING.  I crave things to give a shit about!  Maybe it’s relative to what you put in.  I put a lot into LaughDraft, creatively and professionally.  I do a lot of the organizational aspects of it, I try to keep our meetings on track.  I often meet with Andrew to discuss Humber’s involvement and have done since the very beginning.  Because of that, I expect the same enthusiasm from all the others.  Here’s the problem.  It’s not them. It’s me.  Maybe I just have unrealistically high expectations. When something excites me, I expect it to excite the others in the group.  And it does some.  And others not.

And who cares, at the end of the day?  It’s no big deal.  But I do.  That’s the problem.

Some things just can’t be the same the second time around, but, you make of them what you can.  This was my second year volunteering at the Canadian Comedy Awards.  This was its 12th year and was originally supposed to be held in Ottawa. I have no idea why they decided to bring it back to Toronto, but hey, who’s complaining?

I volunteered by checking in award nominees when they arrived to the Delta Chelsea hotel in Toronto.  I got to meet a lot of fun performers just sitting at a table, handing out sweet swag bags.

By chance, a man I had met last year, who organizes the Stand-Up gala portion of the Awards weekend recognized me and asked me to help out at the gala.  I turned him down, obviously.  What?  No.  Of course not, I went and met Shaun Majumder, who was hosting (and was a super nice guy!) and some of the other featured performers for the evening.

By virtue of my selfless acts of volunteering, I was allowed to attend two nights of after-parties, which were both very fun.

Was it because the Kids in the Hall were there last year?  Some of my heroes?  That I actually got to see the Awards show?  That it was my first time surrounded by such talent because I hadn’t been up that often performing yet?  Was it the booze?  I don’t know, last year’s party just seemed a bit crazier, a bit more exciting.

But it was still a great time and I’m excited to even have been allowed into an “industry-only” event.  I’d encourage any of the Humber students to volunteer, except, then I might not have got my spot and would have had to fight more people off to get into the after-party.  So.  Yeah, stay at home and watch TV, kids!

I need to go to bed now.