Local laughs abound at 16th annual Winnipeg Comedy Festival
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Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 27/02/2017 (2585 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.
The Winnipeg Comedy Festival is bringing the locavore movement to the standup stage.
The 16th annual event runs April 3 to 9, and its theme is “Buy Local.” The festival has scheduled a list of Manitoban and Canadian performers, including MADtv’s Will Sasso, Gavin Crawford of This Hour Has 22 Minutes, three-time Canadian Comedy Award winner Nikki Payne and Gemini Award nominee Howie Miller.
“We wanted to focus on the idea that events like the Winnipeg Comedy Festival… when talent comes to town, money is left in the town,” says Lara Rae, the festival’s artistic director. “We wanted to celebrate that.”
The “Buy Local” theme is probably most noticeable in The Winnipeg Show (April 6, West End Cultural Centre), which boasts eight local comedians on the bill along with host Bruce Clark, a longtime festival favourite.
The world has been entranced by Donald Trump’s presidency in the United States, comedians included, and Rae hopes the festival’s humour will go beyond political observations of what’s going on south of the 49th parallel.
“It’s such a horrible time in the world right now. (Their news) trickles up here,” Rae says. “If you watch Last Week Tonight, followed by Seth Meyers, followed by Samantha Bee followed by the Daily Show it doesn’t make you feel that much better.”
The festival galas, which will all take place at the Pantages Playhouse Theatre, are recorded for television at a later date, and comedians know to avoid topical subjects that may change by the time the show hits the airwaves.
“If you want a break from Trump, come to the galas,” Rae says.
Payne hosts the Thursday night gala Lady Like (April 6); Crawford fronts Virgin Territory (April 7) and Sasso hosts one dubbed I Heart Love (April 8).
Rae says Canadian-focused humour will take centre stage throughout the festival with performers such as Miller, a Cree from Edmonton who stars in the APTN comedy Delmer & Marta, providing an aboriginal perspective to the week’s humour.
“He’s just an affable Canadian indigenous performer, probably also one of the best impressionists in the country,” she says.
The Muslim perspective will be explored by Montreal comic Ali Hassan’s Muslim Interrupted show (April 5, WECC), which had a one-month stand at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival in 2016, and by British comedian Shazia Mirza, whose family originally comes from Pakistan and who is scheduled for an April 7 gala, Good Neighbours.
Mirza joins other foreign-based festival funny folk such as Americans Jackie Kashian and Mark Heath.
While the festival is a major fundraiser for the Gas Station Arts Centre in Osborne Village, that venue is booked solid in early April, forcing the festival to turn the West End Cultural Centre as a hub for humour. The venue, at the corner of Sherbrook Street and Ellice Avenue, hosts four nights of comedy doubleheaders April 5 to 8.
Those include Now or Never, the CBC Radio show with Ify Chiwetelu and Trevor Dineen (April 5), and Feminist Gong Show (April 8), hosted by Vancouver’s Erica Sigurdson.
“We have a panel of three women comics,; they have a gong behind them,” Rae describes. “A bunch of male comics do their material and if it crosses the sexist line, it gets gonged.”
The Club Regent Event Centre also gets in on the comedy action with Coast to Coast Comedy: 150 Years of Funny (April 7) as well as for two tapings of The Debaters, the popular CBC Radio show hosted by Steve Patterson (April 8 and 9).
“That show was born here, 10 years ago, and I don’t know if people remember that,” Rae says. “Now it’s a flagship brand.”
Rumor’s Comedy Club also hosts a different headliner each evening.
In addition to the Winnipeg events, the festival also travels outside the Perimeter this year, with Best of the WCF on Tour hitting the towns of Clearwater, Morris and Teulon.
“You’re reaching out and hopefully bringing people into the city, but it also brings comedy to the region,” Rae says. “I think it’s part of the mandate as part of the festival… that there’s some obligation to bring it to some of the people who can’t come in.”
alan.small@freepress.mb.ca
Twitter:@AlanDSmall
Alan Small
Reporter
Alan Small has been a journalist at the Free Press for more than 22 years in a variety of roles, the latest being a reporter in the Arts and Life section.
History
Updated on Wednesday, March 1, 2017 11:07 AM CST: Photos fixed