ON STAGE
What: Pro Stand Up Comedy with James Kennedy, Bryan O’Gorman, and Dan Quinn
Where: Hermann’s Upstairs, 751 View St.
When: Friday, Nov. 5, 9 p.m. (doors at 7)
Tickets: $33.08 from
Saturday night is comedy night.
Billy Crystal even made a movie about the specific day of the week, which is when stand-up comedians stand to have their best chance of success with audiences. Friday night is also a good spot for a comics to land, but finding available rooms and comics to play them is somewhat of a complicated process — even in a city such as Victoria, which punches well above its weight in terms of its comedy offerings and audience appetite.
Pro Stand Up Comedy, a new six-week series featuring local, nationa and international comedians, aims to alleviate some of that pressure leading into the weekend. “We are always talking about what to do with Friday nights in Victoria, because there are no comedy shows on Fridays,” said comedian and series co-producer Dan Duvall.
“It has been an idea and on the table for a long time. This came together naturally.”
Pro Stand Up Comedy, which gets underway tonight and runs through Dec. 10, was conceived by comedian Bryan O’Gorman, who is producing the project at Hermann’s Upstairs on View Street. He’s running the Friday night showcase in partnership with Duvall and Comedy Here Often?, a Vancouver record label and production company that operates some of the biggest podcasts in the country.
Aaron McGeough, who co-owns Heckler’s Bar & Grill, the city’s longest-running comedy hub, was also instrumental, proof that comedy in Victoria is less cutthroat and competitive than other markets.
“A lot of comedians are very competitive, but we’ve all been very cool with each other,” said O’Gorman, who is originally from Toronto. “We’re working together.”
The series is being held in the former Yuk Yuk’s location on View Street, located directly above Hermann’s Jazz Club. The franchisees closed the venue in 2016, just five months after Yuk Yuk’s opened and long before it could make much of an impact. Victoria has grown exponentially, in terms of comedy, in the years since, so it felt like a good time to revisit the location, O’Gorman said.
“We’re able to make this viable because Victoria actually has artists and people who support them. Here it is about the craft of your art. You can practise that in peace, which you can’t do in other cities like Vancouver. We’ve been able to help the community grow.”
O’Gorman said Victoria has the opposite problem of most cities: a lot of audience and not enough performers. “I tour a lot, and know guys from all over the world who I know love it out here. High level performers know about this place. So we’re trying to facilitate that.”
That will have a trickle-down effect that largely benefits up-and-coming comics in the local community, Duvall said. “The more professional comedy we can have in Victoria, the more it brings up amateur comics. It gives them chances to do guest spots and lets them see how it’s done by example, simply by being around it all the time. It creates more of a buzz, and inspires them to be better and work harder.”
