Where Calgary's Comedy Celebrities Strut Their NEW Stuff
The cream of Calgary's comedy crop perform their newest material. This isn't the stuff you've seen in their club shows or on their TV appearances. It's the brand new material that they are sharing with the world for the first time, and you can be there to witness it.
On Wednesday night over $1,300 was raised for Calgary Alternative Support Services’ (CASS) Client Christmas Hamper Program by the Red Carpet Comedians. Performing new material for a truly packed house (the largest RCC audience yet) were Lori Gibbs, Simon King, Jeff Toth, Ryan Kukec, Jeff Kubik, Kyle Francis, Alan Cho,Cory Mack, Donovan Deschner, Karen O’Keefe and Trent McClellan. These performers should be very proud as Wednesday night’s show easily had one of the highest “laugh rates” with only a handful of the new jokes failing.
A special thanks our photographer, Steve Nagy, and our sound support, Ian Wallace. Also a big thank you to everyone from CASS that helped to make the event such a success. If you happened to miss the show, it was kicked off with this latest Kaboom… Hooray! Comedy! sketch:
This time of year is always very busy for comedians (and performers of all kinds) so we’re going to take the month of December off from Red Carpet Comedy and be back with another all new show of great laughs in 2012. Mark January 25 in your calendars, have a wonderful holiday season and a very happy New Year!
The Red Carpet Comedians are getting into the holiday spirit by converting our November 30 show into a special fund raiser for Calgary Alternative Support Services‘ (CASS) Client Christmas Hamper Program. CASS is a non-profit agency that offers a wide range of community support services to people with various disabilities. One such service is the creation of Christmas hampers (care packages) for their clients. Every penny of the ticket price ($20) from this show will go directly to that program.
While the purpose of this show is a little different than usual, the format of the show remains the same. We’ve lined up some of Calgary’s comedy celebrities to tell only their new, never before heard, jokes and stories. As with every Red Carpet Comedy, you’ll see the highs and lows that come when comedians take huge risks with nothing to fall back on.
The Facebook event page is available by clicking here and if you’d like to arrange for tickets to the event you can call CASS at 403-283-0611.
Our third season continued last Wednesday night with another great show courtesy of Cory Mack, Ryan Kukec, Noor Kidwai, Brent Constantin, Donovan Deschner, Kyle Francis, Brad Muise, Jeff Kubik and Ian Wallace. The audience was truly delighted watching what these performers have been working on – both when it was good and when it was not.
As always we would also like to thank the people that work behind the scenes on Red Carpet Comedy shows – on Wednesday that was Jaron James on sound and ZoĂ« Klintberg working the door. Thank you both for making the performers look and sound great.
To kick off this show we played another Kaboom… Hooray! Comedy! video sketch. It featured many of the performers that were a part of the show. If you missed it, you can watch it now:
You can catch the next live show of KABOOM! on this coming Wednesday night (November 2) at 8:00PM (click here for details).
The next Red Carpet Comedy will be on November 30 and will be a special presentation. In addition to seeing what Calgary’s comedy celebrities have created between now and then on you’ll also be supporting a local non-profit organization. Calgary Alternative Support Services has helped us to turn this show into a fund raiser for their Christmas Hamper Program. Tickets will be $20.00, with every penny of that going toward the program. For more information or to reserve your tickets, you can call CASS at 403-283-0611. We’ll post more details here and on our Facebook page closer to the date.
The first show of the third season of Red Carpet Comedy was a great success! It was clear that many of the Red Carpet Comedians spent their summer hiatus writing new material and our near sellout audience was incredibly appreciative of their hard work and dedication. Special thanks to all of the comedians (Donovan Deschner, Jeff Kubik, Amanda Brooke Perrin, Jeff Toth, Alan Cho, Brian Stollery, Cory Mack, Patricia Cochlan and Lori Gibbs). Also, a big thanks to our “support team” of Brent Constantin on sound and Kent McKay snapping photos (his full album from that night is online here).
For this season we’re kind of “teaming up” with Kaboom… Hooray! Comedy! and kicking off every RCC show that we can with one of their video sketches. It was David Petersonman that began everything for us on Wednesday night. If you missed the show and haven’t seen the sketch yet, do yourself a favour and watch it:
The next Red Carpet Comedy is set for October 26 and the line up is filling up quickly as comedians are snapping up the opportunity to create lots of new material and perform it for an audience that always loves to hear it. More details will be posted on this blog and on our Facebook page soon.
The Red Carpet Comedians are back after a summer hiatus for the third season premiere of Red Carpet Comedy. After a very successful (and rapidly growing) first two seasons, launching a third season was an easy decision. For the past two years audiences have been taking delight in watching as professional comedians from Calgary (and across Canada) take huge risks, forcing themselves to create countless hours of stand-up comedy material, jokes, and stories. When these risks pay off, and they often do, they pay off in big ways.
On September 28, 2011 the third season will begin with a bang. Not only will there be several comedians trying their new material, but crowd-favourite, Lori Gibbs, will be rehearsing for her upcoming taping of “Comedy Now!”.
You can get your tickets for the show online (they are $10 each), RSVP through our Facebook event or simply come to the door the evening of the 28th and we’ll find you a table. We are at the same venue (though the name has changed) and our schedule for the evening remains the same as well: doors open at 6:00PM, and the show starts right at 8:00PM.
With this fresh season also comes a bit of a facelift for our posters…
With the start of our new season, we’ve also started booking a few more shows ahead than usual. We’ve confirmed the rest of our 2011 schedule with shows on September 28, October 26, and November 30. That’s a lot of opportunity to watch your favourite performers live and die with each new joke. We hope that you’ll join us!
The final “episode” of Red Carpet Comedy’s second season took place in May with a nearly full house in attendance to see what Jeff Kubik, Ryan Kukec, Chris Griffin, James Moore, Jeff Toth, Brent Constantin, Brian Stollery, Ian Wallace and Donovan Deschner had created. Lots of new stand-up material was heard and a lot of it will likely be heard again (which is really saying something). Thanks to all of the performers for sending off the season with a bang. The traditional Red Carpet Comedy shows featuring Calgary’s comedy celebrities presenting all new material will be returning in the fall (September 28 to be exact).
Photo by Steve Nagy (http://www.wheresnagy.com)
Fortunately the Red Carpet Comedians aren’t taking the summer completely off – a couple of your favourite performers have teamed up with our venue, Club Paradiso, to present The Hiatus Triple Feature. The first one, which happened in June, was a lot of fun. The audience got to see what Amanda Brooke Perrin, Donovan Deschner and Cory Mack perform when they are not doing all-new material. There is still a chance to catch another one of these triple features, on July 28 you can see the tried and true material from Lori Gibbs, Don Wood and Chris Griffin. Tickets are $12 and available through Club Paradiso at (403) 265-5739.
Red Carpet Comedy only has one more show before our summer hiatus. It will be the eighth show in our second season (which will mean we had two more shows in this season than we did in our first). May 25 will be the last chance (for a few months) that you’ll have to see what Calgary’s comedy celebrities are working on.
After our April 27 show, the expectations are quite high for our “season finale.” Almost everyone had an outstanding set and it’s safe to say that a lot of the material presented is already in professional club and corporate sets. Thanks to the performers: Lori Gibbs, Don Wood, Derek Sweet, Cory Mack, Noor Kidwai, Donovan Deschner, Brian Stollery, and Peter White. (It was an added bonus to have Peter on the show, as he’s from the East Coast!)
Also thanks to our photographer, Steve Nagy, for snapping photos from that evening. As of this post, they aren’t online yet, but be sure keep an eye on our Facebook page, as that is where they will be published. (Steve has also been regularly posting a photo from one of his numerous trips to exotic destinations around the world on his website, and they are definitely worth checking out.)
If you don’t know how you’ll make it through the summer months without hearing from the Red Carpet Comedians, don’t worry. We’ve worked out an arrangement with our venue that will see your favourite performers working there throughout the summer in special “triple feature” shows. You won’t be hearing just their new stuff, but their tried and true material (some of which was written on the Red Carpet Comedy stage). Details are still being confirmed so all that we can say for now is: try not to make plans for June 16 or July 28.
We at Red Carpet Comedy are very pleased to see so much press being paid to the Calgary comedy scene. It’s a sign that things are on the rise and we’re happy to be a part of the community. The most recent article that mentioned us was on OpenFile.ca – a new website which is pushing for “community-based” reporting. Basically once an article is opened/published, it remains open for more feedback (comments) and can be modified as time goes on.
You can read the article, “Calgary comics cultivate community, hilarity,” online by clicking here. Feel free to post your thoughts on the scene or feelings on a particular show that you have attended. You can even add photos if you’ve taken them at a show with some performers.
One of our most devout fans was also interviewed for the article but due to a very strict 500 word limit, her thoughts didn’t make it into the final published version. So I thought it would be good to publish a bit of what she had to say here:
Red Carpet Comedy offers audiences a glimpse into the crafting of comedy that I’ve never seen available anywhere else. At other comedy clubs or events, I think people go with a passive mind set – we sit, listen to the show, then go home. But at Red Carpet Comedy there’s a whole participatory, behind the scenes, kind of dynamic that draws you in and keeps you wanting to find out what will happen next.
In my career I work with artists from many genres, and it’s fascinating to gain insight into the deliberate thought and mechanics that make up their finished work. As consumers we take things for granted a lot and don’t think about the actual building of it, until we’re presented with that opportunity. I believe that’s why Director’s cut DVDs and even “How It Was Made” types of TV shows appeal to people, because it helps us see both the creativity and the mechanics that creates something out of nothing. And the guts! The sheer human courage that it takes to step forward and say “I’m going to take this vague idea in my head, put it out there, and give it a shot and see what happens”, knowing that it could horribly fail in front of everyone. That’s impressive and inspiring, and even more so when it’s just one person, alone in a spotlight, completely vulnerable and unsure of how everyone will respond, and yet they put one foot in front of the other and do it anyway.
It’s hard to experience an evening of that without walking out feeling a little braver in our own lives.
We’re so glad that audience members see the value in what we do here at Red Carpet Comedy – it’s why we keep doing it. Hopefully our continued efforts will help draw even more press and attention to Calgary’s comedy scene.
Since the last post here on the Red Carpet Comedy blog we’ve had two more great shows totalling more than 200 minutes of new stand-up comedy material. On both the January and February shows we were happy to welcome Jeff Kubik, Derek Sweet, Brian Stollery, and Donovan Deschner. Also appearing on the January show were Lori Gibbs, Alan Cho, Amanda Brooke Perrin, James Moore, Dave Merheje, and Trent McClellan. The February performance also had the talents of Brad Muise, Kyle Francis, James Jordan, Ryan Kukec, Jeff Toth, and Don Wood. It was such a treat to see what so many local performers are creating every single month.
Thanks to Heather Schellenbergand Steve Nagyfor photographing the January and February show respectively. They always do such a great job. (An added thanks to Heather for capturing this video of Lori Gibbs in January for a special Comediapedia.ca project.) For the complete photo albums from each night, check out our Facebook page.
As of these past two shows it’s a safe bet that RCC is the show that the most performers have bailed on. It’s extremely intimidating trying untested material in such stretches. Thankfully, many of the local comedians are realizing that it’s not necessarily about doing really well – it’s about showing up. This sentiment was expressed beautifully in a TED talk brought to our attention in January. It’s by Elizabeth Gilbert (the author of Eat, Pray, Love) and summarizes nicely one of the reasons that RCC exists.
The next Red Carpet Comedy show is scheduled for March 30, 2011. You can get your tickets in advance through our online ticketing site here.
The Red Carpet Comedy show on December 1 was not only one of the most unique but also one of the best shows that we’ve ever had! What is made it so special was the launch of Donovan Deschner’s CD, “I’ll Regret This.” All of the performers were hand-picked by Donovan to help celebrate this career milestone, and each of them blew the roof off of the place.
It was a huge variety in terms of “material” presented. There was old material, new material, and what can only be called “tributes” to Donovan. Thanks to Cris Nannarone, Jeff Kubik, Cory Mack, Amanda Perrin, Jeff Toth, Lori Gibbs, and Karen O’Keefe. The show could not have been funnier with anyone else!
Evan Wilson and Jesse Pruden from CJSW’s Am I Right?? were also on hand to host the evening and record it for inclusion on their weekly radio program about all things comedy. Last week a slightly edited version of the show appeared on their program and this week the podcast with an expanded version will be coming out. Thank you Evan and Jesse for giving the whole event a great deal of credibility, pomp, and circumstance.
There was one more “performer” on the show as well; Russell Bowers from CBC’s Daybreak Alberta (and producer of “I’ll Regret This”) was on hand to interview Donovan about the project. Without a doubt, this segment was one of the highlights of the evening.
As always, thank yous go to the photographers and “technical assistance” that was on site that night. Heather Schellenberg and Steve Nagywere snapping photos while Larry Baird was running sound and Zoë Klintberg (with some assistance from Karen Garth) was busy taking tickets.
Coinciding with the launch of the physical album, the option to download (on a “pay what you can” basis) the comedy tracks also went online at Donovan’s website: http://www.DonovanDeschner.com. If you had to miss the evening, you can still hear the bulk of the CD by downloading it right to your computer.
This was a great way to send off 2010 into 2011. The January show is already starting to fill up with performers and they will have a tough act to follow, but we are sure that they are up to the challenge. Put January 26 in your calendars (buy your tickets online if you like), and we’ll you see at the first Red Carpet Comedy show of 2011!
