If you have not yet seen Good Game perform around the city, you have a chance at the Toronto Sketch Festival. You can catch them on November 8th at 8PM at Lower Ossington Theatre. These guys are Sketchfest veterans, and you can expect them to inject a little music into their comedy stylings. They kindly answered our questions and they definitely like hanging out in our neighborhood.
How did you get involved with the Toronto Sketch Comedy Festival?
Toronto Sketch Fest is the one place where we can expose our material to a new audience, and bring people out to our shows that go on the rest of the year. It’s always a great opportunity for us to meet other comedians, and expand our audience. This is our second year being featured in the festival, and we couldn’t be any more excited! We all got haircuts!
What other troupe’s show at this year’s Festival do you most want to see?
We would love to get the chance to see Two Kids One Hall. We are all huge fans of Kids in the Hall, but then again, it’s hard to find a sketch comedy troupe that isn’t. We’re also hoping on seeing some of the new and upcoming troupes that are featured on the roster this year.
Why should we come to see your show?
We’re all really excited for the material we put together for this year’s sketch fest revue. We always aim to mix as many different types of humour into our shows as we can, and this set has a good mix of physical comedy, musical comedy, straight-dialogue humour, and theatrical sketch. As always, it wouldn’t be a Good Game show without a little touch of absurdity, but there’s really something for everyone in this show. This year we’re putting an emphasis on variety, and feel like this might be our best sketch fest set yet (that kinda rhymes).
What is your favourite place on Ossington? If you haven’t been to Ossington, where do you most want to go?
Too many to choose just one… Pizzeria Libretto and Dakota Tavern are some favourites… you can often see us at The Lakeview having a few drinks or some coffee before checking out a show or event at Sketch Fest. Ossington Village is one of our favourite places to hang out during Sketch Fest events, since it’s walking distance from both the Lower Ossington Theatre and Comedy Bar.
How did you get involved with the Toronto Sketch Comedy Festival?
Andrya, a member of our troupe, was out somewhere doing something entertaining in front of an audience or some such thing, and someone from the Toronto Sketch Comedy Festival gave her his card. “It’s hard to find Queer sketch comedy troupes,” he wept. So we invited Sketch Fest to our pre-Pride show at Bread ‘n Circus in June, after which, we filled out all necessary paperwork.
What other troupe’s show at this year’s Festival do you most want to see?
Scott from Xtra called it ‘cheerfully deranged.’ It’s bratty but good-natured. Sarcastic and stinging but you’d still want to be its friend. It’s not the bully of sketch troupes. Oh yah, and we’re the only Queer sketch troupe in Canada.
What is your favourite place on Ossington? If you haven’t been to Ossington, where do you most want to go?
Want to eat at Pizza Libretto and Campagnolo. Or, just want to walk up and down Ossington and be mistaken for cool people.
Susan from the Queer Comedy Collective sent me over lots of videos, so check one out here:
Not all of the performers at this year’s Toronto Sketch Comedy Festival are in groups. Our latest profile is of Kevin Matviw, a one-man act who goes by the name The Really Good Show. You can catch his performance at Comedy Bar on November 8 at 7PM.
Kevin’s responses to our questions follow:
How did you get involved with the Toronto Sketch Comedy Festival?
I’m currently working on a full hour solo sketch comedy show and I wanted to raise awareness for this project by performing with the festival. I’ve been in the festival in previous years writing and performing with The Sketchersons and as one half of the now non-existent sketch duo Death Ray Cabaret.
What other troupe’s show at this year’s Festival do you most want to see?
I’d like to see A Classy Affair, The Templeton Philharmonic and British Teeth. Conveniently enough, British Teeth and The Really Good Show are performing on the same bill!
Why should we come to see your show?
You should come and see my show because I will be performing sketch alone, which is a feat in itself. I will be doing songs, playing multiple characters and it is all material I have been honing in front of audiences for the past year so it’s gonna be funny. If you don’t come, I don’t know what I’ll do to myself and you’ll have to live with that.
What is your favourite place on Ossington? If you haven’t been to Ossington, where do you most want to go?
My favorite place is the Lower Ossington Theatre, which is a venue for the festival. It’s huge! I’ve always wanted to perform there. The bigger your troupe/act, the better chances you will be booked there when they create the sketch fest lineup. This year, I’m performing at Comedy Bar in the broom closet behind the water heater.
Vancouverites “Peter ‘n Chris” are coming to Toronto again to perform for us as part of the Toronto Sketch Comedy Festival. Based on their responses to our profile questions, they seem like two funny guys, so check them out at Lower Ossington Theatre on November 12 at 10PM and/or Comedy Bar on November 13 at 7PM.
How did you get involved with the Toronto Sketch Comedy Festival?
Peter: our Toronto comedian friends told us about it and it sounded like a fun time, and a good chance to meet other sketch comedians, so we applied.
Chris: and I was too drunk to say No
What other troupe’s show at this year’s Festival do you most want to see?
Chris: Im pretty excited to see Uncalled For, Picnicface, Two kids one Hall, Falcon Powder, and Charles
Peter: and hopefully there is enough time to catch Tower Heist, its a new Ben Stiller movie
Why should we come to see your show?
Peter: you’ll want to see our show because we are on before PicnicFace that night, and you are probably going to see them. So it would be polite if you showed up for us too
Chris: also, we won pick of the fringe in Vancouver, Now Magazine Critics Pick, and a Just for Laughs Best Comedy nomination, and we are on before Picnicface who you already want to see.
What is your favourite place on Ossington? If you haven’t been to Ossington, where do you most want to go?
Chris: I don’t really know Ossington, but last year there was this convenience store near the Lower Ossington Theatre that I bought a Red Bull at before the show, and it definitely lived up it its name. Convenient
Peter: Yeah Chris told me about that store, it sounded pretty awesome, i hope to go there too.
Ladystache is a Toronto troupe performing in this year’s Sketchfest. They’ll be performing at the Lower Ossington Theatre on opening night of the festival, November 8 at 10PM. Allison Hogg and Stephanie Tolev are Ladystache, and they have responded to our profile questions:
How did you get involved with the Toronto Sketch Comedy Festival?
We got involved with the Toronto Sketch Comedy Festival last year, we had done the Montreal Sketch Festival the year before as our first festival and wanted to do one in our home town, well where we live now.
What other troupe’s show at this year’s Festival do you most want to see?
We are excited to see Two kids one hall, Falcon Powder and Cheap Smokes, they are always fun to watch.
Why should we come to see your show?
You should come see LadyStache because we appeal to all audiences, we perform silly, non gender specific comedy that ranges from crazy characters, to ridiculous puppet sketches to the two of slapping each other as hard as we possible can. Sounds violent but it is actually very humorous even while we are doing it. We never refer to what sex were playing, even if there is a moustache involved. We have so much fun on stage and are very loose, most of our sketches have never been done the exact same way twice. If you like a high energy and silly character based sketch comedy show you will really enjoy LadyStache.
What is your favourite place on Ossington? If you haven’t been to Ossington, where do you most want to go?
Some of our favourite places to hang out on Ossington are the Dakota, Sweaty Bettys and Crooked Star, just to name a few.
To prepare for next week’s show, check out some of Ladystache’s comedy right here:
Because we’re fresh off the heels from our last revue, “All Grown Up” which sold out that George Ignatieff Theatre this summer and are remounting on Nov. 11 & 12. And we’re Toronto’s premiere Asian comedy troupe, which The Toronto Star “Highly Recommend’s”, just saying..
What is your favourite place on Ossington? If you haven’t been to Ossington, where do you most want to go?
I play trivia at The Ossington, which is a nice little bar/club just north of Queen. Nice and cozy…and almost free of irony.
Kerpatty! is a duo from Chicago: Pat Dwyer and Erin Pallesen. We posted a video below so you can get a sneak preview before their shows at Comedy Bar on November 10 at 9PM and November 11 at 7PM. They obliged us by answering our profile questions:
How did you get involved with the Toronto Sketch Comedy Festival?
We have been wanting to take Kerpatty! beyond the U.S. borders for a while, so we jumped on the chance to apply for the Toronto Sketch Comedy Festival. We feel exceptionally lucky to be able to take part in such a great Festival.
What other troupe’s show at this year’s Festival do you most want to see?
We’ve been looking forward to seeing the Haircut and Imponderables‘ shows. We haven’t seen Haircut since their last participation in the Chicago Sketchfest, and we haven’t seen the Imponderables perform since we all did the TBS Just for Laughs Festival together.
Why should come to see your show?
Besides the fact that we are one of the only groups at this year’s Festival that hail from Chicago, we’re really nice people. Our show is a fun mix of playful and irreverent. If you’re lucky, you may even walk out with a high five.
What is your favorite place in Ossington? If you haven’t been to Ossington, where do you most want to go?
We’ve never been to Ossington before, but we just Googled the crap out of it. Dakota’s is going to be a must stop. The bar stools are barrels. YOU GET TO SIT IN BARRELS!!!!
Fratwurst is made up of four homegrown Toronto talents. They perform around the city, are up for awards, and for Toronto Sketchfest, you can see them in two shows at the Comedy Bar: Nov. 11 and Nov 13, both at 7PM.
We asked Fratwurst to answer our profile questions, and they answered.
We did it last year and had one of the best sets we’ve ever had. The Toronto Sketch Fest is an event which we look forward to all year.
What other troupe’s show at this year’s Festival do you most want to see?
Peter and Chris, The Majors, Kerpatty and Jape. These four troupes, coincidentally are performing with us on the 11th and 13th at 7:00pm. We go way back with Jape and they’re fantastic geniuses. The Williamson Playboys are phenomenal and need to be seen to be believed. National Theatre of the World, 2 kids one hall, Falconpowder and the Imponderables are legends in Toronto. 3 Peters, Ladystache, Shoeless, Vest of Friends, Classy Affair, Cheap Smokes, Good Game, Shark Jump, Smells Like the 80′s, Touch my Stereotype and the Regulars. These are all troupes we have built a rapport with and would be pissed off if we didn’t mention them and go to their shows. Can’t burn bridges…
Why should we come to see your show?
We will be coming off of a streak of glory as we will have just performed at the Tim Sims Encouragement Fund show, Cream of Comedyon November 7th. Whether we win or not, it represents a level of prestige in the comedy community for up and coming performers. We’re doing that show with an amazing troupe who ironically have perfect teeth- British Teeth.
What is your favourite place on Ossington? If you haven’t been to Ossington, where do you most want to go?
The Lakeview holds a special place in our collective heart-By in our heart, we’re being literal- The collected greasy goodness from all the breakfasts. We used to perform at Opera Bob’s when a friend of ours ran a show there years ago, but we still swing by now and then. The Lower Ossington Theatre is rising as one of the best places to see a show. Rocky Horror, baby. Also the Caledonian because it has innis and gunn on tap- amazing.
We are continuing our series of profiles of the acts performing in the Toronto Sketch Comedy Festival with The Templeton Philharmonic. As part of this year’s festival, Templeton Philharmonic perform on November 8 at 10PM at Lower Ossington Theatre.
Toronto actors Gwynne Phillips and Briana Templeton answered our questions:
How did you get involved with the Toronto Sketch Comedy Festival?
We met at the U of T Drama Program and wanted to have more freedom in the characters we play (old men, middle-aged ladies, etc.) so we developed our first show for the Montreal Fringe Festival under the direction of the amazingly talented Kevin Matviw (Second City, The Sketchersons, The Really Good Show). We were first planning on making a heady, psychological drama about dreaming, but ended up with a pile of sketches about eating and people wearing shoulderpads instead.
What other troupe’s show at this year’s Festival do you most want to see?
Ourshow features rigorous dancing. Also, if you’d like to spend an evening watching a performance hosted by two off-putting ladies in ugly period costumes, we’re the show for you.
What is your favourite place on Ossington? If you haven’t been to Ossington, where do you most want to go?
I MISS YOU vintage shop, and THE GOLDEN TURTLE…best Pho in town!
The Toronto Sketch Comedy Fest starts next week – November 8 to be exact – and to prepare you for all the fun and funny troupes to hit our neighborhood, we are profiling as many of them as we can.
Next up: Touch My Stereotype. This large Toronto based troupe is performing on November 8 at 7PM at Comedy Bar. Check out one of their videos after the answers.
1. How did you get involved with the Toronto Sketch Comedy Festival?
We have been patrons in the past! This year, we submitted an application!
2. What other troupe’s show at this year’s Festival do you most want to see?
Can we say all of them? There are so many great groups in this city! We’re fans of British Teeth, The Regulars, Falcon Powder and Uncalled For(to name a few).
3. Why should we come to see your show?
You’ll feel better afterwards. It’s like eating salad! We’ve got something for everyone.
4.What is your favourite place on Ossington? If you haven’t been to Ossington, where do you most want to go?
We often dance or see some comedy at The Ossington and when we have a case of the late night munchies, we head on over to the Lakeview.
If you have not yet seen Good Game perform around the city, you have a chance at the Toronto Sketch Festival. You can catch them on November 8th at 8PM at Lower Ossington Theatre. These guys are Sketchfest veterans, and you can expect them to inject a little music into their comedy stylings. They kindly answered our questions and they definitely like hanging out in our neighborhood.
Vancouverites “
As part of our continuing series of questions and answers for the troupes performing in the 
Fratwurst
We are continuing our 
