So I’m backstage with Brad Garret…
Local comics talk about the history of comedy in Winnipeg
Sharilyn Johnson



The CBC Winnipeg Comedy Festival may only be five years old, but comedy has been in Winnipeg for much longer.

The late ’80s and early ’90s were the heyday for standup in virtually every North American city, and Winnipeg wasn’t immune to the comedy boom. This city once had as many as three full-time comedy clubs running simultaneously.

Bruce Clark is now based in Los Angeles but comes back to Winnipeg regularly for the festival. He got his start in the late ’80s at Yuk Yuk’s in Osborne Village, a building that now houses Die Maschine and the Collective Cabaret. Tanyalee Davis, another ex-Winnipegger returning for the Festival, also started there in 1990.

“That was a great club to work at,” Clark remembers.

But things quickly changed when original owner Josh Marantz moved to Calgary.

“The guy who owned the waterbed store underneath, he owned the building. He took it over,” Clark says. “It stayed open for about another year after that.”

After Yuk Yuk’s closed, Davis became a house MC at the Comedy Oasis on St. Mary’s Road, along with Jimmy Mac. It was far from a glamourous room, as Davis remembers.

“There was some shady activity going on in that joint,” she laughs. “They were so stingy on their local comics. Whenever any big-name comics would come into town, they would be like, ‘We’ll let you open for so-and-so, but we’re not going to pay you.’ So a lot of people didn’t work there, but I just wanted the stage time.”

One of those freebie gigs was opening for Brad Garrett.
“He’d give me money out of his own pocket because he knew the club was totally cheating us. He was an absolute sweetheart,” Davis says.

A new Yuk Yuk’s resurfaced about a year after the original location shut its doors. Clark and Irwin Barker, another Yuk Yuk’s comic and comedy fest performer, reopened the Yuk Yuk’s franchise at the Viscount Gort hotel.

Dan Licoppe’s first shows were at the second incarnation of Yuk Yuk’s, and he also became a regular at the Oasis.

“The nice thing about it at the time, which I haven’t seen in any other city since, was that we were allowed to work at the different clubs. So I could work at the Comedy Oasis and Bruce would still let me come down to Yuk Yuk’s,” Licoppe says.

He remembers the two rooms felt very different, particularly for someone just starting out.

According to Licoppe, Yuk Yuk’s was “one of those really intimate rooms where, to do well in it, you had to really make a connection with the audience.”

He adds: “So as a new comic, it was tough because you’re just trying to get through your set.”

The Oasis, by contrast, was a larger club. The stage was higher and the audience not as close.

“I felt a lot safer as an amateur there because I couldn’t really see them, couldn’t really hear them as well. So I could just focus on my set,” Licoppe says.

And what about Rumor’s Restaurant & Comedy Club? Winnipeg’s longest running comedy venue was around the whole time, but it wasn’t exactly a haven for amateurs.

“At the time, Rumor’s was a bit of a closed shop,” Licoppe says.

By 1995, before the Oasis closed, he was invited into the hosting rotation at Rumor’s. Dean Jenkinson and Jon Ljungberg were the other hosts at the time. Again, Licoppe found a difference in the vibe of the room. Rumor’s audiences expected a cleaner show.

“It felt a bit more professional than the other two,” Licoppe says.

The local comedy scene isn’t in bad shape today, but having just one club instead of three means that getting stage time is now more of a luxury for young comics than it was back then.

“It was really a thriving time in Winnipeg,” says Licoppe.

For more information see www.winnipegcomedyfestival.com.