WHEN ONE DORE OPENS
Canadian comedian happy to be back on stage at the Grindstone Comedy Festival
Jon Dore is very excited to talk to a member of the media today.
“It feels like we're getting back to the way things are supposed to be,” the Ontario-born actor and standup comedian says over the phone from L.A. “A journalist wants to interview me after months of nobody wanting to talk to me; it's all coming back!”
It certainly is, Jon, slowly but surely. As we speak, Dore is chilling at a friend's place surrounded by seven very friendly dogs, but next week he'll be jetting back north for three nights of shows at the Grindstone Comedy Festival here in Edmonton. It's a big deal for Dore; aside from a few gigs snuck in between the ever-shifting health regulations, he hasn't been able to play his trade in the clubs as much as he's used to.
Unlike many of his peers, he was able to hold down at least one job through the pandemic. His latest CBC comedy series, Humour Resources, was made using video conferencing tools while Dore and his family were locked down in Juneau, Alaska. Filmed in mid2020 and then released in the early weeks of 2021, the stripped-down series stars Dore as a retired comedian doing performance evaluations of other comedians. Peers and pals Eric Andre, Sarah Silverman, Tom Green and Reggie Watts are a few of the noted comics who signed up for the Dore treatment.
Of course, being the internet, nothing was simple or easy about the process of making those six episodes.
“It was kind of frustrating at times,” Dore says. “Everyone else was either in St. Louis, New York, Vancouver and Toronto, and there was always either a delay or a restart. So it never quite felt like we were in the same room, even though that's what we're trying to achieve with natural conversation back and forth with one another. But there were just so many wonderful moments that came out of it, and it made it worthwhile. It actually felt good to be trapped in Alaska but still be able to talk, laugh and giggle with all of these people that I never get to see.”
Dore isn't convinced that Humour Resources will be granted a second season by CBC, but he is sure he wants to continue pitching to television.
“I'll be telling jokes and travelling around and that's all fun, but it's also time to get back to the drawing board and pitch something,” says Dore, who counts multiple appearances on Conan, The Baroness von Sketch Show and This Hour Has 22 Minutes as part of his extensive small-screen resume. “I love television. I enjoy the writing and the editing, all of that stuff. There's just something fun about the whole process.”
Dore's pre-pandemic decision to move to Alaska almost feels like the premise of a Seth Rogan-style comedic horror. Standup comedian is trapped with his wife in the far north while a deadly disease rages through the rest of the world; hilarity ensues. The jokes just write themselves!
“That's what everyone says,” he says. “You're lucky to be up in Alaska! But the thing is, I'm still going to feel like I'm missing out on something. Sure, I'd die peacefully here, but are other people doing fun stuff with handguns and fireworks in the big city? Am I missing out on that? Sure they might be dying, but I'll still find a way of reasoning that it's better to be in a big city than in Alaska.”
Or a mid-sized city like Edmonton, where Dore will be re-sharpening his skills during the upcoming comedy festival. This is the second iteration of the festival; the first took place as an online event last summer under the name Reset. A separate standup competition was attempted in late 2020, with the winners selected to open for the headliners of this year's fest, but the second coronavirus wave put a halt to all of that.
The Grindstone is in the process of finishing up the competition — the final takes place on Wednesday with the winner going on to take the stage with Dore.
It's been a chaotic time for the club and bistro. Like other arts organizations in the city, the Grindstone has been pivoting through the turmoil, somehow staying afloat while others have gone under. According to artistic director Byron Martin, who will be appearing in the theatre's improv musical Eleven O'clock Number, it comes down to a certain amount of stubbornness on their part.
“We have some resiliency,” he says. “I feel that as artists we're like the cockroaches of society, as in we'll always find a way to survive. We just find ways of making it happen even when we're asking ourselves what we're doing. Like, why do we do this, why do we put ourselves through all of this?
“The amount of stress for such little money,” Martin adds with a laugh. “You definitely get a lot of existential thoughts going during something like this.”
You can likely expect more than a few coronavirus scarred, existential thoughts from comedians at the fest like Mark Meer and Ron Pederson, Andrea Jin, Kathleen Mcgee, Adrienne Fish and, of course, Dore.
“I prefer to think of them as pandemic jokes,” Dore says. “Coronavirus is just so narrow. But yeah, there's certain topical things you can't avoid.”