CENTRE STAGE
Standup comedy takes on a life of its own for Butt
For Brent Butt, standup comedy is more than just walking out on to a stage and delivering a litany of jokes.
Rather, it’s a living, breathing entity that is constantly evolving from performance to performance. When Butt strides out on to a stage, he’s not reading from a script or following a designated set list, and that’s how he likes it.
“I always look at it like I’m not doing a play — this is a live comedy performance for a different live comedy audience every time I got out onstage. What they’re looking for is going to change from night to night and their mood is going to change from show to show,” explained Butt, who is playing two shows at the Casino Regina Show Lounge on Friday.
“Anytime you get hundreds of individuals together, they create a new entity and you don’t know what that entity likes or doesn’t like. You don’t know what its pace or rhythm is. For me, that’s one of the great things that 30 years later keeps me excited about standing in the wings and getting ready to step onstage to do a show.”
That’s not to say the Corner Gas creator and star doesn’t prepare for each performance. Butt doesn’t micromanage what material will be used during a particular performance but he does have an idea where he will start. Then it’s up to the audience to dictate the direction the performance takes.
“I kind of know how I’m going to open, generally speaking, and then how the audience and I get along drives the boat,” said Butt.
“Sometimes I’ll go out and do a show and something will happen onstage triggers an old joke of mine and I’ll do that bit and it gets a big laugh.
“And that bit tags on to three other older bits. So every show is shaped by what we’re doing together. Audiences are very savvy, they can tell when they’re being talked to as opposed to being part of something.
“They can tell when something is authentic, and the more that you can be in the moment, the more authentic it is.”
Butt brings his standup show to Regina on a regular basis — he was last here in January 2017 — and he prides himself on his material changing from tour to tour.
For some people, though, the recipe of mixing new material with older bits doesn’t go far enough. For those fans, they’re looking for a complete set of new material with each tour.
Butt sees that as an unrealistic expectation. “It is for me. There are some people who do it but generally speaking the end result is people going, ‘His old stuff is better.’ That’s because the new stuff hasn’t been created over a year. Material needs to be honed ... in order for it to get where it’s really good,” said Butt, who jokingly referred to himself as “a greasy nightclub comic.”
Additionally, how could a comedian keep track of what jokes where used at what specific shows to avoid duplication in future shows?
“If you were going to operate the way I operate, I’d have to keep very detailed records about every joke I did while performing in Regina and then before going onstage, telling myself which jokes I couldn’t use because I’d used them previously in Regina,” said Butt. “It completely eliminates the authenticity of that performance.”
But having said that, there are fans who are looking for a specific joke from a previous performance. He has experienced firsthand the negative reaction from a fan who felt they didn’t receive what they were expecting from Butt.
“I’ve done shows where I’ve gone out for 75 minutes, done my show and then met with the audience afterwards and somebody is legitimately pissed off that I didn’t do some joke that they really liked, so the opposite is true as well,” said Butt. “For some people, it’s about comfort. It’s like a band not playing your favourite song.”