All joking aside
Registration open for Stand-up Challenge in St. John’s
Registration begins for annual Stand-up Challenge
The Stand-up Challenge is for everyone, and organizers are really pushing that point this year by encouraging women and members of the LGBTQ community to take part.
Elling Lien said Unpossible Newfoundland & Labrador is quite excited about that aspect of the 2017 challenge, which will take place throughout July.
“I find that trying something new is hard already, but it’s important to recognize that some people have even more barriers in front of them, or people telling them that they aren’t invited, or even just subtly telling them that they’re not invited, or they don’t feel a part of the scene that exists already,” said Lien. “So I really like making it a mission of Unpossible to close that gap, to make anybody who feels like they want to try something to actually try it.”
One of the ways the challenge hopes to reach those communities is by hosting a women- and Lgbtq-friendly workshop on the basics of stand-up comedy.
Other workshops, hosted by local comedians such as Paul Warford and Stephen Coombs, will also take place.
The premise of the event, which is in its second year, is to challenge funny folks from around the St. John’s area to come up with a five-minute stand-up routine. Participants then get to perform it at openmic nights at the Peter Easton Pub.
If last year’s challenge was any indication, it should be a barrel of laughs.
“It went really, really well last year. It was an experiment, and we just kind of wanted to see what would happen if we invited people to do the challenge, to do five new minutes of stand-up comedy, and it was amazing,” Lien said.
Sixty-five people registered to take part, and 40 people performed at the open mics.
“The first one was quite slow, but then every single week there were more and more people who were coming out to see it, to see their friends, but also to see what was happening, and that was really pretty exciting,” Lien said.
“There were so many new people — a lot of people in the comedy scene here were remarking that they’d never seen the people that are at those shows at any other comedy shows. And also the people who were getting up onstage, they were completely new. Some of them have even continued on through the year to do stand-up regularly through the city.”
Twenty-three of last year’s participants performed at a final gala show. This year, the gala show will be held in the first week of August as part of the Stanley Braxton Comedy Festival.
It’s a challenge, but not a contest. Lien said if anything,
people are competing against themselves.
Registration is open online at www.unpossible.co/standupchallenge.