| Not one or two, but five performers with strong Calgary ties are taking a run at the hardware at the Fifth Annual Canadian Comedy Awards. This impressive tally of local nominees paints Calgary as a burgeoning hotbed of comedic talent.
The most interesting race in this year’s CCAs, from a local perspective, can be found in the Pretty Funny Male Improviser category. Three of the five guys up for the award – Peter Oldring, Albert Howell and Derek Flores – cut their teeth on improv at Calgary’s acclaimed Loose Moose Theatre Company. Flores sees a big upside in being nominated alongside his pals Oldring, a star of the film Intern Academy and the WB network series Blue Collar TV, and Howell, who has racked up many impressive TV and theatre credits in this country.
"If either of them wins I can completely see why," Flores says, "These are the guys I looked up to when I was at the Moose in Calgary. These are the people I emulated and wanted to be. To be in a category with them is so humbling and beautiful."
After a relatively short stint with its touring company, Flores has now graduated to the ranks of the Second City Toronto mainstage cast. While the promotion is gratifying, to say the least, it is also more than a little intimidating.
"You walk into the building," Flores says, "and there’s a huge 12-foot-by-12-foot picture of the original cast of SCTV with the likes of John Candy, Eugene Levy and Catherine O’Hara. You come in and you instantly feel the weight of history weighing on your shoulders. It’s very daunting on your first day of rehearsal thinking, ‘This is what I have to live up to.’"
One comfort to Flores in his new gig is the fact that Rebecca Northan, a good friend and yet another highly accomplished Loose Moose vet, is part of the Second City mainstage cast as well. Including this year’s nod, Northan has been nominated as Pretty Funny Female Improviser in the CCAs five consecutive times, but has yet to nab the prize.
"I am the Susan Lucci of the Canadian Comedy Awards," Northan says with a laugh. Sizing up her chances of winning this year she says, "For the most part the awards have been quite Toronto-centric. I think I may have done enough time in Toronto now that things could be pointed in my favour, but who knows."
Northan thinks it’s great that so many of her Calgary Loose Moose peers are being recognized though CCA nominations. "We get more and more Loose Moosers on the list every year and I think it’s no coincidence," she says. "There’s no theatre company like it in the world. It will take anyone off the street and train them for free. The city of Calgary should be ashamed that it has not helped Loose Moose find a space since it became homeless," she adds.
Proving our city can produce top-notch nightclub comics as well as improvisers, Calgary native Tommy Campbell stands nominated as Pretty Funny Stand-Up Newcomer. An author as well as a comedian, he’s thrilled that his highly amusing working-class memoir, The Slacker Confessions, is in its second printing and coming soon to a bookstore near you.
Even though Campbell, a Toronto resident, has been doing stand-up for about six years, he doesn’t have a problem with the "newcomer" label. "All the other people in my category have been doing comedy for about the same amount of time," he says. "Some people might see ‘newcomer’ as a word that implies amateur, but that’s the wrong assumption. Those of us in this business know it takes quite a while to be recognized."
Just how far that recognition stretches for Campbell and the nominated Loose Moose grads will be determined when the Canadian Comedy Awards are handed out on Friday, October 29 in London, Ontario. |
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