Next week, the Toronto Sketch Comedy Festival will tickle local funny bones as it returns for its 20th anniversary.
The festival, also called TOsketchfest, will showcase dozens of acts over 12 nights at The Theatre Centre, Youngplace’s Sweet Action Theatre and Comedy Bar on Bloor Street West.
TOsketchfest’s reach is impressive for an event that originated as a four-day showcase in the back ballroom of the Gladstone Hotel.
Paul Snepsts launched the festival in 2005 with his then-girlfriend (and now-wife) Julianne Baragar, who was also his troupemate in the sketch group Boiled Wieners.
Over two decades, the festival has become one of the biggest draws on the city’s comedy calendar.
“Sketchfest is when sketch gets to be seen in its best light,” Snepsts said in an interview, taking a few minutes to talk while juggling last-minute festival logistics.
“Twenty years into it and I still get so excited,” he said. “We’re a week away from opening and I feel like barfing most of the time.”
Small beginnings
A booking at Chicago Sketchfest led the couple to see the potential of launching a similar event at home in Toronto.
“In Toronto at the time — this would've been around the turn of the millennium — there was lots of great stuff happening in sketch comedy, but the scene was really siloed, broken up into these little cliques and clubs,” Snepsts said. “So we borrowed the model from Chicago.”
“I was talking to a friend about the idea and he said, ‘Well, how much would it cost to do it?’ I said, ‘I don't know, for maybe 2,500 bucks I could put something small together.’ And he goes, ‘Okay, I'll give you 2,500 bucks, but you gotta pay me back.’”
Glenn Sumi, a Toronto arts writer who covered the very first TOsketchfest for NOW Magazine in 2005, has watched the event evolve into a much-needed launching pad for Canadian performers over the years.
“I remember a lot of small-scale shows,” Sumi said. “One of my favourites was Leslie Seiler and [future Superstore breakout star] Lauren Ash sending up these really uncomfortable scenes from Lena Dunham's Girls.”
Sumi also praised the work of Jon Blair who’s on the bill this year, and Kathleen Phillips’ great character comedy. Cam Wyllie, also performing in this year’s festival, received a shoutout as well.
“Carson Pinch and Taylor Davis had a show called ‘Carson & Taylor Promise to Do a Bunch of Flips’ and they really, absolutely did that,” Sumi said. “They fulfilled their premise and it was hilarious.”
Carson and Taylor have two shows in this year’s festival — though it remains to be seen if flips will be involved this time around.
Social media’s sketch effect
The festival’s growth has run alongside the explosion of sketch comedy on social media, where YouTube, Instagram and TikTok can connect a performer to thousands, or even millions, of fans.
Julie Nolke, a writer and performer whose YouTube channel exploded during the pandemic, is performing a show called ‘Julie Nolke’s Dying on the Inside’ at TOsketchfest on March 6 and 7.
“You just have an intimacy,” Sumi said of online sketch comedy. “In a lot of cases, these people come on your screen four or five times a week.”
For that reason, Sumi said admirers can build a relationship with a performer online.
“Look at someone like Russell Peters, who was popular before but just went stratospheric on social media,” Sumi said.
“Sketch comedy is particularly well-suited to the internet,” Snepsts agreed.
He did, however, offer a caveat.
“The consumers’ attention span, the short scripted scene — it should be a total slam dunk,” he said of online sketches. “But to produce sketch comedy for the internet, and do it well, that’s a difficult task.”
Performing live brings a different set of challenges, of course. Snepsts said there’s a very simple reason why Toronto doesn’t have an independent sketch venue.
“Sketch comedy is difficult to do and it costs a lot of money [to stage],” he explained. “The BMO Incubator space at The Theatre Centre is fantastic. The Franco Boni [stage] is amazing. But the work that has to happen in there to make it a suitable sketch comedy space is expensive.”
So every year around this time, there will be a TOsketchfest.
“This is the two weeks of the year where these people get to feel like rock stars,” Snepsts said. “That's why me and the other producers in our gang do the work that we do.”
“It's kind of amazing to look back to that moment when my buddy kind of forced my hand with his kindness,” Snepsts said of his friend’s initial $2,500 loan.
“That improv idea of ‘Yes, and’ is such a powerful one. Commit to a thing and it's amazing where it can go. This is a classic example.”
TOsketchfest runs March 5 to 16 at multiple Toronto venues. Ticketing and schedule information is available online.
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Norman Wilner has written about entertainment and culture since 1988, most recently as the senior film writer for NOW Magazine. He currently hosts and produces the Someone Else's Movie podcast and publishes the Shiny Things newsletter.
