Canadian comedy legend Glen Foster is bringing the laughs to Nepean
Glen Foster is brining Tickle me Tuesday at Summerhays Grill on Oct. 7, hoping to establish a new comedy spot in Ottawa.
The show features Foster and four fellow comedians: Serge Nkusi, Alex Callahan, Jake Daly and Colin Smith, who is hosting the whole event.
Summerhays is not one of the traditional comedy spots in Ottawa, but Foster and Smith saw an opportunity to turn the restaurant into an underground comedy club.
“Well, we actually have wings there every week. So, we were just looking around the place one day and there’s this private back room,” Foster said. “We thought, ‘Geez, that might be a good place to do comedy.’”
The show has been in the works for a couple of months, with Smith talking to the Summerhays owner and finding a suitable lineup.
“I talked to the owner of Summerhays back in the spring and (he said), ‘Yeah, we could do that. Let’s wait ‘till the fall when the kids are back in school,’” Smith said.
As Smith explained, the show will be around 90 minutes, with all the comedians getting a chance to perform their best material on stage before Foster delivers the longest set of the night.
“We have three comedy clubs in Ottawa. The most (stage time) you can get, unless you’re headlining, is maybe 10 or 15 minutes,” Foster explained. “If I want to do anything in the half-hour-plus range, I have to set up my own gigs.”
Foster has been doing comedy for the last 40 years and started off as an unknown opening act, before going on to be featured in Comedy Now! and Just for Laughs.
Smith and Foster emphasized the importance of a strong lineup, when planning out the event.
“We’re doing (the show) kind of low price out the door just to get people in. But I’ll tell you, this is a high-value show,” Foster said.
The lineup features three young local comics in Callahan, Daly and Nkusi who have all been making waves in the local scene.
Nkusi is having a particularly good year, after winning Yuk Yuk’s Mike MacDonald competition this summer and gaining a huge boost to his popularity and opportunities.
“It’s been wild. I’ve never been booked so much in my life,” Nkusi said. “It’s just so much attention all at once.”
His work ethic and frequenting of comedy shows have only increased with this recent success.
From sneaking into a Dave Chappelle show dressed as a cameraman to showing up at the Comedy Cellar in New York as a 20-year-old with no planned set, Nkusi lives and breathes comedy both as a performer and a fan.
“I just love stand-up. I was born for this, I was out my diapers cracking jokes,” he said.
The show starts at 8 p.m., with only 40 tickets available. The smaller venue should make the experience all the more worthwhile, according to Foster and Nkusi.
“My favourite comedy setting is the way comedy should be done and that is a dark basement or an attic,” Foster said.
Nkusi described the Pour Boy Pub on Somerset Street as “a small room, (that) feels humongous, because the laughs are bouncing off (the wall).” Summerhays is expected to bring a similar vibe.
The comedy show is set to become a recurring event if it gains enough traction. Smith invited any Algonquin College students who want to pursue comedy locally to contact him through his website.
Show tickets can be found online, with the discount code “ACSTUDENT” for $2 off the purchase. Tickets are $11.98 online and $15 at the door.
