By Michael Munnik
Ottawa is growing into a healthy environment for comedy, says the owner of a local comedy club.
Ken Godmere runs the Institution Comedy Club in the basement of the James Street Feed Company.
The club celebrates its first anniversary on Saturday, Jan. 27, and Godmere has expanded the show to mark the occasion.
In addition to the Institution’s regular Laff Lines show, a type of improvised comedy similar to the television show Whose Line Is it Anyways?, the anniversary performance will feature local band Blue Lion.
Godmere says he is pleased at Ottawa’s response to the Institution.
“I’m really happy that Ottawa is growing a club,” he says. He says talented comedians can stay and work in the city instead of leaving for Toronto.
“People think of Ottawa as their home town — they need to break out of it and go big-time. Well, Ottawa is the big-time. Ottawa is going places.”
Godmere, a Toronto native himself, says Ottawa has more live comedy than it did four years ago when he arrived with his family.
His improv roots go back to 1981, when he acted with and later helped produce Second City. He worked with film and television, and he produced shows for the Kids in the Hall.
In Ottawa, he started various comedy groups, but none has had the success of the Institution. Godmere attributes this to having his own space.
The Institution has a symbiotic relationship with the James Street Feed Company that Godmere hasn’t had before.
Previously, his groups performed in someone else’s space — a restaurant or a bar.
Godmere says it was unstable accommodation. “If they had a wedding or a banquet, we were out of luck.”
Now, with a permanent location, the shows have been consistent. And Godmere says that’s helped draw crowds.
When the club opened, it usually attracted 15 people a night.
One year later, the show attracts between 50 and 60 people a night, sometimes as many as 90.
Nick Marotta, a long-time fan of improv, is a regular at the shows.
He says he comes at least twice a month, and he often brings friends.
Marotta says he is attracted to the vitality of live improv.
“It’s just so spontaneous,” he says. “Just seeing them pull off a great scene from an odd suggestion is fun.”
Marotta, an employee at Nortel, says he enjoys watching the show and hopes to step on stage one day himself.
“It’s one of my dreams to be able to do (improv),” he says.
Godmere runs workshops in addition to directing the performances, and Marotta says he might consider taking one.
In the meantime, Marotta says he likes to support the club by watching the actors.
Matt Ouimet, comedian and associate producer for the Institution, says he enjoys the improv atmosphere.
“It’s a more human form (of comedy) than having someone up on a stage telling jokes at you,” he says
“It’s relaxed, because if you screw up at improv, it sometimes makes the scene better, ‘cause that’s what people want to see.”