Get ready to yuk it up, Brent Butt, dubbed the funniest man in Canada by many, is coming to Sidney March 25.
With a good mixture of old favourites and new bits, the award-winning comedian is looking forward to playing the Charlie White Theatre.
“I enjoy playing the 200- or 300-seat places, either in a big club or a small theatre,” he says. “There’s an intimacy there. It’s a subtle difference, but it’s a bit more human the fewer people there are.”
The comic is best known for his role as Brent Leroy in the acclaimed prairie comedy Corner Gas, a brilliant and good-natured portrayal of small-town Saskatchewan and its quirky characters. Running for six unceasingly popular seasons and spinning off a hugely successful movie late last year, Corner Gas won six Gemini Awards and has been nominated nearly 70 times for other various awards.
Television and movie success aside, Butt has kept up with his standup through it all, and says he loves “almost everything” about standup, particularly the energy that comes from working with a live audience.
“TV and film is very collaborative, which I also like, but what you’re doing, you have to wait for months, or a year sometimes, to see if it’s going to be any good,” he says. “There’s an immediacy to standup that’s great.”
The ever-changing atmosphere and unknown factor is also especially gratifying, he says.
“Every time you get hundreds of people in a room together, it creates a brand new animal. That moment of waiting in the wings, of not knowing how it’s going to go, is a great moment.”
“It’s something that I always knew I wanted to do, from the first time I saw it on television when I was 12 years old. I knew I was going to give it a try.”
Butt celebrated 27 years of standup and comedy last month, and has no plans to slow down.
He’s currently in the early development stages of several new half-hour comedies, and heads out to Niagara Falls near the start of April for another set of standup shows.
The March 25 show at the Charlie White caps off Butt’s B.C. tour, and it’s an evening he says audiences will thoroughly enjoy.
“You can’t capture and put on film what really goes on live if you’re in the room,” says Butt. “So if you’re a fan of standup comedy, come on out.”
The show starts at 7:30 p.m. Wednesday, March 25 at the Charlie White Theatre at the Mary Winspear Centre, 2243 Beacon Ave. in Sidney.
Tickets are $50, available at the box office, marywinspear.ca or by calling 250-656-0275.
For more on Butt, visit brentbutt.com.