Toronto Sketch Comedy Festival
Comedy Bar (945B College), Second City (51 Mercer) and the Diesel Playhouse (56 Blue Jays Way). Nov. 18-23. Single ticket $12, four-show pass $36.
www.torontosketchfest.com.
Things changed about a year ago for Press, Release, Repeat. when the sketch duo turned into a trio — adding Tessie Burton to the team that, for roughly four years before that, had been made up of just Derek Forgie and Adam Wilson.
Burton made her debut in the reworked troupe at last year's Toronto Sketch Comedy Festival.
"I'm intimidated by them still," says Burton with a laugh, eyeing the guys over drinks at a downtown pub. "They were together for such a long time — I didn't want to ruin anything or be the third wheel."
She was a relative newcomer to it all at the time, but for a few classes she took at Second City. "I thought they were just letting me join their little group because I'm married to one of them," she says.
"We'll never say which one," says Forgie, smirking. He's been married to Burton almost as long as he's been performing with Wilson.
Naturally, the addition changed the way the troupe works. Not just because the guys could suddenly do more than just two-man scenes, but because it gave them a break from their usual straight man/funny man roles — Wilson being the foil to Forgie's array of brassy showmen, hucksters and flim-flam men.
"I think Derek and I also have a very dialogue-driven way of writing comedy," Wilson offers (look no further than their vaudevillian characters Starch and Buster), "but Tessie's imagination is more visual."
Press, Release, Repeat. will be back on stage for this years' festival, playing plum spots Friday and Saturday at Diesel Playhouse and Comedy Bar.
The fest has gone in cycles since it launched four years ago, says organizer Paul Snepts. Fewer acts have come up from the US this time, and the fest is made up mostly of local acts including Kathleen Turner Overdrive, Picnicface and 7 Minutes in Heaven — though newcomers A Week of Kindness are up from New York, and Uncalled For have come in from Montreal.
A Week of Kindness has applied to the festival four years in a row, almost making it every time, Snepts says. "This year their tape was just hilarious."
Forgie also had a hand in another event at the fest, and after his troupe's Friday spot at Comedy Bar will be at the Diesel Playhouse directing End of an Error, a multi-act take on the last days of the Bush administration.
"There'll be all manner of Bush impressions," says Snepts, billing it as, "a cross-border look at Bush's last days."