Funny business

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This article was published 16/09/2023 (1090 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Jared Story has been lying about his age.

“I’ve been telling people I’m turning 40,” the Winnipeg comedian says with a rapid-fire laugh. “I think I’m the first person to age themselves.”

The deception is part of a ploy to pack the house for Thursday’s Winnipeg Comedy Showcase at the Park Theatre, which also happens to land on Story’s 39th birthday.

While a milestone birthday might up the ante, the event is already a momentous occasion. After nearly 20 years of doing standup, Story is finally undertaking a comedic rite of passage: recording a comedy album in front of a live audience.

“I’ve always been late to everything,” he says of the delay.

It’s true. Growing up in Grandview — a town of 500 or so people located 370 kilometres northwest of Winnipeg — often felt like growing up in a different time. Story and his two younger brothers were raised just outside of town on a sprawling acreage with a creek and a vegetable garden and frequent wildlife visitors.

“My parents, they grew up without plumbing — we were just so far behind,” he says. “When you live in a small town, everything gets to you late … people were still listening to hair metal when I was growing up and it was the ‘90s.”

Unsurprisingly, Story is also a luddite. He only engages with social media to promote his comedy shows and recently deleted his Twitter account — “or X or whatever” — because it was becoming a distraction.

“You should see my phone,” he says, plunking a hefty brick of an iPhone, several generations old, on the table. He’d use an old flip phone if it were feasible.

While Story’s aversion to trends and technology fits with his often curmudgeonly onstage persona, it’s not the reason for his delayed album taping. That comes down to confidence.

“I maybe didn’t think I had the stuff,” he says, referring to the quantity and quality of his jokes. “Or that I could convince enough people to come.”

Story never really thought of himself as a funny person. As a kid, he enjoyed listening to cassette tapes of Jerry Seinfeld and watching standup specials on TV, but was far from the class clown.

After moving to Winnipeg at 17 years old, he enrolled in the creative communications program at Red River College Polytechnic and signed up for a comedy-writing elective, expecting little more than an easy A.

“I think I ended up getting a C,” he recalls, chuckling.

Despite the poor grade, the experience got him onstage for the first time and introduced him to the local comedy scene. He performed sporadically and then quit for several years before returning to the artform in earnest in 2009.

He became a frequent flyer at open mics and a four-time finalist in Rumor’s annual Funniest Person with a Day Job competition. He’s opened for big-name comedians, such as Jen Kirkman, Scott Thompson, Bruce McCulloch and Wendy Liebman.

For the last nine years, Story has been hosting and booking the Winnipeg Comedy Showcase, a quarterly event at the Park Theatre highlighting homegrown talent.

Still, confidence is a relatively new phenomenon for the naturally anxious comedian. Where he used to rely on liquid courage to calm his nerves, the pandemic offered a more sustainable sense of self.

“Everyone examined themselves so much, and I was like, ‘OK, it’s time to be more confident,’” he says. “I’ve got things to say and this is the only way I know how to say them.”

Last year, Story stepped away from his communications job to focus on comedy full-time. Being a stay-at-home comedian — a situation afforded by his breadwinning actuary girlfriend, whom he jokingly refers to as “moneybags” — has been a blessing and a curse.

On one hand, it’s given him more time to fine-tune the act for his album taping. On the other, it’s been hard to find inspiration at home.

“I thought it would make me more creative, but it turns out you actually have to be part of the world to write more,” Story says. “I was thinking about getting a job just to get more jokes.”

As a comedian, Story likes to poke fun at social hypocrisy and polarized viewpoints. His small-town upbringing features prominently in his act and his delivery, which ranges from one-liners to winding observational stories, is influenced by the likes of Mitch Hedberg, Norm Macdonald and Marc Maron.

Thursday’s show is poised to be an account of the veteran comedian’s career thus far, with material old and new. Ahead of the event — which will feature openers Mike Green, Andy Noble and Karlee Liljegren — Story was looking forward to documenting his contributions to the local comedy scene.

“I just want to get a record of it,” he says. “Of course I want to shop it around, but I want to be able to say, ‘I did this and I was pretty good at it’ — it’s more for me than it is for anybody else.”

eva.wasney@winnipegfreepress.com

Twitter: @evawasney

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