Funny story

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 03/05/2025 (474 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Welcome to Jen Tries, a semi-regular series in which Free Press columnist Jen Zoratti tries something new and reports back.

In this instalment, Jen Tries… standup comedy.

No surprise here, but I love telling stories. Especially funny stories.

I was at a party last year telling, as it happens, a Jen Tries story and my pal Shannon Guile, who works at the Winnipeg Comedy Festival, told me I should try Laughing With the Stars, the festival’s pro-am show wherein local celebrities take the stage alongside local professional comedians and try standup comedy for the first time.

I said yes, and then immediately got the stress sweats. Why did I agree to this?

Don’t get me wrong: I think I am funny, and I think other people do, too, because “you’re so funny” is feedback I have received. But being funny and being a comedian are not the same thing. I’m not professionally funny. I occasionally use humour in my writing, but I would never call myself a “humour columnist” because that’s way too much pressure to be funny all the time. I’d rather the fact that I’m an occasional newspaper clown be a delightful discovery about me, like how I lose all sense of direction inside a mall.

I got out of doing Laughing With the Stars last year because of scheduling. But when Winnipeg Comedy Festival artistic director Dean Jenkinson asked me again this year, I had no excuse not to.

It’s always easier to not do things than to do things. So I decided to do the thing.

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Every little girl in the 1990s wanted to be a marine biologist for some reason.

I did too, but I also wanted to be a writer, a TV meteorologist, a flight attendant and, yes, a standup comedian.

Your guess as to how I even knew what a standup comedian was is as good as mine, since I do not believe it was one of Barbie’s careers at the time. But I did grow up in a comedy house. I was sentient for Seinfeld’s heyday and was raised on NBC Must-See TV sitcoms.

And I did know what it felt like to be able to make people laugh.

Discovering that you can make people laugh is like “figuring out I could make a rainbow appear on the wall just by staring at it,” to borrow a quote from musician Kathleen Hanna on finding her singing voice. It’s a superpower.

I’m painting a picture of an outgoing, class-clown kid, but I was actually quite shy — or “reserved” as the report cards used to like to call it. When I pictured a career as a comedian as a kid, I wasn’t wishing I could be someone else. I was wishing I could be myself, out loud, in front of everyone.

All this to say, performing my own comedy set in a pair of light-wash jeans has been a dream of mine since the ’90s. It’s bucket-list stuff for me. It just took turning 40 to get there.

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I took the assignment very seriously. By January or February, I had my set down. A couple of jokes were pulled from my column, but the rest was all new. I didn’t want to share anecdotes; I wanted to challenge myself to craft a standup routine.

My bits kept evolving. I’d think of new ideas as I was falling asleep, sometimes even while I was asleep. I ran my set all the time — on walks, in the shower. I figured out pacing and delivery. I figured out better pacing, better delivery. I cut stuff that wasn’t working. In the end, I had written — and memorized — eight minutes of comedy that I was proud of. There was nothing left to do but do it.

I kept telling people I wasn’t nervous despite the fact this show has been saved in my calendar for months as “COMEDY FEST OH NO.”

By the time I was in the green room backstage at the Gas Station Arts Centre with my fellow stars — CBC’s Marcy Markusa, CJOB’s Richard Cloutier, University of Winnipeg professor Marc Kuly and entomologist Taz Stuart — I tried to focus on the excitement, not the nerves.

It was reassuring to see that the professionals were pacing in the wings just like us amateurs. Veteran Winnipeg comedian Big Daddy Tazz was our host and guide; he gave us good advice such as “don’t walk on your laugh,” which basically means allow your laugh room before moving on to the next bit.

When it was finally my turn — sixth, excruciating — I took a breath and did my set. And people laughed.

I get why people get addicted to doing standup. When your humour is mostly written, you never get to hear the laugh in the room. Hearing the laugh in the room is the warmest embrace.

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At the 2022 Winter Olympics in Beijing, Japanese skip Fujisawa Satsuki wrote a mantra on her hand. “I’m a good curler. I have confidence. Let’s have fun.”

Now, I am not saying that doing eight minutes of something that isn’t even my actual job is as stressful as competing at the literal Olympics, but listen: pressure is pressure. I adopted a modified version of Satsuki’s words in the lead-up to the Comedy Fest.

“I am funny. I have confidence. Let’s have fun.”

There’s something particularly instructive about that last part, “Let’s have fun.” It can be so easy to let stress or anxiety jump into the driver’s seat in moments like this. But I didn’t want my comedy set to be something I “got through.” I wanted it to be a thing I enjoyed.

Even if I never do comedy again, I’m so proud of myself for challenging myself in this way — even though it was scary, even though the possibility of failure was high.

People have been asking me how it went. And I can honestly say: “I had so much fun.”

jen.zoratti@winnipegfreepress.com