Outside Joke’s Christmas Miracle: An Improvised Holiday Rom-Com
December of 2024 saw OJ return to the PTE Mainstage for a run of live, improvised holiday tv movies (think of your favourite greeting card company. . .). Musical Director, Paul De Gurse, was out of town working on another project, so OJ teamed up with a mainstay of Winnipeg’s music scene, DJ Mama Cutsworth, to create a fresh improvised score every night. The resulting 12 shows left audiences in saccharine holiday stitches, and the members of OJ vowed never again to turn on the tv during the month of December.
Outside Joke: The Improvised Musical
In the spring of 2022, Outside Joke achieved a career-long dream of doing a Main Stage run of shows at a regional theatre. This is not something that is commonly done in Canada, and OJ was over the moon to be invited by Winnipeg’s Prairie Theatre Exchange to do a whopping 21-show run of a two-act improvised musical. Every night, the group took audience suggestions of a genre of storytelling (romance, sci-fi, etc.) and a location where one wouldn’t expect that genre to occur (a Western in a waterpark, a teen rom-com in a graveyard). The run of shows was a massive success, and began a years-long relationship between Outside Joke and Prairie Theatre Exchange.
Outside Joke at Kilter Brewing Company
For the 2023/24 and 2024/25 theatre seasons, Outside Joke produced monthly shows at Kilter Brewing Co. These shows were a delightful opportunity to play a bit fast and loose with a loud, boisterous crowd of craft beer lovers. Every second show featured another local improv group in the first act of the show.
Outside Joke’s A Christmas Carol: Big Dickens Energy
Outside Joke’s Mainstage run of the Improvised Musical at Prairie Theatre Exchange went so well, the theatre invited them back to do a show the following season in December 2022. Even more exciting: a regional theatre, funded primarily by government grants, allowed an improv company to name their show “Big Dickens Energy”. What a time to be alive. In reverence to the Big D himself, OJ improvised a fresh take on his yuletide classic every night.
Outside Joke’s A Christmas Carol: Bigger Dickens Energy - OJ’s parody of Dickens’ A Christmas Carol went over so well in December of 2022, that Prairie Theatre Exchange brought the show back for 2023. This time around, the amazing tech staff at PTE helped OJ create a very spooky and very fun Ghost of Christmas Yet to Come that flew in on a zipline. Worth every penny.
Prairie Bowl Theatresports Tournament 2020
Outside Joke hosted the 2020 Prairie Bowl Theatresports Tournament in January at X-Cue’s Cafe & Lounge. The Prairie Bowl Theatresports Tournament was created in 2012 by Rapid Fire Theatre in Edmonton, AB, and features the finest improv troupes from across the Canadian prairies, competing in an all-out battle of the wits to determine who is the best in the west! The tourney saw performances from Rapid Fire Theatre (Edmonton), Hitchhikers Improv (Regina), and locals BUCKO, Behind the Grave, Unexpected Results Improv, Club Soda Improv, and Not My Favourite Daughter.
Outside Joke Seasons of Yuks- Between 2012 and 2017, Outside Joke produced five series of shows at Winnipeg’s Gas Station Arts Centre. The shows always featured a comedy act of some kind in the first half, and OJ doing their signature improvised musical in the second half. Thanks to generous grants and audience engagement, OJ was able to bring in some acts from other cities. Certain groups collaborated with Outside Joke. For one show, OJ performed in some choreographed dance pieces by local dancer/choreographer, Brett Owen. In a particularly delightful collaboration with sketch comedy heroes, Hot Thespian Action, the sketch group shared ideas onstage for sketches that never made it to the stage. OJ took these ideas and improvised them into sketches live for the audience.
