Theatre in the Bush 2021
Ramshackle Theatre in the Bush “I’m already out in the yard,” Fidler says. “I’ve got my chainsaw out and I’m clearing the paths.”
George Maratos
Welcome back… to the Round Back
With an improved ‘Round Back venue in place, the Guild Hall unveils a new series of performances. Music, theatre, comedy and more.
Shine those Shoes
Edmonton comedian Lars Callieou at a Comedy Monday Night gig in Calgary. Callieou will make a return appearance at the Ride For Dad Comedy Night at the Coast High Country Inn, January 17–19. PHOTO: James Moore Canadian comics Lars Callieou and Derek Seguin will share headlining duties at the annual Ride For Dad Comedy …
Serving laughs straight from the oven
The Whitehorse comedy scene is on a roll as of late. One of the events that has helped cultivate this resurgence has been Baked Laughs, the stand-up nights presented monthly at Baked Café.
A weekend of laughs
The Yukon stand-up comedy scene can be fickle. Some years comics will perform to packed houses that turn people away at the door. Other years, not so much. Whether it’s a lack of comics, audience, or both, northern life can bring a number of challenges that make live comedy difficult to maintain. Richard Eden, George …
Stand up for Stephen McGovern
On March 9, Yukon comic Stephen McGovern will be gearing up to take the stage at the Just for Laughs Northwest comedy festival in Vancouver. The 10-day event beginning March 1 offers a wide variety of shows that highlight Canadian and international comedy. McGovern makes his Just for Laughs debut performing in The Outsiders Comedy show, which …
The Birth of the Yukon Comedy Collective
The Yukon is about to get a whole lot funnier if Richard Eden has his way. Relatively new to the territory, Eden is the president and creator of The Yukon Comedy Collective – a new non-profit organisation that’s dedicated to providing top quality comedic events, activities and hospitality by exposing outside and homegrown talent as …
Debaters Bound
Whitehorse comedian Jenny Hamilton will be performing live on the CBC Radio One show The Debaters in North Vancouver on Nov. 22
The only personality test that works
There are people out there who think they know everything they need to know about me just because: I’m a Scorpio. I’m a white male in his 40s. I drive an Explorer. Nobody likes to be pigeon holed … especially with seemingly arbitrary classification systems like these. At the very least take into account my …
Old Time Horror
Geneviève Doyon and Jessica Hickman have, once again, combed through silent films, searching for excerpts to play on a screen to an audience. This is the third year they’ve done it. Doyon and Hickman are the co-artistic directors of Open Pit Theatre. Doyon is based in Whitehorse, Hickman in Victoria. The film nights have become …
Get your elbows up
I crowd-sourced tips for navigating the ski swap. A local ski-lover and gear aficionado advised me: “Go early. Really early
Calling All Arty Teens
From November 2 to 5, youth from all over the Yukon will be converging on Dawson City to hone their art skills in the 16th annual Youth Art Enrichment Program. Hosted by the Klondike Institute of Art and Culture (KIAC), the four-day program is for Yukon students in Grades 9 to 12 who are …
Who’s Line is it Anyway?
Expect the unexpected. This is good advice for both performers and audience at a typical improv event. Mind you, “typical” is a misnomer for a genre defined by having a unique performance every time. If you’ve ever had a yen to create one-of-a-kind, hilarious scenes, get yourself to the Guild Hall every Tuesday at 8 …
Eastward Ho, at Last
They’re on the road again. Bruce Barrett and Judy Forrest, the Whitehorse couple whose van was torched by an arsonist in British Columbia last month, are rebounding from the major setback in their retirement travel plan. Barrett retired last December after 30 years as a heritage sites project officer with Tourism Yukon. Forrest’s last day …
How To Do Your Part to Reduce the Risk
On July 2, 1998, as Canada Day weekend celebrations carried out across the Yukon, a wildfire ignited. It was one of the largest and most expensive wildfires in the history of the territory. It was preventable and began after a campfire was not properly put out. It started at the north end of Fox Lake, …
Managing Yukon Wildfire: How, When and Why
Wildfire is as common in the Yukon as camping and bear sightings. There are roughly 150 wildfires in the territory every fire season. If the summer is hot, it is likely smoky. It is the responsibility of the Yukon Wildland Fire Management program to suppress wildfires or allow them to burn naturally. This summer What’s …
Moving Target
Unlike some comedians, Lars Callieou didn’t get his start as the class clown, for a simple reason: he wasn’t in class. From the age of six until he was 14, Callieou was home-schooled in hotel rooms while his parents plied their musical trade 50 weeks a year with a band called Columbian Gold Rush. “Back …
Honouring a hero
George Maratos was just three years old when Terry Fox was becoming a household name across Canada and elsewhere. Still, he claims to have a “kind of” memory of the young B.C. runner’s heroic 1980 odyssey known as the Marathon of Hope. “My parents were gripped by it, and I have a feeling that kind …
Terry Fox was a heck of a man
“It’s like the Yukon scenery — I never get tired of reading about Terry Fox.” George Maratos has never had cancer, and nobody in his immediate family has suffered from the disease. Terry Fox is still his hero. He can’t stop talking about the man. About how awesome he is. Because of what he did …
First Issue “I’m just saying”
Dennis Fentie is the premier of the Yukon and watches over an annual budget of $550 million … but I don’t care about that. I do care that he likes to play Bridge and, before he lost most of his free time to that government job thingy of his, he played hockey and coached a …
Syphilis Spreads like Wildfire: Peter Jickling’s Play Syphilis: A Love Story wins comedy award
It’s difficult to resist making puns about the title of the award-winning play Syphilis: A Love Story by Whitehorse playwright, and What’s Up Yukon assistant editor, Peter Jickling. Jokes like, “I caught syphilis at the Guild Hall last week,” or, “I caught syphilis with your mom.” Or how about, “I wanted to catch syphilis, but …
Occasionally Awkward, Always Available
We all pay just a little more attention to coverage of events we attended just in case we are On TV. But On TV usually happens somewhere else, somewhere we can’t reach. But there is something waiting to bridge that gap. Always there, often forgotten, occasionally awkward — it’s community television. Community television exists because …
What’s new for you
Soooo, notice anything different about today’s paper? We have found a new printer: Webco Leduc. It is a company that has come highly recommended and its people have bent over backwards to convince us they will do a good job for you, the readers. In particular, the outside four pages and centre four pages will …
Timber Rabbits has a big heart and flat feet
I push the potatoes around in my cup of Timber Rabbit Stew and find no timber rabbit meat. Oh, I get it. I’m supposed to ask where the meat is and will be told, “You’re as naïve as Ben Mueller!” Ben Mueller is the character in Timber Rabbits – A Northern Mystery of Men, Madness, …
Last Comic Standing Takes the Next Step
The first time I saw Rob Stalkie take the stage, I could tell he was a natural. And now, only one short year later, this young comedian has fought through some of the toughest competition to be crowned the “Last Comic Standing” in the Yukon. “I don’t know if I’m the Yukon’s funniest,” says Stalkie. …
Take the lead
Nothing says “lead” like a top hat, white tie and tails, a walking stick and leather-soled taps. Nothing says “lead” like Fred Austerlitz (Fred Astaire). And, of course, nothing says “follow” like a black chiffon gown that floats just above the dance floor in effortless grace. Nothing says “follow” like Virginia Katherine McMath (Ginger Rogers). …
Dispatch from Down Under
Dear Yukoners, Warm greetings from Adelaide, Australia! Bloody hot greetings more like it. Your very own Yukon Gold Comics (Jenny Hamilton, George Maratos, Stephen McGovern, and I) are going through a creative comedy makeover by shaking their pasty white skin cells and useless winter fat amongst tree-hugging koalas and randy kangarooters. Luckily the mad crowds …
Bring the funny … or else
After intense immersion in comedy last winter in Toronto, George Maratos has returned with a program that is making its second appearance Thursday night. The Stand Up Stand Off begins with a number of comics riffing on the same topic for two minutes. The audience decides who will go to the second round to present …
What’s so funny about tourists, money and summer?
The prize, a battered gold pan streaked with red, was held aloft, like a trophy. George Maratos stepped up to the microphone like a gunslinger to announce the comedy Standup Standoff was about to begin. This was no laughing matter. Former champion Tristin Hopper was back to protect his title. The format of the comedy …
What’s so funny about tourists, money and summer? Read More »
Take a walk on the wild side
Imagine taking a roller coaster ride and then writing about it as if you were still on the ride. That is an example of the journalistic for which Hunter S. Thompson was famous. Simply put: He lived it, then wrote about it. This style of journalism often leaves objectivity at home, seeks new adventures, finds …
Goal for Terry Fox Run: lots of participants
This is one event that doesn’t spend a lot of time looking for volunteers. George Maratos, Whitehorse organizer of the Terry Fox Run, says most of the crew from last year is returning because it was so much fun. “We all get along; we all understand the reason for the event,” says Maratos. “[Cancer] touches …
From the publisher’s desk
Time flies when you’re having fun! Our goal at What’s Up Yukon has always been to be a true reflection of Yukon’s living culture. Before we started this little magazine, our family knew there was way more happening here than we could keep track of. It almost seemed as though the Yukon kept its entertainment, …
I conclude that socks and sandals are fashionable …
It’s a walking, talking paradox … well, mostly it’s a walking paradox: If wearing socks with sandals is so wrong, why do so many of us do it? I like to think it’s because we Yukoners are soooo polite. If our tourists do it, whether it be from poor blood circulation, leaving them with cold …
I conclude that socks and sandals are fashionable … Read More »
The Men Behind The Boys
The Guild will open its season this week with the Canadian premiere of The Boys, written by Kris Elgstrand. Elgstrand and Brad Dryborough, the play’s director and Elgstrand’s “longtime production partner,” agree that it’s a simple play. With a lot going on. Each of the “three characters, in one room, in real time” has one …
The brutal, relentless comedy of The Boys
The Quickie: The Boys is not a feel-good drama, an easy date night play, or a relaxing evening. However, it is outstanding acting and thought-provoking theatre. There are some movies I refuse to see. I will not see Saving Private Ryan — the Second World scenes, I’ve heard, are way too realistic. I will not …
Seriously Hilarious
Margaret Thatcher. Genocide. Venereal disease. Personal betrayal. These are not the standard fare of romantic comedy. But in the deft hands of Whitehorse playwright Peter Jickling, they become wickedly funny. With Syphilis: A Love Story, Jickling has hit the exact tone for the rom-com genre. As a love story, it comes perilously close to being …
Step this way for hilarity
We meet our Canadian protagonist, Richard Hannay, played by George Maratos, in his West End London flat. It’s the mid-Thirties and he’s bored. So he decides to go to the theatre. This cures his boredom. It will cure yours. In Hannay’s case, a mysterious woman takes a seat next to him, shoots into the ceiling …
Syphilis Goes South
It sounds nasty. A small group of northerners is scheming to infect a major southern city with Syphilis next month. But there’s no need to alert public health officials. Ramshackle Theatre is merely hoping to spread an infectious dose of laughter to audiences at the Edmonton International Fringe Festival, by means of Whitehorse playwright Peter …
A Brother’s Bond
As cross-country skier Gary Chaplin walked through the arrival gates at Whitehorse International Airport last month, gold, silver and bronze medals hanging around his neck and bagpipes playing, it was hard to determine who was more proud: Garry himself or his older brother.
