Humber Comedy School says goodbye with one Last Laugh

“So... can you really teach comedy?”

Ever since it launched in 2000, Humber Polytechnic’s Comedy Writing and Performance program has prompted people to ask this, often with skepticism.

Now the question will be redundant. The program, the first of its kind in the world, was cancelled earlier this year, and the final class of 11 will be performing its end-of-term sketch and stand-up show tomorrow at Comedy Bar Danforth.

“It sounds a little pretentious, but I was always hoping the school would become the Juilliard of comedy,” says Andrew Clark, the veteran journalist and author who began teaching a history of comedy course part-time at the school in 2000 and became its full-time program co-ordinator and director in 2007.

“In a way, it was a self-fulfilling cycle. If you have a reputation for being good, you attract good people, which means you have good graduates, which attracts more people, etc. I’ve never said to anybody that if you don’t come to Humber you can’t become a comedian. That’s ridiculous. It’s one way.”

From the start, the school had a solid reputation. Throughout the 2000s and 10s, whenever I interviewed a comic for NOW Magazine, they often mentioned they had graduated from the two-year program.

Alumni include some of the country’s funniest folks — in stand-up, writing, acting and hosting, like Nathan Fielder, Steph Tolev, Kurtis Conner, Debra DiGiovanni and Rebecca Addelman.

And instructors included people like Larry Horowitz, Martha Chaves, Robin Duke, Melody Johnston, Christel Bartelse, Paul Bellini and Gary Pearson.

“The program was grounded because besides classes we had a weekly night at Yuk Yuk’s Downtown,” says Clark, whose Stand and Deliver: Inside Canadian Comedy is a must-read for anyone interested in the field.

“Talent reps would come in, but so would actual people who weren’t involved in the comedy scene. There were always a couple of guys there on business and staying at one of the hotels, wandering in. Or young people out for drinks. That was important for young comics.”

Many graduates, says Clark, amusingly compared being in the Humber program to spending time in jail. But in a good way.

“They joked that when criminals go to prison they become better criminals, learning things and making contacts,” says Clark.

“We also had many students from outside the GTA. If they had told their parents that they wanted to move to Toronto to become a stand-up, the parents wouldn’t have paid. But since it was a college, they felt more comfortable. And lots of students forged creative partnerships that lasted years.”

The comedy industry has changed drastically in a quarter century. Once upon a time, comics needed a Comedy Now special or an appearance at Just For Laughs to break through. No longer. YouTube and social media apps have given comics a way to try out material, find audiences around the world and sell tickets.

“In the early years, we’d have students coming in having done plays in high school but no filming,” explains Clark. “Now they come in and they have no live performance experience but they’ve been making all sorts of videos.”

Clark remembers Fielder (Nathan for You, The Rehearsal) from his History of Comedy course.

“He was an extremely good writer of essays,” he says. “I wasn’t the co-ordinator of the program then, but I’d see him filming stuff all the time. That class was really strong, with Rebecca Addelman, Graham Chittenden and Tim Gilbert.”

When Fielder visited the school to talk to students in 2018, he said that when he was here he probably made 100 films.

“He and Levi MacDougall were doing YouTube videos, and that’s how Demetri Martin found them for Important Things with Demetri Martin,” says Clark. “Before studying stand-up here, Kurtis Conner had a quarter million followers on Vine and was a really good student, unassuming and very smart. We had him come back and teach almost immediately after he graduated because we were trying to keep up with what was going on in social media.”

The final show, which Clark is directing, will follow the same format as previous grad shows.

“It’ll be sketch comedy, then some stand-up, and then we’ll finish off with a sketch,” he says. “We had an improv show a couple weeks ago. I find when you mix sketch and improv, it puts a lot of pressure on the improv.”

And what about that question — “So can you teach comedy?” — that people have asked him for nearly 20 years?

“Over time, more schools opened offering similar classes,” he says. “In just Toronto, you’ve got Comedy Bar, which has a thriving school, Bad Dog, So Cap, in addition to improv at Second City.”

Clark estimates that about 15 per cent of Humber grads continued in some aspect of comedy.

“Plus, the skills students learned are pretty portable,” he says. “Standing up and delivering a speech is important in a lot of careers. Comedy is good training in writing rhetoric and logic — but in an illogical way.”

One thing he’d like to see more of is people doing comedy for their own enjoyment — and not necessarily with a professional career in mind.

“Doing improv or taking a course in sketch is really fun and it nourishes a part of the soul — it contributes to the human experience,” he says.

“I’d love to see regular people doing stuff and not worrying about whether they’re going to become the next Jim Carrey. They’ll be happy connecting with people. That’s how I’ve always felt about amateur nights. No matter how terrible a show was, this person got up, got dressed, went out to the club and told material, hoping to connect with others. And there’s something noble and very human about that.”

The Last Laugh: Humber Comedy’s New Faces of 2026 takes place Wednesday, August 19 at 8 pm at Comedy Bar Danforth, 2800 Danforth Ave. Ticket info here