Podcast

Virginia Woodall is Building Community at the Toronto Sketch Comedy Festival

About This Episode

In this episode of Stageworthy, host Phil Rickaby speaks with Virginia Woodall, producer at the Toronto Sketch Comedy Festival.

With the festival entering its 21st year, Virginia shares the story of how she moved from volunteer to producer, how 164 submissions become a 12-day lineup of 78 troupes, and why sketch comedy deserves recognition as its own artistic discipline.

In this episode:

  • The evolution of the Toronto Sketch Comedy Festival
  • How the programming committee evaluates 160+ submissions
  • Why sketch comedy is a distinct art form — not just “theatre adjacent”
  • Community-building within the sketch scene
  • The role of monthly comedy cabarets
  • Why Virginia calls Sketchfest “Comedy Christmas”
  • And more!

Guest: 🎭  Virginia Woodall

Virginia Woodall is a producer at the Toronto Sketch Comedy Festival. She’s an arts administrator and creative producer with a background that bridges the cultural and corporate sectors (she’s a textbook Libra: very balanced). Drawing on years of experience in comedy, live performance, and festival production, she combines strategic thinking with a deep love for the creative process. Her prior work in corporate sales and marketing helps her build buzz, grow partnerships, and develop organizational growth strategies. Virginia is passionate about creating inclusive, accessible, and joyful arts experiences that support artists and strengthen community.

Connect with Virginia & Toronto SketchFest

🌐 Website: torontosketchfest.com

📷 Instagram: @tosketchfest

📷 Instagram: @iamvirginiawoodall

Support Stageworthy:
If you love the show, consider supporting on Patreon: patreon.com/stageworthy
Patrons get early access to episodes, participate in conversations about topics to cover, and more.
With three backer levels: $2, $7, and $20.

Subscribe & Follow:
🎧 Listen on Apple Podcasts | Spotify | Podchaser | Amazon Music | iHeart Radio
📺 Watch on YouTube – Like, subscribe & hit the notification bell!

Transcript

[Phil Rickaby]
Hello, welcome to Stageworthy. I’m Phil Rickaby, the host and producer of this podcast. Stageworthy is Canada’s theatre podcast, and on Stageworthy, I talk to people who make theatre in Canada, from actors to directors to playwrights to stage managers to producers and more.

If they are making theatre in Canada, I’m talking to them. Some of the people I talk to are household names, and the rest are people that I really think you should get to know. Before we get into this week’s episode, let’s get a little housekeeping out of the way.

If you’re watching on YouTube, and did you know that you can watch most episodes on YouTube when there is a video component? It’s on YouTube, and you will find that on the Stageworthy YouTube channel. And also in each episode’s webpage, just scroll down and watch the video if you would like.

You’ll find that just above the transcripts. I do have transcripts, and I’m working on getting as many transcripts for back episodes as I can. It’s a bit of work, but I am working on it.

But if you’re watching on YouTube, and you like what you see, leave a comment. Let me know that you were there. Like the episode, and hit the subscribe button.

And with the subscribe button, make sure you also click that bell icon so that whenever I drop a new episode, you will get a notification that a new episode is available. Also, if you’re listening to the audio version, make sure that you are subscribed. Go to your favourite podcast app, search for Stageworthy, and hit the follow button.

That way, whenever a new episode comes out, it will download directly to your device, you won’t have to do anything, it will just be there. Also, while you’re there, if you are listening on Spotify or Apple podcasts, please consider leaving a rating and a review. Ratings and reviews help new people to find this show because they bump the podcast up in the algorithm on those platforms, making sure that it goes in front of the eyeballs of more people.

So if you enjoy this show, consider leaving a review and a rating, and that way you will help out the show. Speaking of helping out the show, if you want to help me to make Stageworthy, think about joining the Patreon. And I’ll go into a little bit more detail about Patreon at the end of the episode, before I tell you about who the guest is next week.

But for now, just know that if you go to patreon.com/stageworthy, you can become one of the people that helps me to make this show by becoming a patron. This week, my guest is Virginia Woodall. Virginia is a producer at the Toronto Sketch Comedy Festival, and we talk about the history of the festival, we talk about sketch comedy in general, and how it relates to theatre and everything else.

I had a lot of fun talking to Virginia, and I’m looking forward to this year’s Toronto Sketch Comedy Festival. Virginia Woodall, thank you so much for joining me. You are a producer at the Toronto Sketch Comedy Festival, which is coming up.

So my question for you, just for the benefit of anybody who’s unfamiliar with the Toronto Sketch Comedy Festival, what is the Toronto Sketch Comedy Festival?

[Virginia Woodall]
The Toronto Sketch Comedy Festival is a 12-day festival of sketch comedy, built into the name there. In Toronto, we have two theatres, where the festival takes place over 12 days in March this year, March 4th to 15th, 2026. That’s the short answer.

[Phil Rickaby]
The funny thing is, I became aware of the Toronto Sketch Comedy Festival in about 2019, was the first time that I was really exposed to it, which is sad, considering what happened a year later. In Canada, and in Toronto specifically, we have a long history of sketch comedy, of really famous sketch comedy troupes. You’ve got the Second City people, you’ve got Kids in the Hall, you’ve got so many different troupes of sketch comedy.

Where do the people, who audiences will see at the Sketch Comedy Festival this year, where do the groups come from?

[Virginia Woodall]
They come from all over. The festival, like I said, is 12 days. We have 78 troupes in the festival this year, coming majority from Toronto, and I would say around a third coming from 10 different cities from all over the place outside of Toronto.

[Phil Rickaby]
One of the things that I think is interesting about sketch comedy is it has really been an essential part of Canada’s theatre ecosystem, even though it’s often not considered part of legitimate theatre, you know what I mean? Yet, so many people who’ve been involved in sketch have been so important to the world of theatre. In your mind, how is comedy and sketch an essential part of the performing arts ecosystem?

[Virginia Woodall]
That’s a great question. Comedy really often gets plugged in as part of theatre or other live performing arts as a niche and a subcategory within a broader ecosystem. Part of our mandate is to support Canadian comedy writer performers to grow their career, and a big part of that is giving them a opportunity.

So, sketch comedy is happening throughout the year, and we’re really trying to develop the audience for that and develop the artists for that within its own category. So, I would take comedy and put it as its own fine arts category, separate from theatre, you know, as its own unique discipline. Often it’s looked at as a lighter discipline or an easier one, when often it has the same amount of work that goes into any other live performance going into sketch comedy to really reflect the world around us and get the laughter.

[Phil Rickaby]
When I think about people who have done sketch comedy in this city, almost all of them come back to their theatre careers at some point. I think of some of the most famous sketch comedians who went on to do SCTV, who were before that a part of the original cast of Toronto’s production of Godspell, which essentially laid the groundwork for Canadian theatre in this country as something that could be successful. It’s hard to deny that as part of our foundation.

How long have you been involved with the sketch community, and how did you first get involved?

[Virginia Woodall]
I started as a volunteer with the Toronto Sketch Comedy Festival back in 2013. For many years, I was a volunteer, I was a patron, I was an avid comedy goer in the city of Toronto. Volunteering, I was self-producing other shows at fringe festivals and things like that in the city as well.

I came to work for the festival after the pandemic, so in our return to the live stage in 2023, I joined as a box office coordinator and have grown as part of the producing team over the last four years. What does a producer at the Toronto Comedy Festival do? What doesn’t a producer do at the Toronto Sketch Comedy Festival?

There’s the artistic side of producing that comes with the curation of the festival. Part of my role as a producer with the festival is overseeing our programming committee. We curate five different people, experts within the community, often alumni of the festival, people that are on the next level of their career, more established comedy artists.

Five committee members watch all of the submissions every year, along with myself. This year, it was 164 submissions. We watch everything, recordings in the back of the room, not the way live comedy is meant to be watched, but we do our best to see through that and then end up curating what becomes the festival.

That comes from largely the recommendations of the programming committee and then an element of outreach to our featured performers in the festival. There’s a big artistic part that goes into producing of what does a festival look like as a whole? What does that map look like, the schedule, the calendar?

To me, that’s a spreadsheet, but there’s a bit of a creative element. The majority of the shows in the Toronto Sketch Comedy Festival are double bills. What I mean by that in a sketch comedy context is we’ll have an hour, 75-minute show where the first half is a 30-minute set from one sketch comedy troupe.

The second half is a unique 30-minute set from another sketch comedy troupe. What I really enjoy is trying to piece together who pairs well together, whose audiences are going to complement each other, what comedy tastes and comedy styles are going to fit well together in a contrast or a complementary kind of way. That’s what I get my big joy out of is going through the 78 troupes that end up the festival and deciding who’s going to pair well together.

That’s the artistic side of the producing for me, which involves watching shows throughout the year and getting out and seeing sketch comedy.

[Phil Rickaby]
Curation is a huge part of it, as you’re describing it. Not only from making a decision about who’s going to be in, but pairing them together, as you described. How do those decisions get made?

First off, what kind of criteria are you looking for when you’re watching a hundred or more videos of sketch comedy troupes? What kind of decisions are you making to put them together? That jigsaw puzzle is not easy.

Walk me through some of those things, some of those decisions.

[Virginia Woodall]
It’s a wild process that is a little complex in all of the different pieces that we consider. We program a range of emerging and established performers, so you don’t have to have been performing sketch comedy for years and years and years at a high level. Part of what we’re trying to do as a festival is give performers that opportunity, and then continue to give them that opportunity.

We’re looking to see, can you set up a premise? Can you heighten a scene? Can you develop strong characters?

What we consider sketch comedy is so broad that it’s really hard to compare one to another. It can be solo sketch comedy, musical sketch comedy, that’s really broadened over the years to include puppetry, clown, game shows. Really, anything that’s pre-written and short bits, short can be subjective as well, that is performed live on stage.

I would say I’d fall under that umbrella, so we’ve seen drag comedy, puppetry. There’s a dance troupe that has come in the past couple of years from Chicago, comedy dance.

[Phil Rickaby]
Comedy dance, that’s fun.

[Virginia Woodall]
Maybe I shouldn’t say this as a producer, but they are one of my favourites. It’s hard.

[Phil Rickaby]
You’ve got to have favourites. It always comes down to that whole, I’m a producer, should I admit that I have favourites? You got to sometimes admit that there are things you love to watch, right?

[Virginia Woodall]
When we consider what troupes get selected out of that big list of 164, there’s the basics of, can you sustain a 30-minute set on a double bill? Everyone on the programming committee will watch everything because comedy can be so subjective. We ask everyone to take their personal sense of humor out of it and to take the quality of the tape out of it, because it’s not about that, to try and see through that and say, do we think this would complement the festival?

From there, each committee member will rank all of their submissions in a recommend-a-maybe or a pass for this year. We compile everyone’s recommendations and we chat for several hours through everything. Then I take away all of the recommendations that we leave that meeting with, and I’m balancing unique perspectives, diverse perspectives, diverse comedy styles, and trying to balance the local acts with the visiting acts.

Then sometimes it really comes down to the pairings and the availability and some of the logistics. There’s so much incredible talent that we see in our submission pool every year.

[Phil Rickaby]
When you’re having that several-hours-long conversation about everybody’s giving their notes, their opinions, how passionate are the people who are making these recommendations? Do you ever have heated disagreements or people fighting for one group over another? I guess what I’m trying to say is, is it a dramatic, long conversation?

[Virginia Woodall]
It’s long. I wouldn’t say dramatic. It does get passionate.

It gets passionate, especially when someone’s tape isn’t representative of what you know you can do. With our programming committee being people that are really established in the community, they’re often people that are out at comedy shows throughout the year and maybe touring their own shows at other festivals. Maybe they’ve seen some of the visiting acts in person.

What we’ll see is a really strong passionate advocation for someone whose tape maybe doesn’t match what we know they can do on stage.

[Phil Rickaby]
Does that kind of thing carry weight? If there’s somebody who’s like, no, no, no, you got to admit. You got to see these guys that killed.

The tape isn’t the best. Does that help to sway the committee?

[Virginia Woodall]
If it was on a maybe, on an edge, it absolutely can. That’s part of why we have a different programming committee every year. So this was my third year overseeing the programming committee, and it’s really interesting to see myself seeing a lot of the same submissions or submissions from the same groups, rather, year over year.

It really makes me value the different perspectives and hearing what different colleagues of mine, different fellow artists in the community feel about someone or react to a particular submission.

[Phil Rickaby]
Did I, a little while ago, hear you say that there are sketch entries that might be like game shows?

[Virginia Woodall]
We’ve seen that in the past.

[Phil Rickaby]
Is that something that has proliferated over the last few years with the explosion of the popularity of things like Taskmaster from the UK or the programming on Dropout.tv? If more people are thinking in that way, or is that just because there’s so much that comes in that eventually you’re going to hit a game show type thing?

[Virginia Woodall]
I think it’s a bit of volume, and we’ve seen it. It’s not new and recent to the Dropout.tv and Taskmaster and all of those elements. Because it’s live, we see a little bit less of that.

It’s just that we have a really broad definition of what is sketch. We’ll see people reach out and say, is this sketch? I’ll say, well, let’s let the programming committee decide this year.

[Phil Rickaby]
That’s kind of fun, though. If you don’t have that, if you leave it entirely up to the programming committee, then there isn’t a hard and fast rule about or a codified, this is what sketch is. It gives it more freedom and allows more diversity in what might be on the stage.

[Virginia Woodall]
Exactly. We don’t want to be prescriptive of what any artist is creating. Sketch comedy is an art form.

It’s so experimental to begin with. We don’t want to limit that experimentation and come in with too many preconceived notions of what it means to be a sketch comedy game show, or to be clown versus sketch comedy. One of the places where it gets a little bit more difficult is if something’s overlapping a little bit more heavily with improv or with stand-up and storytelling, where those are more traditional disciplines.

The reason they’ve not historically been programmed in this festival is because there have been so many other performance opportunities for those comedy formats.

[Phil Rickaby]
It’s true. Outside of something like Sketchfest, I don’t know where I would go outside of, I don’t know, Second City or maybe occasionally Bad Dog, but to see sketch comedy that isn’t improv adjacent. I think the days of kids in the hall having a standing set on Sundays at the Rivoli are long gone.

Outside of Sketchfest, where would somebody go to see some of these acts?

[Virginia Woodall]
I’ll make my prediction now that we’re coming to a turn on that and seeing a resurgence of sketch comedy, especially with the rise of TikTok and all the digital short form, that is starting to bleed back into the live sketch comedy scene here in Toronto. There are a number of monthly shows, not as many as there were before the pandemic. There’s Sketch at the Rivoli, which is kind of like the sketch comedy open mic of the city.

So you mentioned the kids in the hall performing at the Rivoli. It’s such an iconic comedy stage. So it’s a great place for this open mic that doesn’t have a curation barrier.

They’re really open to anybody in the community. You send them a DM on Instagram and they program you for a five minute set. As long as there is room, I’ve seen anywhere from I think as low as eight different acts on the show to as many as 16.

It will probably be done by the time that this episode airs, but in January and February every year, there’s a sketch comedy competition called Sketch to the Death that takes place every Wednesday in January and February.

[Phil Rickaby]
A Sketch to the Death?

[Virginia Woodall]
Like a sketch comedy. The regular season, if you think of Sketchfest as the playoffs, like this competition is such a great build build up. And they actually have a showcase that they’ll have their best newcomer and their winner and some of their highlights from the competition in the festival on Thursday, March 5th at 11pm.

It’s such an incredible competition. They’ll see 64 different acts just here in Toronto competing for one title at the end of the day of the champion of Sketch to the Death.

[Phil Rickaby]
Is that essentially like a bracketed sketch comedy tournament?

[Virginia Woodall]
It is. There’s so many troupes this year that round one took four weeks. And each week there was 15 or 16 acts on the bill.

So you’d see eight have an intermission, see another eight. And the variety, the quality. Today is the only day that I’m missing in the entire competition this year.

And I’ve been to all of round one. And it’s just, there isn’t one that I felt like failed or didn’t hit a mark and get a laugh and achieve what they were going for.

[Phil Rickaby]
That’s pretty incredible.

[Virginia Woodall]
They can’t all live though.

[Phil Rickaby]
No, I mean, yeah. Somebody has to, when it’s a bracket, someone must win and someone must die. Essentially, right?

Somebody moves on, somebody doesn’t. And that’s the way it is. But somebody who kills but doesn’t move on still has the satisfaction of having killed in the room, right?

Yeah.

[Virginia Woodall]
Yes. And just the power of the laughter, especially because it’s a room filled with so many artists with 16 acts on the bill and sketch comedy, that can mean many, many people. It’s a full, warm, generous room and such a community-building event for sketch comedians in Toronto.

[Phil Rickaby]
Yeah, for sure. You mentioned community a couple of times, and I’m curious about how you see the importance of community in the world of sketch in the city.

[Virginia Woodall]
Sketch as an art form is so collaborative. Artists often working together, you have solo sketch, but even then a lot of solo sketch comedians will come together to work on their bits and what they’re doing. I think that community builds every aspect of the different art forms that we have.

And one of the benefits of sketch comedy is that it can be so open. And I think it’s so important for us to be welcoming to encourage the growth of all of the artists. Rising tides lift all boats.

So the more people that are working together and get to know each other, the more that will do to build the art form for everybody. There’s that element. And then I think it’s encouraging to work together and be supportive outside of a school environment.

There’s the courses at Second City, which again, a little bit more improv focused, but improv with the end goal of sketch comedy. Bad Dog Theatre, more focused on improv. And then Comedy Bar Pro has been diving into more sketch troupes and development.

So if you’re not in one of these school programs, it can be hard to find the other people. It can be intimidating to go out and grow in that mid-career phase as a sketch comedian of, okay, I’ve finished these school programs, now what? And I think that’s where an open community that’s loud is so, so critical to artists not giving up in the middle.

[Phil Rickaby]
Yeah. I mean, you mentioned doing some fringe producing and things like that. One of the things that Toronto Fringe has, and many fringes have, is a place where there’s the fringe tent, the bar.

There’s a place where people gather and can socialize. And it’s a great way to bring the community together. It’s one of my favourite things about those festivals.

Is there an equivalent at Sketchfest for the artists who are performing to mingle and complement each other and get to just talk and nerd out over Sketch?

[Virginia Woodall]
Absolutely. There’s the public-facing side of the festival, which are the 72 shows where all the troupes are performing. The artist-facing side, there’s some structure to it.

With our Learning and Fun program, we have a series of panels and workshops. And then there’s also an industry mixer that we run sponsored by Counterfeit Productions. We gather 75 artists in a cramped little gallery space at the theatre centre and force the artists to shake hands with industry members.

So often it’s the Sketchfest staff walking around, noticing industry members talking to each other. So it could be someone from a production company, a broadcasting organization, different producers throughout the city. We see them tend to gather together, and then the artists tend to gather together.

And we will pull them together and say, oh, you should meet each other. And that’s where some of the handshakes can happen. And then we have a few artist parties where the industry isn’t there.

People don’t have to be on their best behaviour for industry and networking. And we do that both at brunch for people that prefer the daytime and late night event on the Saturday nights after our shows finish. That’s called Sketch Train, which is kind of like, I would liken it to karaoke for sketch comedy.

Everybody performs their favourite sketch for each other, their goofiest sketch that they might not do for an audience, but it’s a little bit inside baseball for each other.

[Phil Rickaby]
So it’s essentially the aristocrats for sketch comedy. For those who know that bit from stand-up.

[Virginia Woodall]
I don’t know that I know that bit.

[Phil Rickaby]
Oh, OK. It’s like a terrible, horrible joke that comedians just tell each other. There was a documentary made about it, and each comedian trying to gross out each other.

But it’s a thing they never do on stage or rarely do on stage. It’s just something they do for themselves. So this is kind of like sketch artists doing the thing they might not do on stage, but it’s the thing they do for each other.

[Virginia Woodall]
Yes. Yeah, they do for each other. Their silliest stuff, their fan favourite for the people inside.

We get a bunch of snacks and pizza and we stay there until we have to lock the doors behind us at 2 a.m. And it’s just such a great way for the artists to get to know each other. And we have an award that we present at the second event in the weekend called the Sketchiest Sketch Truth.

[Phil Rickaby]
And do you win that? Is that just judged on that night?

[Virginia Woodall]
On the last Saturday of the festival, it’s peer nominated. Write in your nominations and your votes throughout the night. We collect all of the write-in ballots and we tally it up at about 1.30 in the morning and present the Sketchiest Sketch Truth Award. It was created by a sketch troupe called The Understudies when they, I’ll say air quotes, retired. They’re back now. They retired and they left a fund, a small pot, that would go to the Sketchiest Sketch Truth.

So it’s an award that comes with the honour and the burden of producing the Sketchiest Sketch Show. At some point throughout the year before the next Sketchfest, you can use the funds in the pot to produce the show, can hire a director, get your props and costumes and wig, rent the venue, and produce a really fun, sketchy sketch show. And then any proceeds and profits from that show become the pot for next year’s Sketchiest Sketch Truth to produce their show.

[Phil Rickaby]
Now I understand the honour and the burden. I understand the burden. The burden is you have to set up the next Sketchiest Sketch Truth for their success when they produce the show next year.

[Virginia Woodall]
Yes, I think that might be my favourite award in the festival. Peer-nominated at SketchTrain. And then with the fun benefit of I get another sketch show I get to go to throughout the year.

[Phil Rickaby]
I mean, that’s totally like you get to benefit. You don’t have to make the decisions and you get to go to another sketch show that is sort of like the fruits of Toronto Sketchfest later on in the year, which is a great benefit.

[Virginia Woodall]
Yes, I’ve been to three of them now and I’ve had so much fun at every Sketchiest Sketch show.

[Phil Rickaby]
Could I? I mean, here’s the thing, because I think that, you know, this show has a mix of people, people in the industry, people outside of the industry. And there is a difference between improv and sketch that I think isn’t always clear.

Could you identify what makes sketch over improv? What is the difference between the two?

[Virginia Woodall]
Absolutely. To me, it’s very clear. I’m very much inside.

Improv is not written ahead of time. You show up on stage with lots of preparation of what it takes to build a character in a scene, in a story, in a relationship. And it’s entirely made up on the stage in front of the audience without preconceived notions.

Sketch comedy, really the only piece that’s a qualifier, as far as I’m concerned for sketch comedy, is that it is pre-written. There is something written on paper and mapped out ahead of getting on stage that can range in the structure and how strict it’s written, how closely it’s followed to the script. But it’s written ahead of time and prepared and then presented on stage somewhat close to how it was written.

[Phil Rickaby]
But sketch can be developed through improv, is that right?

[Virginia Woodall]
Yes, that’s the second city method of developing the sketch comedy that you see on their main stage is devised through improvisation and continuous development and practice until you come to a final sketch. One of the many methods of developing sketch comedy.

[Phil Rickaby]
I mean, I’m sure there are as many methods as there are troupes, right? I was actually just thinking about the first time that I saw Kids in the Hall. It was at a massive venue.

A fundraiser back in the day at Convocation Hall. And they did sketches throughout. And I think they had a mix of we improv and some we write.

And then Scott Thompson came out and did Buddy Cole. And it was the first time most people in that room had ever seen that character. And actually, nobody knew what was happening because he entered from the back and hopped up on the stage and just started talking.

And I think that’s something that’s written. And some other stuff was stuff that was improvised or came out of improv. So there are so many different ways of creating a sketch and to varying degrees, like even within one troupe, it could be that way.

[Virginia Woodall]
Absolutely. And that’s part of the beauty of it, how broad ranging it is. And one of the reasons that we believe it should be a unique discipline because there’s so much variety and not just sketch comedy, but comedy as a whole has so much breadth and variety as an art form.

[Phil Rickaby]
Yeah. Is there Sketchfest programming all year round or is it just during the official Sketchfest?

[Virginia Woodall]
Our main event is the Sketch Comedy Festival, March 4th to 15th. We run a more or less monthly sketch comedy cabaret that’s a little bit more, a little bit looser for stage time and more open to artists rather than curated. So that is meant to be, again, I’ll say the word community that we could probably bet how many times I’ll say that in this conversation.

It’s a place for community to happen, both to give our audience another place to go and the artists another place to play on stage and develop their work throughout the year. So that’s Sketchfest Comedy Cabaret that takes place at Video Cabaret in Leslieville. We venture over to the East End for that.

And then we also have our sister festival that started 11 years ago now, Comedy Country out in Prince Edward County, bringing comedy to rural places. So our focus shifts a little bit throughout the year from the festival in March to our monthly shows in Toronto and our marquee programming out in Prince Edward County.

[Phil Rickaby]
Yeah. Are there Sketchfests in other parts of the country that you’ve sort of Toronto Sketchfest connects with to like help find other artists and things like that? Or is it Sketchfest, the Toronto Sketchfest, the Sketch Festival?

[Virginia Woodall]
There are many comedy festivals and more and more coming actually across North America. Recently in the last year, Damian Nelson, arts consultant here in Toronto, along with a producer in Washington, D.C., E.K., they formed what is called the Sketch Comedy Festival Association. And they’ve reached out to all of the Sketch Comedy Festivals in North America and brought us together for about quarterly meetings where we’re sharing resources, sharing knowledge, and we’re welcoming new festivals as they form.

So this year, 2026, will be the first year for the Dallas Sketch Comedy Festival, and we’ve welcomed them into the fold of the Sketch Comedy Festival Association. In Canada, Toronto is the oldest, very closely followed by Montreal Sketchfest, which I believe is celebrating their 19th year this year. We’re in our 21st in Toronto.

And then there is a fresher comedy festival in St. John’s, Newfoundland that I had the pleasure of attending in May of this year, the Newfoundland and Labrador Sketch Comedy Festival, which celebrated its second year this year, or last, in 2025.

[Phil Rickaby]
With different sketch scenes, sketch communities in Toronto, Montreal, Newfoundland, just to name three. And having been able to go to Newfoundland and see that, do you find that the sensibility is different in each place? Are there distinct styles or variations that you can see in each city that marks it as different from, say, Toronto and Montreal and St. John’s?

[Virginia Woodall]
Yes, there are different sensibilities in different regions with sketch comedy. Toronto has a lot of schooling. People, I’m going to very broadly state, they follow structure, and not all of them.

There’s so much sketch in Toronto that there’s a little bit of everything, but there is a lot more structure here in the way that artists can learn about developing their comedy and their tone and their voice. So you see a broad range here in Toronto, and by far the most from a volume perspective of sketch comedy. And then I’ll go across the calendar year.

The next one after Toronto is Montreal Sketch Comedy Festival, which I’ve went to the last two years. They have a very physical comedy, which is so interesting. I don’t know where that comes from in a city, that it is so physical.

Some people will describe it as messy, but I don’t like that. I think it’s just that it’s physical comedy. They do have a splash zone.

They warn you if you’re in the first two rows, you will probably get hit by some sort of liquid at some point during one of their shows, which is true. I’ve sat in the front row and gotten wet. And it’s a bit of a personality.

It’s such a high energy. It’s the community coming together in Théâtre Saint-Quentin, a really old theatre in Montreal. If you’ve performed comedy in Montreal, you’ll know it.

It’s a hub there for improv and sketch in the city. And I would just say the personality is so physical, and it feels like a party when you’re there. With everybody coming together, it’s so welcoming.

And then Newfoundland. It’s incredible to me that it’s 2026 will only be their third year with the Sketch Comedy Festival because they have such a long and rich history of sketch comedy in St. John’s. Being so isolated from the rest of Canada, they created so much of their own art.

And I don’t think I fully understood the scale of that until I went and visited and saw the festival, learning a lot. I had the pleasure of seeing Andy Jones and bought his book. And just to see the history coming from a different region of Canada that’s so different from what I’ve experienced here.

And so much of the comedy is for them and I’ll call it rural life there in St. John’s, the island life.

[Phil Rickaby]
As you were mentioning St. John’s, I was thinking about Codco because I remember when Codco was on the CBC. At the time, it was kind of like must-see television. And how that group eventually gave us This Hour Has 22 Minutes, and how they’ve become so important to comedy in Canada just generally.

So kind of taking the torch from the air farce as well. And as you mentioned, Montreal, and that’s such a party, it does not surprise me because the Montreal Fringe is a party. And it’s the thing that everybody talks about is how Montreal puts on a festival.

When you’re connecting with these two festivals, is it hard to take off your producer’s hat and just sit and enjoy it? Or is the producer always active in the back of your head?

[Virginia Woodall]
At first, when I went to other comedy shows, it was a little bit difficult. Now it’s just the most blissful feeling to go to another person’s comedy festival where I can sit and enjoy all of it without thinking about the next thing to do. In St. John’s in particular, it was one venue. I could watch everything. I missed the first day. I got in on the Wednesday.

Wednesday to Sunday, I called it my sketch comedy vacation. Because I’d gone to Montreal, I came home for one day before I flew to St. John’s. And I just saw so much without having to worry about the logistics or my email.

To be able to just be so present in the moment and soak it in that that was my one priority for 11 days straight was such a privilege.

[Phil Rickaby]
That’s kind of a dream, isn’t it? To have that kind of focus time to just enjoy it?

[Virginia Woodall]
It was pretty incredible. It’s what I dream of. I hope that I’ll have that opportunity every year.

The next on my list are a little bit less exclusively sketch comedy focused. Grindstone Comedy Festival in Edmonton. That’s a big one, which has a big sketch comedy component.

And the Winnipeg Comedy Festival, of course, which is more standup focused, but again, includes some sketch comedy within their program.

[Phil Rickaby]
I mean, I always used to see a bit of sketch comedy within Montreal’s Just for Laughs festival when it was operating too. So it wasn’t just standup. It was often a mixed bag of like musical comedy and sketch and all kinds of things.

It’s kind of fascinating to see how all of these different comedy festivals can incorporate sketch in amongst all the other forms.

[Virginia Woodall]
Yes, I think it’s wonderful that sketch comedy is included in all of those other festivals. It’s interesting to me as an audience member. I don’t know what it is.

It feels a little jarring to have standup comedy juxtaposed against sketch comedy. Something I run up against with the people in my life that are not in the comedy or the arts world is saying that I’m a comedy producer. The first thing that I think people think of is standup comedy.

And anytime anyone’s naming their favourite comedian, that’s usually who it is. Every now and then you’ll get a comedian from Saturday Night Live named in the mix. But for the most part, that’s the first thought.

So I think it’s really important that when we’re having audiences walk into a room for a sketch comedy show, that we prepare them for it and welcome them into the give a little bit of a transition moment for a general audience that sketch comedy is scripted bits and it will look different and feel different than standup comedy. Same with improv. It needs an introduction.

[Phil Rickaby]
For sure. Absolutely. Speaking of preparing an audience with this year’s Toronto Sketch Comedy Festival being imminent, what can an audience expect from this year’s sketch fest?

[Virginia Woodall]
Only sketch comedy. They’ll expect only sketch comedy for 12 days straight. And I want an audience to think about Saturday Night Live.

Think about This Hour Has 22 Minutes. Think about SCTV. And the audience that’s more online, think about Dropout a little bit more or TikToks, where they’re scripted bits and people are putting on characters and go in with an open mind.

That’s what I want audiences to do is come in with an open mind and ready to laugh.

[Phil Rickaby]
I’m going to ask you a difficult question. And because, again, we’ve sort of like you, we alluded to the fact that as a producer, you don’t have favourites except for the, there’s the dance troupe out of Chicago. Are there any groups that you could name that are, or any nights that are must-see for an audience that somebody had?

Like, I can go one night, or I can go two nights. Are there any groups that you would say are, this is who you have to see or this is the night you have to go?

[Virginia Woodall]
I do feel like that’s a little bit of an impossible question.

[Phil Rickaby]
I know it’s not a fair question to ask. I have to ask it, but I know it’s not really fair. And because I know you can’t like name, you can’t name which of your children is your favourite.

And it’s an unfair question, but I still stand by it. Is, are there any groups that somebody might’ve heard of or who’s, who’s, who are particularly unique you are most looking forward to this year? Let’s put it that way rather than like favourites or anything like that.

[Virginia Woodall]
Okay. Yes. There, there are troupes that I’m looking forward to.

So there’s troupes that I’m looking forward to that I’ve seen for years. And that would be our featured series. It’s a little bit of an out because it’s in the name that they’re featured in the festival.

They’ll be some of the more recognizable faces to people in general audiences that may have seen them at fringe or in other venues and other festivals across Canada. So first we have Sex T-Rex with their hit show crime after crime after crime.

[Phil Rickaby]
I’m going to stop you right there because first off Sex T-Rex. I’ve been a fan of theirs since I first saw them and crime after crime after crime is a magnum opus, the physical comedy, just everything that’s in it. I will sing the praises of that show.

Every time I get the opportunity to.

[Virginia Woodall]
It’s such an incredible mashup of genre and physical comedy and the beats and the pacing is so incredible with everything that they do. But in particular, crime after crime has such a soft spot in my heart as maybe one of my favourite live performances of all time.

[Phil Rickaby]
Yeah. And it’s hard to say it’s hard to look at their collection of shows and say, I have a favourite, but I think crime after crime after crime might be my favourite of theirs.

[Virginia Woodall]
Yes, they won the best of fest at Toronto’s sketch fest in 2019 with a noir in beige, which was the first act of crime after crime earlier in its development. And so it’s such a great story for us to have them. I mean, they’ve come back to the festival with different shows many times.

They’re a festival favourite. Our audiences know them. The general audiences know them.

But to have them come back with crime after crime. Through that journey is really special to us. And I’m so excited, March 6th and March 7th, to have the opportunity to present that to another three hundred and twenty audience members across the two nights as it will undoubtedly sell out.

[Phil Rickaby]
One hundred percent. Who else is in the featured series? I interrupted because I got excited about sex T-Rex, but who else can people see in the featured series?

[Virginia Woodall]
We have the Tita Collective, another very well-known Toronto sketch comedy troupe, the Tita Collective coming back to the festival again. It’s a very full circle moment for us this year, presenting Tita jokes. So the Tita Collective is a collective of Filipina artists presenting sketch comedy for their Titas.

So family musical comedy, very heartwarming and connected, easy to connect to comedy.

[Phil Rickaby]
Yeah, I think Tita jokes was their first and it was the first time that I think I was aware of them. They turned it around all over the place. So it’s really great, again, to see the Tita Collective come to Toronto Sketch Fest.

[Virginia Woodall]
Yes. And so all of our featured series, it’s a full hour. So there’s too much of these troupes to fit down into 30 minutes.

And so they’ll have the full hour, 75 minutes or so just for those shows. The next one in our featured series is John Blair, a comedy show at the end of the world. It’s his Toronto premiere with this show.

He traveled in 2025 to Edmonton Fringe with a sellout, an incredible production at Edmonton Fringe. And so I’m so thrilled to be able to see it here in Toronto at the Toronto premiere on Friday the 13th in March. Easy one to remember.

[Phil Rickaby]
Yeah, I’ll say John Blair’s presence as well as less so in Toronto, but in almost every other place that he’s that he goes, he is a fringe royalty. He is a stalwart. People are like, people look for his shows.

So I think it’s great to have him get this moment at Sketch Fest just to be able to come back, come to Toronto with something and have that featured moment. I think it’s really great for him as well.

[Virginia Woodall]
Yeah, Sketch Fest royalty for sure here in Toronto.

[Phil Rickaby]
100%. I just think that if he goes to any other fringe in Canada, it’s like everybody knows his name. And I think the downside is that sometimes in Toronto, they don’t, but they should.

100%.

[Virginia Woodall]
They should absolutely know John Blair’s name.

[Phil Rickaby]
Yeah.

[Virginia Woodall]
And we have one last show in our featured series this year. It’s their third year doing Toronto Sketch Comedy Festival. They won our Audience Choice Award in their first year in the festival in 2024.

It’s BDB comedy with their Mandarin Sketch Comedy Night. So it’s a sketch comedy show presented entirely in Mandarin. And they do the incredible feat as anyone in any live performance discipline will know.

They do live subtitles, live captioning for their show to make it accessible to English speakers as well and our general Sketch Fest audience. So it’s such a great bridging of cultures and showing that comedy transcends language. And that was a really interesting one back in 2024 to adjudicate with our programming committee.

We saw the submission. It was, as you would expect, entirely in Mandarin. It didn’t have subtitles on the video that they had submitted.

And so we were having that big discussion as a programming committee, and everyone had said maybe because we all watched the video and none of us spoke Mandarin. We have a diverse programming committee that year. We all happen to be English speakers and none of us Mandarin speakers.

And we watched it. The audience laughed, huge laughs from the audience. The physical comedy was really clear without understanding the language.

You could get some of the jokes a little bit. And then you could tell that one of the sketches was on a subway train and another one was related to an alarm clock. And you could see the pacing.

It was really interesting to see how much you could tell even without understanding the language. And then we got a script from them for just for those 10 minutes to have a fair adjudication against the other tricks in the festival. And of course, they were then selected and programmed.

And we don’t program that one on a double bill. They’ve had a full hour every year. And this year, we’ve put them in the featured series to really honor the impact that they’ve had on the festival.

[Phil Rickaby]
The live subtitles is a pretty difficult thing. Is that something, have they been able to do that each year, or is that something that’s relatively new?

[Virginia Woodall]
They’ve done it all three years that they’ve been, or they’ve done it the last two and they’ll do it this third year in the festival. It was really incredible and welcoming of them to do that from the beginning since they’ve been participating.

[Phil Rickaby]
Amazing. And are they based in China? Are they based in Toronto?

Where does that group come from?

[Virginia Woodall]
They are based in Toronto. And if we have any Mandarin speakers listening to us in this conversation, you can find them throughout the year. You can find them on Instagram at BDB Comedy.

They’re doing comedy and improv in Mandarin throughout the year here in Toronto.

[Phil Rickaby]
That’s incredible. I mean, there’s so many things that you don’t even know about that are going on in the city. And it’s always so great to just like, oh, I didn’t know that existed.

It’s pretty incredible. Here’s another difficult question. And this is, but there are a couple of outs in this question.

What are you most looking forward to about this year’s Sketch Fest?

[Virginia Woodall]
In the Sketch Fest community, there’s a lot of us that will call it comedy Christmas. I treat Sketch Fest, to me, it’s my biggest holiday of the year, even though it’s the most work I’ll ever do. And the longest days, it’s what I look forward to.

I used to have a corporate career that I balanced and I would take vacation time just back as a volunteer and as a patron for Sketch Fest. And now, the fact that I get to do this as my job, and it’s not vacation time, this was vacation for me, was working on this festival, attending this festival. So all of the pieces of that are included on what I’m looking forward to this year.

There is the talent in the shows on stage, of course, that is such a delight to see so much incredible sketch comedy concentrated together. But it’s not just watching sketch comedy on my own. It’s not going to a show in the back of a bar on a Tuesday night.

I’m there and laughing next to my community and the people that I know, the people that become part of the community. And I think there’s something so intimate about sharing laughter together and shared humor when watching something on stage. And it’s such a bonding experience that heightens the festival from an audience experience perspective.

So there’s that element and then just getting to see everybody. There’s so many social events throughout the day. There’s so much learning.

Every workshop is so incredible. I want to go to all of them. I just don’t think I’ll sleep for 12 days straight.

[Phil Rickaby]
Are you producing? You’re going to have to sleep somewhere sometime. So something has to has to be the thing that you don’t go to.

[Virginia Woodall]
Well, and with four theatres this year, it’s not possible to see everything, which is both a blessing that there’s so much incredible talent and an audience to support it. And one of the biggest challenges of the festival and you have to decide with not being able to quite fit in everything. At most, troupes will have two performance slots.

So I know that people will work their fringe schedules to the max with any fringe festival. And I’ve done that as well to try and fit in as much as you can. With eight performances in two weeks, you have a little bit more flexibility to fit in the top acts on your list, the top shows on your list.

It’s so hard with two and often only one show from a troupe to see everybody. So that would be the biggest challenge for the festival. I’ll answer the opposite of your question.

[Phil Rickaby]
For sure. I mean, sure. Absolutely.

Absolutely. I think that’s awesome. I think you’ve done a great job of sharing Toronto Sketch Fest with us today.

I want to thank you for coming on and talking about that. And Virginia, thank you so much for being on Stageworthy.

[Virginia Woodall]
Thank you, Phil. It’s been a delight.

[Phil Rickaby]
Thank you for listening to this episode of Stageworthy. Before I get into who my guest is next week, I want to talk a little bit about Patreon. Just like I promised I would at the start of this show.

I can’t make this show without the people who’ve chosen to back me on Patreon. Even though this podcast is available to you for free, it still costs money to make the show. It costs money to host a website, to host the audio files and distribution of the podcast to all of the platforms.

It costs money for editing software, for transcripts, which I mentioned earlier as well. I do have transcripts on every episode and I’m working on the back catalog. And that costs money as well.

So there are all these little things that pile up and cost money. And I don’t have advertising, I don’t have sponsors. So the Patreon is the only way that I’m able to be supported in making this.

And for most of the 10 years of this podcast, I’ve done that on my own. It paid for this podcast out of my own pocket. But when I was talking about bringing it back, I knew that I needed help and I needed people to back the podcast to be able to keep doing it.

And so if you enjoy this podcast, if you enjoy Stageworthy, and you want to be one of the people that helps me to make this show, please become a patron by going to patreon.com/stageworthy and join the Patreon. Patrons get early access to episodes, we’ll have conversations about interesting topics in theatre. And of course, the more people who join the Patreon, the more I can offer to the patrons.

So if you want to help me to make this podcast, if you value Stageworthy, please become a patron, go to patreon.com/stageworthy and join the Patreon. My guest next week is Emily Jeffers. And Emily is probably most known for her character Bitty Bat, which I saw at the Toronto Fringe Festival last year.

I had a great conversation with Emily and I can’t wait for you to hear it next week on Stageworthy.