By Matthew Robertson
When Gavin Stephens was in Grade 12, he attended a show at Toronto’s Massey Hall that would define the trajectory of his life. He watched comedians Sinbad and George Wallace take the stage, his first time attending a stand-up comedy show.
“It was like oh, I can do that. That’s a thing you can do,” recalled Stephens.
Gavin Stephens stands outside Absolute Comedy on Tuesday afternoon. He will perform at the venue nightly until Sunday. Photo: Matthew Robertson.
One month after graduating high school, Stephens would take to the stand-up stage for the first time. Years later, he would perform on the Massey Hall stage himself.
This week, he is in Ottawa to headline at Absolute Comedy nightly until Sunday and at Moose McGuire’s Monday night.
Performing wasn’t foreign to Stephens when he got on a stand-up stage for the first time. Growing up, he gravitated toward entertaining.
“I was always a class clown kind of performer, and I was into acting and stuff like that. Anything in entertainment, I wanted to do,” he said.
Although stand-up was not on his radar at a young age, television comedy interested him. He was a big fan of SCTV, a 1970s and 1980s Canadian sketch comedy series created as an offshoot of the Second City comedy troupe, starring names like Martin Short and Catherine O’Hara, plus other sketch shows.
“I would watch Mr. Show and Second City, and all that stuff, in my basement,” he said. That’s what I thought I’d be going into.”
Although Stephens has performed in sketch comedy, including appearing in 42 episodes of the CTV series Comedy Inc., which ran in the 2000s, he keeps returning to stand-up.
“I think I could have worked in a lot of different mediums but [stand-up] is the one I chose. You create something; you put it all together; you take some time, like a year or two, and you present it; you record it; and, you put it out there. It’s the process of building that that I like.”
“I was always a class clown kind of performer, and I was into acting and stuff like that. Anything in entertainment, I wanted to do.”
In the close to 32 years since Stephens first got on stage to do stand-up, the industry has changed significantly. Social media has allowed comedians to reach audiences beyond the doors of a comedy club, something Stephens has mixed feelings about.
“I still think it’s good. There’s a democratization of it, but it also is kind of controlled because of algorithms and stuff. It feels almost like the same thing. We are controlling ourselves; we are the people who are doing the limiting, as opposed to a boss. Now we’re doing it to get the views. I mean, you can also do whatever you want, but if you want to get into the algorithm, you got to do certain things.”
However, Stephens does not shy away from expressing his thoughts, especially on his podcast Uncolonized, which he co-hosts with his friend Daniel Grant. It is a comedic leftist podcast where the two discuss culture, race, and politics.
Stephens says he has become more politically radical as he has gotten older.
“We’re trying to solve problems […] through the very system that caused the problems. The problem is the system. We can’t solve it, unless you abolish it. So that’s where I’m at; I’ve gotten radicalized on that point,” he said. “My new motto is to be hard on systems, soft on people.”
Stephens says he has always looked at things critically and bucked the system. He is a self-described party pooper.
“What I do with my sister-in-law, every Christmas they’ll listen to Bing Crosby and they’ll put it on, and I’ll be like, ‘you know, he beat his kids.’ I’m that guy,” he said.
Looking forward, Stephens wants to get more involved in theatre. He recently got into fringe in Hamilton, but he’s still unsure what the future holds.
“That’s one of the panics in my life: What am I going to do?”
Gavin Stephens performs nightly at Absolute Comedy until Sunday, Feb. 11, and at Moose McGuire’s on Monday, Feb. 12. Tickets can be bought here.
Uncolonized is released weekly and can be listened to here.
