St. Catharines’ new home for comedy will be where the old home was. Opening Sept.
6, Spotlight Comedy Club replaces the former Showtime Comedy & Entertainment venue at 92 St. Paul St., which closed late last year.
To serve up the laughs, owner Jeff Gale underwent a serious career change. After 20 years working in sales and marketing with the Toronto Blue Jays, he decided to give his lifelong love of stand-up comedy his full attention. “I couldn’t keep the itch without scratching it anymore,” he says.
With capacity for 150 people, the refurbished club will bring in duo Corey B and Marcus Monroe for the first show Sept. 6. The club’s official grand opening weekend Sept.
13 and 14 will be headlined by veteran Canadian comic Mike Wilmot. Upcoming shows include Tony Lee Sept. 15 and Jon Steinberg Sept.
20 and 21. A former stand-up comic in the late ‘90s and early 2000s, Gale caught wind from the Showtime owners they were closing the venue to operate their collectibles store at The Pen Centre. “I just decided, yeah, that was my time to get into things,” he says.
“It’s what I always wanted to do. I’d been out of the Blue Jays since late last year and decided this was where I wanted to spend every day.” Gale’s plan is to have professional comedians every weekend with a night every week reserved for local and amateur comics to hone their act.
He’s aiming for the type of ‘drop-in’ atmosphere of the comedy clubs in New York and Los Angeles. “We’re going to do a bit of a throwback to the old kind of comedy style,” he says. “It’s not an underground club but it has that feel to it.
I’ve redesigned things inside, rebranded completely.” If anything, competition in Niagara’s comedy scene is tighter than ever. In addition to longtime staple Yuk Yuk’s, currently operating across from Niagara Fallsview Casino Resort, there are regular comedy shows at both the Fallsview Casino venues and FirstOntario Performing Arts Centre in St.
Catharines. But Gale isn’t worried about a talent shortage — there’s plenty to go around. “It’ll be somewhat of a challenge for us to pull in a big, big name — the artists that play at the casino, I probably won’t get the opportunity to bring them here,” he says.
“But there are more than enough comics throughout the U.S. that have strong followings.
“I don’t have any doubt that the talent we’ll be able to bring here and the shows we’ll be able to put on will absolutely entertain people. There’s so much talent that’s not on a Yuk Yuk’s roster.”.
