“Every audience is a different animal”: Comedian Brent Butt talks upcoming show in St. Marys
- Galen Simmons
- 2 days ago
- 4 min read
By Galen Simmons, Local Journalism Initiative Reporter
As he looks ahead to his June 7 show in support of the St. Marys Healthcare Foundation and the St. Marys Memorial Hospital, Canadian comedy icon Brent Butt says fans who know him from his hit CTV show, Corner Gas, will see a whole new side of the comic from small-town Saskatchewan.
Speaking with the Independent, Butt says his character from Corner Gas, Brent Leroy, is a version of himself had he decided not to leave his hometown of Tisdale, Sask., to pursue a career in comedy. While he says the comedy in Corner Gas is more about the show’s characters than it is about where it’s set, in Dog River, his standup comedy is a different beast altogether and a craft he’s been honing since long before the people and places of the fictional Saskatchewan town were ever conceived.
“The tv show is a scripted thing, it’s an ensemble cast, there’s a lot of people involved, and standup is very much a solo effort. It’s sort of the difference between a team sport and being a marathon runner,” he said. “Standup is my background. I started standup in 1988, so I’ve been at it a long time. I think I’d been doing standup 15 years before I got the opportunity to do Corner Gas, so standup was always my thing. Even during hiatus on Corner Gas and later hiccups, whenever we were on a break between seasons, I would be on the road doing standup.
“So, it’s always been my thing and it’s still my favourite thing to do.”
Having performed for audiences in small towns and big cities from coast to coast and beyond over the past 37 years, Butt has developed a vast repertoire of observational and incidental comedic bits he can deliver on stage. Rather than rely on character-driven stories like those in both Corner Gas and Corner Gas Animated, Butt picks and chooses which bits he will deliver by taking the temperature of the room he’s playing and deciding on the spot that’s going to hit home the hardest for his audience.
“It’s much-smaller, incidental bits of comedy all strung together and not really tied to each other very much. … I usually know how I’m going to start. I make a conscious decision about, ‘Okay, I’m going to do these bits to start with,’ but then it sort of develops based on how people are responding to that stuff. Then, based on how people are responding, I start pulling from the old tickle trunk full of material because I have a grab bag of material I’ve developed over the 37 years of me doing this, and you just start reaching into your brain and you start pulling out stuff you think will work.
“One of the things I really like about standup and keeps it fresh all these years later is that you really don’t know what each crowd is going to respond to.”
While Butt takes pride in his ability to read and interact with a crowd, he said there is no rhyme or reason to how a crowd will react or what bits audience members will relate to at any given show. He says he’s played shows for huge crowds in large cities that felt intimate, and he’s performed for smaller audiences in rural and remote towns that felt somewhat distant.
“Each audience is so different from any other audience that geography doesn’t play into it. It’s almost like if I were to do two shows in St. Marys on the same night, an early show and a late show, those two crowds could be so hugely different from each other. I feel like you could never say, ‘This is what crowds are like in the Maritimes, this is what crowds are like in big cities, this is what crowds are like on an island on the West Coast.’ You just kind of can’t do that.
“Any time you get a few-hundred individuals clumped together, it automatically creates a brand-new animal that’s never existed before. Each one is a completely unique experience.”
The St. Marys Healthcare Foundation is celebrating after having raised $3 million in support of the now completed upgrades to the St. Marys Memorial Hospital’s east and west wings. Having grown up in rural Saskatchewan, Butt says he understands the importance of helping to raise funds in support of smaller, rural hospitals, which can often be lifelines for people who don’t have regular access to hospitals in larger, urban centres.
“I’m all for it. It’s incredibly important to have a resource like that within reach so you’re not driving 90 minutes or two hours to get somebody somewhere if they’re in need of care,” Butt said. “It seems like less and less, small communities are having that access, so I’m all for doing whatever I can do to help this cause out.”
Tickets for the Built For Tomorrow Gala at the Pyramid Recreation Centre June 7 are available until May 29 or until they sell out. For more information and to purchase tickets, visit Trellis.org/2025gala.
The gala will be a night of celebration as the health-care foundation reflects on the renovation and completion of the east and west wings. This year’s theme is futuristic elegance, so think chrome sparkle, LED lights, silver and starry-night vibes. Enjoy appetizers and a three-course meal by Steel Grill.
Along with Butt’s standup routine, the evening’s entertainment will also include music by the Randy Satchell Band. Doors open at 5:30 p.m.
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