ON STAGE
What: Bruce McCulloch
Where: Charlie White Theatre, 2243 Beacon Ave., Sidney
When: Thursday, Nov. 4, 7:30 p.m.
Tickets: $50.40 from tickets.marywinspear.ca or 250-656-0275
Members of The Kids in the Hall came to prominence in the late ’80s and early ’90s, when the only place you could see all 102 episodes of their self-titled sketch comedy show was on broadcast television.
Shareable content via YouTube and Netflix was a pipe dream at that point; the modern Internet, as we know it today, did not came into popular use until 1995, the year the series wrapped. If you knew about The Kids and the Hall, and watched it religiously, it was because you were a diehard fan and sought it out, often outside of the primetime programming schedule.
That fan foundation served each Kid well as they transitioned outside of the group and into careers of their own. And yet, despite their invidiual successes, Bruce McCulloch, Dave Foley, Kevin McDonald, Mark McKinney and Scott Thompson all remain committed to the avant-comedy collective, which turns 40 years-old in 2024.
That is something McCulloch has come to value in recent years. “We’re not for everybody,” he said Tuesday from Edmonton, where he was scheduled to perform a solo show later that night.
“Kevin Hart can make 10,000 people laugh in a way that we never could. But we’re for the particular people that are like us. There’s only so many of them, but the good news is there’s actually a lot of them. There’s pride in that.”
McCulloch is between projects at the moment, which is how the consistently busy actor, writer, director and producer found the time to book a solo tour of Canada. Tales of Bravery and Stupidity, which stops at the Mary Winspear Centre in Sidney tonight, is a mixture of new and old material, with some site-specific improvisation. McCulloch said he will also workshop bits that could find their way to future projects by The Kids in the Hall.
Much of the material in the forthcoming eight episodes of The Kids in the Hall, scheduled to be released in 2022 through Amazon, came about in a similarly collaborative way, McCulloch said. “Everybody gets to write what they want, and then we all choose. We’re all captains of our own creative world, and agree and disagree. That’s how the show gets put together. We’re tough on each other, but we’re also very generous now, as we’re getting older.”
Age is a recurring topic in McCulloch’s work. He was as career-minded as anyone during his 30s, and threw everything he had at film, music and television. The end result was a mixture of hits and misses. He worked on a series of high-profile film TV shows (Arrested Development, Gilmore Girls, Brooklyn Nine-Nine and Trailer Park Boys) before leaving Los Angeles with his wife and two children three years ago.
He moved his family back to Toronto around the time he was tapped to direct six episodes of the Emmy Award-winning comedy, Schitt’s Creek. McCulloch was in the director’s chair for the episode Open Mic, — the one with the Tina Turner cover — which is considered one of the acclaimed series’ top episodes.
His return to Canada also coincided with The Kids in the Hall’s restart. “There are opportunities in L.A., but [leaving] was more about my age. As I got older, I realized my life force was precious, so I had to put my energy into stuff I was sure was going to happen. Maybe it’s a young person’s game to be in L.A. Now, I just want to make work.”
Young Drunk Punk, a 2015 TV sitcom and stage play written and directed by McCulloch, who also starred, is how he described himself as a youth. He’s on a creative roll today, and believes his skillset is more acute than it has ever been. He attaches the same sentiment to The Kids in the Hall circa 2021. “Our work is faster and more instinctive. I feel like we’re in a good place.”
Fans of The Kids in the Hall are loud and proud, and there for the long haul, which gives members of the troupe the necessary space to create. Theirs is an inconsistent schedule as a unit, with years between projects. But supporters rally whenever and whenever the group steps forward. When something is created under the Kids in the Hall banner, McCulloch said, you can be sure it will be done right.
“We don’t sit down and have a yearly meeting about what we should do and where we can make money,” McCulloch said. “Things just gather. We haven’t worked full time with each other all these years. We’ve been able to come in and out of each others’ projects and lives, and then gather to do a tour or a miniseries. The fact that The Kids in the Hall were never really very successful — we weren’t The Tragically Hip — has kind of kept us at the place where we should be.”
