The final episode of Hot Garbage Comedy Collective’s liveplay adventure comedy show takes place May 6 at Unplugged.
Matt Carter
After nearly a full year of roll-playing fun, Fredericton improv ambassadors Hot Garbage Comedy Collective have decided to wrap up their monthly fantasy adventure, Players & Pints.
“We’ve had a blast with Players & Pints. We originally started it as an experiment, and it has grown into something we’ve become very proud of. It’s been really cool to see an audience and community be built around the story we’ve been telling,” said HGCC’s Jean-Michel Cliche.
“We’ve decided to wrap it up for a couple of reasons. Primarily, we’re thinking about this show in the context of everything else we do,” he said. “We’re very lucky to have a growing community of improvisers, and we want to make sure that we’re able to offer them opportunities to create new shows under the Hot Garbage banner. We’ve been able to run Players & Pints alongside our mainstage Hot Garbage Players show for a year now, which has been so cool for us and has helped us reach a wider audience. But Fredericton is only so big, and we wouldn’t be able to sustain audiences if we were to introduce a new show and asked people to come out three or four times a month.”
Launched in July of 2018, the company’s liveplay comedy show has been attracting capacity crowds to Unplugged – A Board Games Café each month to follow the adventures of Zorr The Monk (Aaron Ellis), Griffith The Wizard (Ryan Griffith), Yala The Fighter (Kat Hall), Elleline The Bard (Tilly Jackson) and The Dungeon Master (Jean-Michel Cliche).
Cliche says that while the monthly series is coming to a close, he isn’t ruling out the possibility of future Players & Pints events.
“We’re already booked to do a show at Animaritime in June and are talking about doing some other special events,” he said. “The Players & Pints team really love the characters and world that we’ve built, so we’re going to chat about what this show turns into after it’s phased out as a monthly show. It could evolve into something completely new.”
The series finale on May 6 will be your last opportunity to check out a public Players & Pints performance, at least for the foreseeable future. For audiences who haven’t attended a show yet or haven’t been following along with the podcast (yes, there’s a podcast) but are interested in checking out this last show, have no fear – Episode 9 promises to be an accessible one.
“We work really hard to make the show accessible to anyone who hasn’t been to a previous episode, and that’s going to be true for the finale as well,” said Cliche. “If you haven’t been before, it’s a lot like our other shows; low-key, fun, and welcoming!”
As part of this final performance, the HGCC team will be making a big announcement, possibly sharing how they plan to fill this vacancy in their date book.
“We have this crazy idea for something in the summer, which is probably the biggest event Hot Garbage has ever done,” said Cliche. “We’re announcing that at our finale so you’re going to want to be there for that. Because it’s pretty wild…”
Details to follow.
The Players & Pints Grand Finale! | May 6 | Unplugged – A Board Games Cafe | 7:30 p.m. | $7 | View Event
