From Ottawa’s own Cashboyreg, Cultures Comedy Club is the latest addition to the city’s comedy scene
For Reggie Cash, his passion for comedy grew in the same city where he was born and raised. While at l’école secondaire publique De La Salle, a French arts high school in downtown Ottawa, Cash, also known as @cashboyreg on social media, began making comedic skits and growing his appreciation for different forms of comedy.
This was only the beginning.
During his first year at the University of Ottawa, Cash started a YouTube channel and received instant gratification.
“You never think it’s going to blow up,” Cash said about the unexpectedness of gaining instant popularity.
Despite pausing his YouTube channel for four years, Cash started emceeing and promoting events around Ottawa. As he got back into making videos, he had one go viral in 2020―specifically on the French side on Instagram.
As his videos gained traction on French social media, Cash decided to move to Montreal, Quebec with his brother who was starting school there. While he enjoyed the comedy scene there, he decided to move back to Ottawa in 2022 and has gone back and forth between the two cities creating content and doing shows.
For Cash, while the attention is great, it’s never just been about the popularity.
“You want it to blow up but you just like it so much that you just do it because you’re having fun,” he said.
This idea extends beyond just creating comedic videos to his latest venture, Cultures Comedy Club (CCC)―a new comedy club he is opening in Ottawa. The idea of this club came out of a gap for multicultural comedy clubs in the city.
“You want it to blow up but you just like it so much that you just do it because you’re having fun,” he said.
This idea extends beyond just creating comedic videos to his latest venture, Cultures Comedy Club (CCC)―a new comedy club he is opening in Ottawa. The idea of this club came out of a gap for multicultural comedy clubs in the city.
“Every city has a diverse comedy club and I was like ‘it’s time to bring one to the nation’s capital,” Cash said.
CCC was born out of the idea of multicultural people attending comedy shows that are outside of the “typical base of typical comedy” as Cash described it. He explained how certain jokes based on cultural norms don’t work on every crowd.
“I have this joke: I usually say that I have a hard time explaining to my, my non ethnic friends that I can go outside because my mother had a dream,” Cash said, “and that joke isn’t worthwhile with different crowds.” With CCC, he said he hopes that it will be a good opportunity for up-and-coming comedians to try out this kind of in-house material.
Despite diversity being at the club’s forefront, and its opening coinciding with National Truth and Reconciliation Day, Cash said finding diverse comedians has been difficult.
“It’d be nice to have, I don’t know, five different ethnicities and not just the same one,” he said, explaining that while it is difficult, the club welcomes all comedians regardless of their background.
Cash said he is also excited for the unique experience that CCC provides, namely that it gives people “entertainment with a VIP service”. With the comedy club operating inside Nuvo Lounge, guests are provided with bottle service, which Cash said has never been done before in a comedy club.
Cultures Comedy Club opens inside Nuvo Lounge on September 30, 2023, with Ottawa’s own Janelle Niles, a Black-Mi’kmaq comedian, Black Adam, and Uncle Phil from Montreal, QC.
For more information about Cultures Comedy Club visit culturescomedyclub.com.
Click here to purchase tickets to the Cultures Comedy Club opening.
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