From men and women to children and seniors, improv comedian Jennine Profeta believes there’s a place for everybody in comedy. That’s why she’s sharing her love of making people laugh by leading classes to nurture the next generation of comedians right here in the Kawarthas.

But, proving her passion for community-building extends beyond comedy, the Bobcaygeon performer can be spotted at plenty of local events, including leading line dancing classes and organizing “girls’ night in” game nights. Next week, she’ll even be getting dressed up to lead story time at the Bobcaygeon Public Library and the Thriller Dance Party at the Globus Theatre Box Office on October 21 as part of Harvest Haunt.

“I want to take what I have to offer and use it in the community,” says Profeta. “You can get very isolated up here, depending on where you live, so we’re all looking for connection and it’s great to see it happening.”

As for her own performances, Profeta is currently touring in Ontario with Girls Nite Out, her all-female ensemble of stand-up and improv comedians. Joined by Elvira Kurt, Karen Parkerl and Diana Frances, the group is making a stop at Bobcaygeon’s Globus Theatre on Saturday, November 4th for an already sold-out show.

Stopping at the theatre at the Lakeview Arts Barn will mark a return to where the show — which features a rotating line-up of female cast members — was first born 16 years ago. Globus Theatre co-founder and artistic director Sarah Quick, a performer herself, came to Profeta with the idea to gather a group of these talented women in the community.

“It was one of those things when you hear something and just know you’ve been waiting your whole life to hear it,” Profeta says, adding that she may not have thought of it on her own. “These are unlike any other show that we do. There’s something very different about it.”

Though usually not a phrase to be taken literally, Profeta really had been waiting her whole life. While growing up in Winnipeg, Manitoba, she looked up to the female comedians who were “taking charge” like Carol Burnett, Gilda Radner, Lucille Ball, Joan Rivers, and Carol Channing.

“They come from a time where guys ruled the roost and they had to play at a certain level to compete and be seen and they did it,” Profeta notes. “Through history, women have been able to use comedy to assert themselves — not in a negative way, but a very positive, very empowering way. I think I’ve always been drawn to that.”

Watching these women ultimately inspired and influenced Profeta to move to Toronto after studying theatre at the University of Winnipeg. The day after moving, she signed up for classes at Second City. Considering she met her husband and many of her friends within that first week of arriving, Profeta describes Second City as being her “home base ever since.”

Unlike a lot of the other improv comedians with whom she interacts and works, Profeta didn’t grow up with the “comedic flair” or innate funny bone as the class clown. Instead, she was more introverted, but had the right amount of dedication.

“I was just bullheaded about it,” she recalls. “I wanted to learn how to do improv even though I felt like I was terrible. I had a dream, but I didn’t think I would necessarily make it. I was just in love with this format, and I knew I needed to know how it worked. I think I’m only just starting to figure it out.”

It’s evident she figured it out a long time ago, spending years with Second City, where she even had the opportunity to entertain internationally on a cruise ship. For 12 months, Profeta and her husband Dave Pearce toured the world on the ship, with six months spent in the Caribbean and six months spent in Europe, where she performed to all kinds of crowds.

“There, you start learning about how comedy translates or doesn’t translate between different cultures,” the comedian explains. “It’s not just a language barrier. Some cultures like more physical comedy, whereas others rely on cerebral and witty stuff.”

Since then, Profeta has made acting appearances on television shows, films, and commercials for The Comedy Network, CBC, and NBC, including as a cast member on Howie Mandel’s Howie Do It.

An entertainer of many talents, Profeta has also been credited with writing awards shows and episodes of animated children’s shows for CBC, and has bylines in magazines like Chatelaine and Today’s Parent from her time spent as a freelance writer upon first moving to Toronto. Though it was her way to make some income while she was going to auditions, writing also became beneficial to her craft as a comedian.

“At Second City, you’re not just a comedic actor — you need to be a writer as well,” she explains. “I could see how the two were helping each other. Even with what I was doing in comedy would just feed into my writing, and I think helped me get more work because I was developing my voice.”

Finding your voice is one of the many things Profeta now teaches through her work as a theatre and improv facilitator based out of Bobcaygeon, where she moved with Pearce in 2016. After being introduced to the region by Quick and her husband, Globus Theatre co-founder and artistic producer James Barrett, and wanting to escape from Toronto to raise their son, Profeta and Pearce relocated without so much as a thought of what they would do for work.

Fortunately, the local theatre community was very welcoming and had a place for the duo.

“It’s great to see how many kids want to get involved,” Profeta says about Globus Theatre’s new School of Dramatic Art where she teaches. “Many of them are on the hockey teams and it’s cool to me that we don’t live in a community where you either do hockey or you do art. You can do both and there’s not a weirdness — there aren’t people picking on each other. So I really admire that families here are open to letting their kids try the art.”

Profeta adds the same goes for the large retirement community that exists within the region, who are only now getting the opportunity to experiment with their creative passions.

“People are just taking that dream from the past and blowing the dust off it and trying out this thing they’ve always wanted to do and to me that’s amazing,” she says. “That’s something they’ve just never had a chance to and, because there’s now this opportunity for them, they’re taking a risk and they’re finally doing it.”

Profeta is also facilitator for classes at Lakehurst Hall in Buckhorn and with Linda Kash’s Peterborough Academy of Performing Arts (PAPA) improv classes and camps.

“I’ve learned so much more about improv and comedy through watching and working with my students and, in particular, working with people that are starting off like I did,” she says. “They’re shy and don’t necessarily feel this is their gift or their talent, but they’re just drawn to it and they want to try it. It’s a great joy to work with them, because I see a lot of myself in them.”

While Profeta continues to share her passion and build the community around theatre, she and Pearce are regularly hosting improv shows in town at Bobcaygeon’s Just for the Halibut, where she’s determined to make people laugh.

“It’s all about nurturing that positive part of yourself, and the joy in yourself,” says Profeta. “We all have a lot of stuff to do deal with but if you can just laugh for 30 to 45 minutes a day, what a privilege that is.”

When the Northumberland Orchestra and Choir (NOC) performs at the Trinity United Church in Cobourg next month, it will be a bittersweet concert for the music group, as it will be the final time Peterborough’s John Kraus will stand before them as conductor.

Appropriately closing his decade with the orchestra by passing on the torch to the next generation of musicians, Kraus’ final show at the conductor’s podium will see the performance of rising talents, pianist Michelle Yeh and violinist Ashley Leong. As last year’s winners of Markham’s Yip’s Music Competition, the duo will join the orchestra in performing masterworks from Beethoven and Bruch.

“Young Artists in Concert” is the premiere production for NOC’s 2023-24 season, held at Cobourg’s Trinity United Church on Saturday, November 4th at 7:30 p.m.

Since May 2013, Kraus has been at the helm of the not-for-profit organization that first formed in 1978. The Peterborough musician has led performances of works by Beethoven, Brahms, Lauridsen, Willan, and Stravinsky and collaborations with local and national groups including Sultans of String, Molly Johnson, Quartetto Gelato, Anastasia Rizikov, the Hispanic Society of Northumberland, the Kawartha Lakes Singers, and the Oriana Singers.

“One of the best things about these past 10 years with the NOC are the people I have had the chance to meet and to work with, as we mounted over 50 concerts,” says Kraus in a media release. “If I have accomplished anything, I hope that I have given people on stage and in our audiences the chance to see and hear their friends and family members coming together and making beautiful music in their own community.”

According to the release, Kraus has held many roles for the NOC as well as a conductor, often jumping in as a stage hand, sound tech, videographer, and publicist for the group. He is also an active music educator with more than 30 years of experience teaching both high school students and adults in the community. He has also served on the teaching faculty at the Lakefield Summer Music Camp, and as a sectional conductor and woodwind coach at the La Jeunesse Youth Orchestra in Port Hope.

The musician has also been a founding director of the Durham Chamber Orchestra and Lakeridge Philharmonic Youth Orchestra, served as music director of the Clarington Concert Band, and has performed in a number of funk bands, jazz groups, choirs, orchestras, and musical theatre shows.

In 2017, Kraus was nominated for the Heinz Unger Award, a national award from the Ontario Arts Council to recognize professional conductors.

Though Kraus is stepping down to travel and ease into retirement, he will continue to conduct Ottawa’s Parkdale Symphony Orchestra and host his weekly Northumberland 89.7 classical music radio program, Maestro’s Picks.

After Kraus’ departure, the two remaining NOC concerts of the season, “Christmas in Northumberland” on December 17 and “Heroes and Heroines” on April 6, will be led by guest conductors.

Kraus’ final concert as head director is part of electric violinist Victoria Yeh’s Travel by Sound concert series, which gives ticket holders the opportunity to turn the concert into an experience. Anyone with a ticket can receive a pre-show dinner special at Cobourg’s Arthur’s Pub and a discount at Best Western Plus Cobourg Inn & Convention Centre.

Tickets for NOC’s Young Artists in Concert performance are $35 for adults, $32 for seniors, $19 for students 25 and younger, $82 for family (four tickets), and free for children 12 and younger. For more information and tickets, visit travelbysound.com/northumberland-orchestra-choir/.

Painter JoEllen Brydon’s latest art show gives viewers a glimpse into a life well lived at her home in the small village of Mount Pleasant in Cavan Monaghan Township.

“Home” is a love letter to the house in which Brydon has spent the last 40 years raising her children and grandchildren, crafting her oil and acrylic paintings, and building her professional art career.

The exhibit is on now until Sunday, October 29th at the Atelier Ludmila Gallery, located at 129-1/2 Hunter Street West in the Commerce Building in downtown Peterborough. The gallery is open from noon to 4 p.m. on weekends and by appointment during the week.

Though this is the first time Brydon has used her home as the theme for an exhibit, the professional artist explains it’s not the first time her work has been influenced by her 153-year-old house and the acre lot on which it sits.

“It’s an old house and it’s got lots of character,” she says. “I’ve always found that it tends to inspire me and shows up a lot in my work. I never do an exact image of something, but the feel of what’s going on is in all of the pieces.”

In 1983, after spending six months searching the region for a house to buy, Brydon accidentally stumbled upon the home two months before she purchased it. The first time she saw it, she knew it was hers — even though it wasn’t for sale at the time.

“We were just driving around everywhere looking for a house and then I saw this one and said ‘That’s the house I want’,” she recalls, noting that she still can’t pinpoint what exactly appealed to her so immediately. “I just knew it was mine from the very beginning.”

Calling the experience “magical,” it’s almost as though Brydon willed the house to be put on the market. In July of that year, she was spending the first night in her new home. Since then, the house has “evolved” as she’s turned it into a home, planting trees and gardens, adding pets, and raising two children who have since given her grandchildren.

This summer, when Brydon’s 40-year anniversary of purchasing her home collided with the time she was preparing for her show at the gallery, she began to notice just how much her home had become a theme in many of her pieces.

“When I started working on this, there wasn’t a specific theme,” Brydon explains. “But as I went along, I suddenly realized most of the paintings in this show reflect this house and my family here, and the things that I’m familiar with.”

Exploring her own stories for the 15 pieces that are part of “Home” was a different experience for the artist, as much of her regular work involves telling other people’s stories as they’re relayed to her.

Specifically, her work often depicts stories from her relatives and their history. In the 1920s, Brydon’s family emigrated with a “whole gaggle” of brothers and sisters from a small farming community called Sixmilecross in Northern Ireland’s County Tyrone. They brought with them a love for the tradition of storytelling, which has been passed down to Brydon.

“They all had this real spirit and storytelling nature,” she explains. “They were always joking or gossiping. And that really came through the family and rubbed off on my mother and then me. To them, a story or a tale was the most important thing.”

With Brydon painting portraits of people and places since the mid-1980s, storytelling has become a central aspect in her vibrant acrylic and oil paintings as well. Oftentimes, she’ll even pen the story, told in a few lines scribbled somewhere on the painting itself or as a descriptive title.

“Most of the things I’ve painted are based on stories — I listen to people,” says Brydon. “I don’t necessarily experience the story, but they’re always telling it so I’m always listening.”

Much of the work that’s been inspired by her relatives’ stories can be purchased internationally at the Nicholas Gallery in Belfast, Northern Ireland, where she has been presenting her work since the early 2000s.

While many of the pieces currently showcasing at Brydon’s Atelier Ludmila Gallery show explore the more mundane moments of life — chopping wood, waiting in line, taking a bath — the artist explains that as a “nostalgic person,” her work also often unintentionally depicts characters using items that could seemingly be called “outdated,” such as rotary phones, televisions with antennas, and print newspapers.

“The paintings are documents of a culture in history,” the artist explains. “I’ve always been focused on things we’re losing — the things I see slipping by.”

History is often a component of Brydon’s work, most evident through her previous two large-scale installations that depict the Romani visit to Peterborough in 1909 (when 60 Roma set up camp on an extension of George Street and thousands of people came to watch them) and John Smith’s tragic attempt to paddle his canoe from Peterborough, Ontario to Peterborough, England.

Both installations relied on news coverage during the time period, in addition to Brydon’s research gathered from existing diaries and by listening to stories from community members.

Brydon is further exploring her own familial histories by working on a third mixed-media installation based on the compilation of work by her late mother Jean Armstrong Brydon when she wrote an advice column under the pen name Elizabeth Thompson for Toronto’s Globe and Mail from 1966 to 1978.

As for her individual paintings, Brydon has been showing them at the Atelier Ludmila Gallery for four years. Her current show “Home” is running until Sunday, October 29th, with pieces selling fast.

For more information about the exhibit or to make an appointment to visit the gallery, contact Laurel Pluck at gallery@ludmilagallery.ca or visit ludmilagallery.ca. For updates on which pieces have already been sold, visit Atelier Ludmila Gallery on Facebook.

More of Brydon’s work can be viewed at www.joellenbrydon.com or by following her on Facebook.