Bear with them

The members of Wealthy Bear: Conor Purdy, history student Patrick McGuire, English student Josh Tibbetts and Theatre major Stewart Delo.  (Nick Pearce Photo)

Every other Tuesday, from 10:30 p.m. to midnight, Dalhousie’s CKDU radio presents “The Wealthy Bear Radio Hour-and-a-Half.” Exactly what you will hear during this hour and a half cannot be reliably predicted. Occasionally a counterfeit version of Reading Rainbow will review existential literature. The hosts might engage in recreational time travel. There could be mock-Marxist diatribes. There will be a superfluity of falsetto. It’s the kind of humor not often achieved without reliance on mood-altering substances, but I sat in on a performance, and no substances were consumed, not even sugar. There’s certainly nothing like it.

This “Wealthy Bear Radio Hour-and-a-Half” is presented by the “Wealthy Bear” improv troupe, which consists of Dalhousie/Kings students Stewart Delo, Conor Purdy, Joshua Tibbets, and Patrick McGuire (an extra X chromosome is occasionally provided by honorary member Liz Johnston). The troupe began as King’s’ improv group; they’ve been performing together since 2008.

Sketch comedy

I sat down with Conor Purdy and Stewart Delo to ask them some questions about Wealthy Bear—not so much an interview as a two-man comedy act. The first and most obvious question—where did the troupe’s unusual name originate? It was apparently a joke on the group’s dire financial straits, as far as anyone can remember (they’re not sure). I “It was sort of a play on ‘robber baron’, wasn’t it?” Mr. Purdy asks Mr. Delo.

Mr. Delo believes this was the case. “We decided, let’s charge $200 for tickets,” he says, recounting their first live show with a straight face, ”So that only one person would come, and we could recoup our costs, and that person would be sort of this wealthy baron.” (‘Wealthy baron’ was soon shortened to ‘Wealthy Bear’). Besides the occasional live show (shows have titles like “The Many Magnificent Machinations of the Peerless and Proper Professor Pratt” and “The World’s Shittiest Pyramid”) Wealthy Bear mostly performs radio spots CKDU.

As bizarre as their sketches seem at first glance (Prometheus steals fire in order to roast marshmallows, and a vulture named Grant is assigned to his case?) there is a method to Wealthy Bear’s madness. “We definitely have stock characters,” says Mr. Purdy. “Certain things each of us are better at doing.”

“I do a lot of voices,” his friend agrees. “I do really nerdy guys.”

“Or mad professors.”

“Oh, yeah – Doctor Brainstabber.”

“What sort of characters do I play?” Mr. Purdy pauses and considers. “I do, like, man-child characters. Josh kind of plays… a lot of intense characters.”

“Josh can do this ludicrously bad Bill Cosby impression.” says Mr. Delo, with reverence.

“And a lot of the woman characters are played by either me or Pat.”

'Play with cats'

There’s also a standard procedure in to the writing of a Wealthy Bear script. “Usually we kind of hang out and watch TV for a bit,” says Mr. Purdy.

“Play with the cats,” adds Mr. Delo.

“We had a lot of cat sketches for a while.”

“We’ve kind of moved away from cats, a bit.”

After, presumably, much playing with cats and TV-watching, somebody will suggest an idea for a sketch—the more outlandish, the better. When I ask for an example of such an idea, Mr. Delo blurts out, “What if the whole world was a spaghetti world?”

Mr. Purdy muses about the possibilities of a spaghetti world. “There’d be an evil meatball government.”

“A linguine resistance.” The idea of the spaghetti world is then briefly abandoned, as Mr. Delo adds, “We’ve all seen too many movies. Stuff kind of takes on epic dimensions with us… we’re like the Three Stooges, if all Three Stooges were Andy Kaufman.”

“And directed by David Lynch,” Mr. Purdy says.

Do  group members have favorite sketches? Mr. Delo admits to a soft spot for The Fraction Song. “It was Marie Antoinette, and she was like, ‘let them eat cake’… but they had to divide the cake somehow.” It’s not their only song; Mr. Delo plays both piano and guitar, and the group frequently incorporates music in various ways. “We had this one Jonas Brothers song….”

“It’s a really catchy tune,” Mr. Purdy agrees.

So what’s in the future for Wealthy Bear (if one dares ask that question)? Stewart suggests we’ll soon be able to catch the act in the flesh. “We do very intermittent live shows… we’re trying to do more of that.”

“We want to branch out,” Conor says.

In the meantime, you can catch Wealthy Bear on their Youtube channel (I rather fancy “Lavalamp Filled With Actual Lava”) or on CKDU.