Comedian Che Durena reflects on his fast rise, from bartending to shelter resident to TikTok star
Appearing at Just for Laughs Vancouver, Port Coquitlam-raised standup talks sex, vices, and the importance of craft
The first show that PoCo-raised Che Durena will ever see at the Vogue Theatre in Vancouver is his own.
Just for Laughs Vancouver presents Che Durena at the Vogue Theatre on February 24
CHE DURENA IS POPPING a ZYN nicotine pouch into his mouth as our Zoom call blinks to life.
“I don’t know if you saw that,” he says a little later. “The nicotine helps you get focused. I have all these little chemical tools I use at different times to aid me.”
Food is a minor vice, he says, but fans of Che Durena are well aware of his biggest addictions. “Pussy,” he deadpans. “And video games.” (He’s currently streaming Baldur’s Gate 3 with his friend Cameron on their Twitch Channel, LittleDinkyNews, if you’re interested.) The question of vices is a natural one, as the 31-year-old comic is a phenomenally productive man and it seems that very little gets in the way of his work.
“I try to stay on top of things, I try to get a lot of stuff done, I feel good when I’m getting stuff done,” he says, sitting at his desk in his East Village apartment. “Booze kind of was a vice for a while, because I think there’s this psychological connection between booze and getting laid, but that has dissipated over the years.” And if pussy shows up, uninvited, during work hours? “I understand my inability to control myself around certain things—that sounds bad when you’re talking about pussy—so I do things like: when I’m in New York, I don’t have anyone on the roster in New York. And then I will not get distracted by pussy when I’m at home working.”
The discipline is admirable and the dividends obvious to anyone with a ticket to Durena’s headlining show at Just for Laughs Vancouver on February 24. Ditto the Haitian-Canadian comedian’s odd backstory. Durena did his first ever standup gig for tourists while working as a bartender in Playa Del Carmen in late 2012, moved to a shelter in Toronto to pursue full-time comedy in 2014—“I bought my plane ticket and by the time I got there I had 25 dollars. My thought process was ‘They’re not gonna let you die in Canada’”—and then absolutely cracked the social-media code during the pandemic and became a megastar on TikTok. His ascent has been unusually speedy. Amazingly, considering that he grew up in Port Coquitlam, the first show that Che Durena will ever see at the Vogue Theatre in Vancouver is his own.
“I’m so grateful for what I have now, and I’m very aware of where I’m at as a comic,” he says. “I’ve been working very hard at this for a decade but if you look at the greats, a lot of them don’t pop until 20 years into the game. The fact that I can go on the road now and sell out venues and sell out weekends—I’m ahead of a lot of my peers and I’m very, very happy about that.” For Durena, the greats include Chris Rock, Dave Chapelle, Louis CK, Bill Burr, Jim Jefferies—all “very, very funny”, obviously, but also noted for dealing in uncomfortable truths and attracting controversy.
Durena’s gift is the marriage of his laidback style with a wanton honesty about his life and his preoccupations. Accordingly, the only shade in his enthusiasm for online channels and social media?
“Community guideline violations,” he says. “But you have complete agency over what you want to create and how it works, and that’s amazing. That did not exist 10, 15 years ago.”
Durena also enjoys complete agency onstage, and, not surprisingly, he clarifies that all digital venues flow in the direction of his true love: standup. There might be something telling about his meteoric rise in a time when too many comedians are self-censoring or rely on “clapter”—that is, political approval and fear of offence. The “state of comedy” is a discussion taken on by every generation, but are there fewer risk-takers these days?
“I think some people are being very careful but then there are others who are doing the exact opposite,” answers Durena, who, to be clear, loves pussy. “With the rise of PC and safe-space comedy has been a rise of people being, like, ‘I’m gonna push the boundaries!’ And frankly I think they’re the two sides of the same coin. Someone saying something politically correct and expecting people to clap, and get some praise, versus the comic who says something that no one laughs at and then says, ‘Oh, you can’t handle this?’ It’s the same thing. You haven’t put the time in to craft your jokes, and you expect, based on your beliefs, that you should be praised? You haven’t done the work.”
In other words, it’s always about the craft. “I think comedy is extremely healthy right now,” he continues. “I think the public consumes more standup than ever before and more comedy just as a platform. If you look at podcast clips, or meme channels, or YouTube channels, short sketches—there’s tons of edgy, interesting, new types of comedy. I Think You Should Leave is a great example of something that’s mainstream as well as pushing the boundaries, as well as being super-funny.”
He mentions that he was once praised for delivering “the smartest jokes about cum,” which must be nice when it’s in tandem with your youth, good looks, and talent, but behind the vaunted sex-positive comic persona is Durena’s true faith and the source of his humour. “Absurdity,” he says. “And sex is something I find inherently absurd because it’s so taboo but it’s the driving force for everyone, every day. It’s in marketing, it’s in our relationships, it’s the motivation to meet people, to get a job and make money, and yet we’re supposed to feel ashamed of it. That in itself is very funny.”
It’s also very dangerous. You can hit the road with a girl in every port, but does he ever worry about getting honey-potted? Durena laughs: “I’m not at a stage where it's worth it. I’m not struggling but you’re not gonna get a ton out of honey-potting me, that’s for sure. Not yet. I’m not concerned. Plus I have a vasectomy already scheduled. That’s gonna be happening February 27th.”
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