The Comedy Tribune

Hello, my name is Tim Dorsch. Nice to meet you. How have you been? Good to hear! Anyways, I’m not good at small talk so let's dive in.

On Monday, November 6th 2023, a show that I wrote and directed debuted on a streaming platform run by The Trailer Park Boys called 'Swear Net'. The show is called 'Break Time' and to be honest, it’s probably the funniest thing I've ever done. The show takes place in a run down factory and the characters are blue collar Joe's just trying to get through life. Each episode is a smoke break, where they are given the chance to take a load off and shoot the shit about their lives.

Now, you may be asking yourself, how did a self proclaimed bon vivant like Timothy Dorsch write four characters that are so rough and tumble? Let me give you some back story.

When I was 15 my Dad took it upon himself to get me a summer job at a factory in my hometown of Kitchener, Ontario. For the purposes of this story, we'll call the factory ABC Manufacturing. I think my Dad probably wanted to teach me something about responsibility, because up to that point in my life all I'd wanted to do is prance around being 'Yes And, The improvisational imp.' ABC Manufacturing was real work. Goddamnit, it was man's work!

It was a refractory plant, which I still don't really understand. The best way I can explain what they do is to show you this image from their website:

I remember being terrified. The people were scary. Everything was loud. I had to start work at 7:15am. The section I worked in was called 'Flextube'. Again, no idea what that actually is. It was my job to set up really heavy metal pans, weld nails to them, and place fibreglass insulation on the nails. After that was done, I had to spray the whole thing with some kind of white chemical.

I had never welded before, and wasn't given eye protection or a mask, but what the hell! This wasn’t the kind of place that had ‘rules’ or followed ‘workers safety guidelines’. One day I found a M95 mask on a table and, thankful that something would finally be protecting my lungs, put it on. Instantly, I realized it belonged to a perpetually hungover guy in my department. My sinuses were flooded with the vapours of cigarette smoke and stale whiskey.

At the end of each day, I would go home and blow kleenexes full of black stuff out of my nose. By the end of the summer, my two big toes had gone numb. I would get daily headaches from breathing in forklift exhaust. To a scrawny little pube like me, the job was a nightmare.

The people, however, were one of the craziest cast of characters I had ever met. Every day during break, we would sit around on dirty old patio furniture by a loading bay and I would listen to them talk. They were so surly, angry and funny that I started to look forward to this part of the day. The conversations were always the same: the Leafs fuckin' suck, my ol' lady is a bitch, this place fuckin' sucks, the bouncer at the Travellers Roadhouse is an ignorant fuckin' goof. Cigarettes would be chain smoked. Sometimes fights would break out. To an 'improv imp’ like me, hearing these conversations was like discovering a new kind of music. Aside from those few minutes each day though, the job was awful. I’m not saying that there is anything wrong with working blue collar jobs. It just wasn’t the right fit for me at that time.

Awfulness aside, I ended up working two more summers at ABC Manufacturing and I was miserable. Not just about the job but about life in general. I was stuck in a classic spiral of teenage angst and depression. By the time I reached the end of high school, I didn’t really have a good idea where my life was going. I wanted to be a big time famous actor and comedian.

Thankfully, I ended up getting accepted to Humber School of Comedy and moved to Toronto a few months later. When I first moved away, it felt like some kind of victory against an evil villain. I had somehow escaped the ‘clutches’ of pointless, mind numbing work and an endless existence in Kitchener.

However, after the benefit of age has given me time to reflect, I think that there was something very special about the people that I worked with. They may not have been the most educated, politically correct, or informed people, but they were real. They were themselves. They had opinions that they believed in and didn’t give a shit if anyone agreed or not. In its own odd way, there is something refreshing about that, especially in our current world of cancel culture and safe spaces.

Cast of Break Time from left to right: Matt Hopkins, Laura Danowski, Paul Thompson, Nick Reynoldson

Those summers at ABC Manufacturing felt like a negative experience at the time. But ultimately, I learned a lot from those people and 38 year-old me is thankful that my Dad forced 15 year-old me to work in that terrifying place. There are often times in life when we feel stuck somewhere that we don't want to be. Ruts. Dead ends. All I can say is to embrace wherever you are at any given moment because you never know what will stick with you and inspire you later on. There is no such thing as wasted time.

That's the inspiration behind 'Break Time'. There will be episodes or characters that express views, and opinions that will offend. Hell, the characters may be offensive to some people by their very existence, but that's the point. In real life we’re not all cookie cutter gingerbread people. We’re all unique and messy. We disagree. We fight. We fuck.

Tim Dorsch - Break Time can be seen on SwearNet.com