Even uber standup comics who’ve graduated to performing in large arenas will wax romantic about their love for the cosy comedy room. The closer you are to the audience, the comic’s belief goes, the better.

It’s an art form, after all, that thrives on intimacy.

Only steps away from Oshawa’s GM Place — which has hosted more than a few rock star status standups — there’s a weekly comedy venue that has intimacy in spades. Not that you could fit a spade in the back room of Buster Rhino’s Southern BBQ — certainly not when it’s a packed comedy house of, oh, 25 or so patrons.

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“I was thinking the audience is going to be too close,” remembers Jim McAleese, a respected 35-year standup veteran and teacher at Second City. “Like, right-in-your-face-close. But once I got onstage, I liked the intimacy. I slowed down, relaxed and just talked to them. Like I was having a conversation.”

Lincoln Trudeau says the bigger gesticulations often required when performing to a typical comedy room can be awkward and “artificial” in the Buster venue given the proximity of its audience. Like McAleese, though, he welcomes the warm yet closed-in feel of this tiny space.

“The upside is that it doesn’t take much to feel like you have an audience,” he says. “And they want to be there.”

Both standups praise the room’s impresario and house emcee for its appeal: Russell Roy.

Roy says he spends about a half-hour before each show ensuring lighting and sound equipment — the latter, arguably, superfluous — is up to his standup standards. The shows are heavily advertised via social media and slick posters are everywhere in Oshawa.

Roy even provides wait staff with a tips sheet on how a comedy audience should be served food and drinks: while hunched over and whispering.

With no admission fee, this is hardly a profit-driven venture for Roy, 49, who’s from nearby Ajax. A concrete truck driver by day, he really just wanted a guaranteed venue where he could perform at night and workshop his own material.

“I did that thing where you called in to (a comedy club) to beg and grovel for spots,” says Roy, who says he’s been working professionally since the mid-’90s but grew frustrated with seeking, and not getting, stage time.

“The supply and demand rules are not in your favour. So in order to kind of step outside that little box, you need to develop your own thing and make it happen.

“I had studied a little bit of business and theatre and figured I could do the whole thing myself,” he adds.

So, “stepping outside that little box,” Roy essentially created another box. Inspired by comedy pubs he says he witnessed on a trip to England, Roy’s Oshawa concept is square and sparse (except for a stack of boxes near the exit) with a tiny raised stage against one wall.

To reach it, comics have to inhale hard to negotiate the tight squeeze through chairs and tables. Once behind the mic, they can lean forward in any direction and almost literally be nose to nose with the back row.

Roy, not surprisingly, boasts of the unique characteristics of what is surely one of the tightest comedy quarters in the GTA.

While the audience may, as Trudeau suggests, be put off by big physical gestures, they like the smaller ones, counters Roy. “They can read your facial expressions, your intonation. You raise your eyebrow for a punch line and they’ll notice it.”

Neither does the space lend itself to heckling, which contrary to popular perception most comics do not welcome.

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“They don’t have that anonymity of making snarky remarks and heckling from the dark reaches,” Roy says. “Because you’re only four feet away from the guy.”

While Roy says he has no trouble filling spots with Toronto pros and up-and-comers willing to make the one-hour drive east, Trudeau and McAleese, from Pickering and Ajax respectively, have especially embraced Buster Rhino’s because of their short commute. “And the parking is free,” notes McAleese.

Adds Roy about his large labour of love in a small room, “My only motivation now . . . it’s not financial, it’s not fame. It’s just the actual pleasure of being in front of an audience.”