Great Outdoors Comedy Festival spokesman doubles as improviser Park Ranger Donovan

While waiting to get into ONE Spokane Stadium for the Great Outdoors Comedy Festival, audience members will likely see Park Ranger Donovan saying hi, making jokes and telling everyone the need-to-know information about the event. He then hops on stage to get the crowd excited for the rest of the evening.

Park Ranger Donovan, aka improviser Donovan Workun, is the spokesman for the comedy festival. Clad in a park ranger uniform and often accompanied by his partner, a puppet named Rudy the Raccoon, Workun travels North America bringing laughs to the great outdoors.

This year’s Spokane stop, Saturday at ONE Spokane Stadium, features headliners Bert Kreischer with Fortune Feimster, Derrick Stroup, Nathan Chartrey and DJ Matty. Local comedian Casey McLain will host the event.

Comedian Matt Rife’s show, originally scheduled for Friday, has been rescheduled to Aug. 29, 2026, due to changes in his filming schedule.

Before he became Park Ranger Donovan, Workun said he came by his sense of humor naturally after seeing how much fun everyone was having while joking around at family reunions. He also watched a lot of “SCTV,” a sketch show from renowned improv troupe Second City, that starred the likes of Eugene Levy, Catherine O’Hara, Andrea Martin, John Candy, Rick Moranis and Martin Short.

He participated in drama in junior high and high school and got lots of laughs along the way. He was later part of a theater company in his native Edmonton called Rapid Fire Theatre, which participated in a competitive form of improv called theatresports.

“We started doing that and I was good at it, and then we started getting gigs,” he said. “And lo and behold, I found out that you could make a living, not a great living, but you could pay your rent and buy a few beers, and that’s all that really mattered. Or some pizza. You could survive.”

From there, Workun did bigger and bigger gigs – nightclubs, colleges and universities – and corporate work.

A few of those university bookings came from Great Outdoors Comedy Festival founder Mike Anderson, who would book Workun to perform improv at a technical school for which he was the entertainment coordinator. The pair reconnected years later when Anderson’s daughter participated in an improv comedy class Workun hosted during COVID.

Anderson told Workun he had an opportunity for him and booked Workun and his improv partner to perform during the Great Outdoors Comedy Festival pre-show as audience members were making their way to their seats.

“The whole idea is to have a pre-show, because we want people to be settled and happy and ready to laugh by the time the main show starts,” Workun said.

After a couple of years, Anderson wanted Workun’s role to evolve into that of a spokesman or a mascot for the festival, and he threw out the idea of Workun as something like a ring master. Workun understood what he was asking for but suggested, as the shows are held outside, that he become a park ranger instead.

“I put together this park ranger outfit that I have, and the rest is history,” Workun said. “I went to the U.S. Forestry Service and got the official U.S. park ranger hat to make it real.”

After the park ranger idea was greenlit, the festival team decided to give Workun a partner, a puppet named Rudy the Raccoon. Normally, Workun is up for just about anything, saying you have to do things a second time to see if you really hate them, but he was uncharacteristically apprehensive about Rudy.

He’s not a puppeteer, or a ventriloquist for that matter. And contrary to Workun’s positive attitude, Rudy, as his name suggests, is “rude and naughty.” Workun said it was trial and error to find out just how rude he wanted Rudy to be.

“He’s the salt to my pepper,” Workun said. “The yin to my yang.”

The Great Outdoors Comedy Festival grew out of an outdoor comedy show Anderson organized in Edmonton in 2021 during COVID, when social distancing barred people from attending events inside.

Workun said comedian and actor David Spade, who headlined that event with Chelsea Handler, was the one who suggested organizers should take the show on the road.

“It’s like the Coachella of comedy because you have that big festival feeling as you come in, and everybody’s excited and pumped, but then by the time the show starts, everybody’s really close,” Workun said. “It’s really intimate. The video production is good. The audio production is fantastic, so it feels like you’re in a comedy club, and that’s the whole idea. We want to make sure that everybody can hear, can see, can have a great time.”

It’s then Workun’s job to, as they say in the comedy business, set the table, or make sure everyone is ready for a night of laughs. At the end of the night, he goes back to the gates, wishing audiences a good night and thanking them for coming out to the festival.

“It’s all about being positive and having fun and not only keeping them happy, but then also saying, ‘Hey, we appreciate you,’ ” he said. “It’s easy for us to come here and try to get your money but we want you to know that it’s not about that. It’s about the community, and we care that you’re doing this, because the economies aren’t always that good.

“You guys are spending a lot of money to come here, so it really does mean a lot to us, not just because there’s 15,000 people there. I try to make a connection with as many people as I can and try to say thank you.”