Laughter: Live and In Person
What’s the best venue in which you’ve ever seen a performance of comedy magic?
Some venues are literally made for it like The Magic Castle in Hollywood. These days there are many venues devoted to the performance of magic emerging all over the United States: Liberty Magic in Pittsburgh, Marvin’s Magic Theater in Palm Springs, The Chicago Magic Lounge in, you guessed it…Chicago, House of Cards in Nashville, Keller’s in Erie. Not to mention any number of successful long running residency productions in casinos, theaters, and hotels.
But seeing comedy magic live wasn’t always within arm’s reach.
I owe a debt of deep gratitude to a man I’ve never met. His name is David Wood. In 1985, at the height of the stand-up comedy boom, he opened a club in downtown Minneapolis. He called it The Rib Tickler. This wasn’t your regular comedy club. This was a comedy and magic club! Inspired by the famous Comedy & Magic Club in Hermosa Beach, The Rib Tickler featured headline comics sharing the stage with some of the greatest club workers in magic. John Carney, Christopher Hart, Scott Cervine, Michael Douglas (aka Mondre), Joel Hodgson and Paul Kozak to name a few.
It was only open for five years, closing in 1990 when David Wood sold it to a new owner and it became ACME Comedy Company. Over the past 30 years ACME has become one of the most revered “road” clubs in the country, but after changing hands it was no longer committed to booking magic on a regular basis.
I was 14 when the club opened, too young to get in on my own. I needed to be accompanied by a parent. During that 5-year window I talked my mom into taking me as often as she possibly would.
It was in that smoke-filled room, seated on burgundy upholstered chairs, after the oversized light bulbs that peppered the ceiling faded to black, and Sinatra’s New York, New York played (in its entirety at the top of every show) that my vision of a future me was hatched.
Shortly after learning my first tick (Penny-to-Dime) I became obsessed with stand-up comedy on television. My favorite part of every talk show was the opening monologue or, even better, the tight five presented by any given night’s guest comic. Shows like Evening at the Improv and Comic Strip Live dedicated entire episodes to a never ending showcase of amazing talent. I caught Harry Anderson’s SNL appearances. I became infatuated with these performers who seemed to just “be themselves”, talking about the world as they see it, and making me laugh in the process. I struggled to stay up past bedtime. After bedtime was when you might hear jokes meant for older ears. I’ll never forget peeking through the cracked door of my best friend’s basement stairwell during a sleepover so we could eavesdrop on his older brother watching Eddie Murphy’s Delirious on VHS. Precariously perched at the top of a darkened stairwell desperately trying to hold in our laughter in so we could keep listening.
As captivated as I’d become with stand-up on the tube, when my mom finally took me to the belly of the beast, a real life, grown-up, night-on-the-town comedy club I couldn’t believe how next-level funny stand-up became when experienced live and in person. Watching on TV, sure I could hear the studio audience laughing, and I loved the humor, but under the dark wood of that low basement ceiling, seated among grown-ups, I wasn’t observing the laughter, I became a part of the laughter. Completely submerged. Total release. No holds barred. It was the greatest.
When a person is seized by unbelievable hilarity, it trips a wire in the brain forcing complete surrender to the comic’s premise and emotional point of view. Once you are won over, the comic keeps it going, hitting with punchlines that, in the moment, seem so surprising yet also somehow completely inevitable. Inevitable because in the heat of live performance a good joke just seems perfect. “Of course” combined with “no way”. My face contorted, lungs fighting for air as the comic hammered me with tag after tag. The bet comics made me wonder: Is this premeditated? Did he write this or is this only happening here-and-now?!
I believe that, at its best, it’s a little of both.
I’ll share my theory on the parallel intention of the rock star and the comedian. The rock star uses music, the comic uses jokes, but both aim to build a bridge for their audience leading from one’s day-to-day existence to a state of unanimous and anonymous release. For the rock star it looks like a stadium filled with fans moving their heads back and forth in unison. A unified room. Same for the comic. End game, a room full of people seized by uncontrollable laughter, causing the entire room to move their heads back and forth in unison. If you were to take footage of both audiences at a moment of peak release and transpose the audio, I imagine not much would look out of place.
Let’s ROCK.
As we approach our time together in Las Vegas I encourage you to see as many solo performances as you can. Be mindful of the group dynamic and how the performer communicates and connects with the audience.