How funny business became laugh factory
A small sign opposite the performers’ area in the ComedySportz Arena in Houston urges comedians to “Be All Here.”
It’s a reference to the fact that performers, who do something called short-form improvisation, better be ready for anything.
“When I try to tell people what we do, I tell them it’s like the television show ‘Whose Line Is It Anyway?’ — only with teams,” said ComedySportz Arena owner Dianah Dulany, 56. “You basically have two teams who battle it out with comedy and a referee who keeps track of it all.”
The ComedySportz Arena is in a shopping center near Memorial’s new City Centre. The 120-seat theater is open Friday and Saturday nights. At 8 p.m., the family-friendly ComedySportz shows take place, followed by an adults-only comedy act at 10:30 p.m.
Admission is $18 for the 8 p.m. show and $12 for the later one. ComedySportz sells alcohol and soft drinks during performances.
“One of my favorite games is something called ‘Blind Line,’ where the audience shouts out a line from a movie, or a song lyric, or something a mom would tell her kids,” said Chad Minchew, one of the performers, who is also a sales representative for an IT staffing firm. “Those lines are written down, and then placed on the stage. The performers will come in and pick up one of the lines and have to work it into a scene.”
There are 22 ComedySportz clubs across the U.S. and two in Europe. While they’re not considered franchises, each location pays a licensing fee to the club in Milwaukee that started it all.
It was in 1984 that actor and writer Richard Chudnow founded the first ComedySportz club there. By that time, Dulany had a theater degree from Southwestern University in Georgetown, and she’d tried her hand at performing in New York City.
The negative attitude among comedians there made her rethink her choices, though.
“Basically, you’d get off the stage in New York and another performer would tell you how horrible you were,” Dulany said.
Instead, she moved to Milwaukee in ’86 to be general manager of a nonprofit theater. She ended up auditioning for Chudnow that year. After four years with ComedySportz in Milwaukee, Dulany was ready to run her own club.
“I started out with 15 comedians, and we’d play in a restaurant in Montrose on Thursday nights,” Dulany said. “The problem was that in Milwaukee, 90 percent of the people know what ComedySportz is. Since Houston was a bigger market, I thought it’d be even more successful. It was a much longer haul than I ever thought it would be.”
The club opened in its current location in 2004. Its roster has grown to 45 comedians, all of whom have day jobs. In addition to performing on weekends, members of the troupe do comedy shows for corporate clients, like Shell and Chevron.
Mindful of her days in New York, Dulany is big on encouraging teamwork among her comedians.
“Every time before we go out on a stage, we get in a circle and pat each other’s backs,” Dulany said. “And we tell each other, ‘I’ve got your back.’ It’s our way of saying we’ll be there for each other.”