lifestyles
Let the comedy and games begin
Parm Dishman/KANSAN
Comedians perform at Kansas City ComedySportz every weekend at the Kansas City, Mo., club. The improvisational comedy show features teams of comedians who compete for points and laughs.
By Craig Lang Kansan staff writer
Two teams of three players come out onto the field. The Sharks wear red, and the Jets are clad in blue. The audience stands and sings the national anthem. And the games begin.
The spectators at this Kansas City,Mo., club are not watching any normal sporting event. They are at Kansas City ComedySportz, 15 E.Fifth St., and the game is improvisation.
"It's two teams trying to out-funny each other, all done by audience suggestions," said Corey Rittmaster, KU graduate and cast member of ComedySportz.
Any suggestion the audience throws out is fair game. The players will do whatever is asked of them by the crowd's suggestion — from singing a reggae song about Idaho to selling an elephant's toenail clippers endorsed by Joe Namath in a Home Shopping Club-style sketch. If they have to, they even will play Twister with the Bee Gees.
Ritmaster said the shows were 90 minutes long with a 10-minute half-time. The six players must play various improvisational games, using audience suggestions as they go along. The host of the show is a referee who takes audience suggestions and makes penalty calls if necessary.
"At the end of each round of game, the audience says who they like more and points are given to that team," Rittmaster said. "At the end, we have a winner and a loser."
ComedySportz performs shows
Thursdays through Sundays at 7:06
p.m. and an extra show on Fridays
and Saturdays at 10:50 p.m. Tickets
for Thursday and Sunday shows are
$8 each, and tickets for Friday and
Saturday shows are $10 each and
must be ordered in advance. Tickets can be purchased by calling (816) 842-ARGH.
Clancy Hathaway, owner and manager of Kansas City Comedy-Sportz, said players had about 150 different improvisational games to choose from each show. Games include Mr. Know-It-All, where each team member says one word until they make up a sentence, and Last Action Joke, where players have to come up with an Arnold Schwarzeneger-style one-liner after pretending to murder other players with unusual household items chosen by audience members.
"They all have different points of what players should accomplish," Hathaway said.
Kevin Pinkowski, Memphis, Tenn., junior, said his favorite game was the Shakespearean Theater, in which the players had to make up a story, based on an event in an audience member's life, in the style of Shakespearean drama.
"I think the Shakespearean play motif is something you can play around with and make fun of pretty easily." he said.
Because ComedySportz is a family club, Hathaway said one of the rules at the club was that the content must remain clean.
"Although we're not against dirt humor, we just don't need it," he said. "Anybody can make a dirty joke."
Kelly Jones, St. Louis sophomore, said she was glad that the players did not make their jokes dirty because a lot of comedians today had a hard time keeping their acts clean.
"It's nice that they can still be
free and keep it clean," she said.
day jobs but that none of them was a professional comedian.
The company of ComedySportz is made up of 31 paid performers. Rittmaster said that 27 of them had
we nave teachers, computer programmers and bill collectors," he said. "They come here and act goofy at night."
For each performance, six cast members act as the team players, one as the referee, and three others as the announcer, light controller and keyboard player. Hathaway said having a lot of performers in the company allowed them to have several shows each weekend without any of the cast members getting burned out.
Eric Davls, Chapman junior and cast member of ComedySportz, said improvisation was not as easy as it looked. He said that it took a long time to find out what a person's fundamental improvisational skills were.
"It's a series of years before you get to be a good improviser," he said.
Davis said two of the things ComedySportz members had to be able to do well were sing songs and make up rhymes as they went along. Davis said he practiced this by spending time thinking up songs and words that rhymed.
"We have a rule that we never say scissors or orange," he said.
After training himself for years as an improviser, Davis said skills such as making up rhymes on the spot became a subconscious effort. "The brain is like a muscle," he
"The brain is like a muscle, he said. "It gets stronger as we train."
Davis said he thought improvisation was better than stand-up comedy because it involved more than one person building one big idea together. He said he enjoyed working at ComedySportz because of the reaction he heard from the audience.
"When you hear the crowd laughing uproariously, it shocks you," he said. "It's pretty rewarded."
Kill Creek
By Robert Moczydlowsky, Kansan music write
As I crossed the shallow, muddy ditch outside of
I turned the volume down, frantically looking around for the film crew from "The Twilight Zone." Then, realizing that I was missing the song, I put the eerie coincidence on hold and turned up the radio volume.
And while the tune played, I thought back to the conversation Ron Hayes, Kill Creek guitarist, and I had had earlier that afternoon.
Through my speakers came Kill Creek's "Stretch."
which lent its name to one of Lawrence's finest guitar-driven bands, I switched stations on the radio.
Way up.
We spoke about pop music, touring,
sleeping on floors and the band's new
material for a coming record on Mammoth Records — and golf.
Q: Exactly how well did your first record, "SB Valentine's Garage," do?
It was a weird afternoon.
A: Well, around here it did incredibly well. I was amazed that the reaction
around Lawrence was as strong as it was. Across the country, we had pockets here and there where it sold pretty well, too. But it didn't go gold or anything. As far as our success around here though, we couldn't have been happier.
A: Absolutely. We wrote the songs for the first album a really long time ago. They were written in '91 and '92. So that's three years of having to get excited about playing the same songs, even though we've been writing new songs all during that time. Right now we've started work recording our new album, which will be released in February, and after this coming Canadian tour, we'll go back to the studio and finish it.
Q: So now that the touring is done and you're sick of those songs, are you guys ready to make a new record?
A: It's funny you ask that. Just yesterday, we were talking about all of the pats on the back we got when our record came out. And then now, if I forget to say hello to somebody while I'm downtown, I'm a snowbock rock star. I
I think that this album will be a much better showcase of where we are musically than "Valentine's" is. Of course, we never get tired of some of our songs, like "Wuss Cliff" and "Stretch."
know that really happened to PAW when they got signed; I think it happens to everybody. I try to not let if get to me.
Q: What about your image inside the Lawrence music scene?
Q: What about support from students at the University of Kansas? Do you feel
always play well in town, that affords you a little luxury to go out and fall all over the country.
A: Oh yeah, totally. We definitely need the college students. Like this Friday, for instance. We haven't played in town for a while, aside from a show at one of the residence halls, and we're anxious to see how many students still are interested in hearing us play. A lot of people still haven't heard us, and I'd like to hope that we'll be able to put on a good show for them. We need the students to build a really strong base in town. If you
Q: So what does Friday's show look like?
New stuff or old stuff?
any effects of the students on your local following?
A; Both. We plan to play everything everybody expects to hear and then throw in our new songs, too. It'll be a big mix. Lately we've been thinking that the initial record-deal-album honeymoon was over, but now, with this show here and the new record, we're starting to get excited again. And Pat and I have been playing a lot of golf lately. It's such a fun game. That has me excited, too.
Q: Golf, huh? Are you any good?
A: Oh, no. It's so frustrating. But I guess that's the fun of it, watching everybody handle the frustration. I need to get a new driver though. I hit Paid's dad's driver the other day and hit the longest, straightest shot ever. I've been walking around with that shot in my head every day since.
Kill Creek tee off at 10 tonight at the Bottleneck, 737 New Hampshire St. Superdrug and Polara (two great rock bands, Hayes said) will open. The show is 18 and over. Tickets are $4.
Exhibition—Basic Studies Scholarship Show, today, at the Art and Design Gallery.
PERFORMANCES
EXHIBITIONS AND LECTURES
KU Theatre for Young People will sponsor "The Butterfly," 7 p.m. tomorrow at Crafton-Preyer Theatre. Tickets $3, $5 and $6.
Cultural Calendar
The Renegade Theatre presents East Side Comedy Shop, 8 p.m. tomorrow at 1801 Massachusetts St. Tickets $5.
Helen Hocker Center for the Performing Arts presents "Grand Hotel," 7 p.m. Tuesday, at the theater in Gage Park, Topeka.
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