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Comedy hit the Chapel Hill scene last year with hilarious performances from the The Comedy Zone
By CHRIS CAIN
Staff Writer
"Comedy ... is an unnatural act."
once said the bug-eyed funnyman
Marty Feldman.
Talk to a comic for more than five
minutes and the truth of Feldman's
maxim begins to sink in: Being
seriously funny is hard work. But it's
work that more and more men and
women are choosing to take on
nowadays. And for many, it's work
that has proved to be unnaturally
successful over the past couple of
years. Tom Williams, founder of
Charlie Goodnight's Comedy Club,
puts it simply: "There's no question.
Comedy is hot."
Obviously, hot is a good thing to
be. and like most good things in this
land of opportunity, it means lots and
lots of money. Money enough to
bulge Feldman's eyes out were he still
around, and enough to cause local
performers and business people to
take a second look at the art form
that has been around since bushmen
and banana peels Comedy.
Performers like Chapel Hill's own
Dan Barlow, who after years of
writing humorous pieces for the odd
newspaper or magazine has decided
to give it a shot as a professional
stand-up comic.
And business people like Mark
Tharrington, owner of the newly
opened La Terraza, who believes there
is a place for comedy even in clubs
such as his that until now have
featured exclusively musical forms of
entertainment. He is not alone in
realizing that "comedy is more
popular than it once was. I think there
is an audience here." Consequently,
Tharrington has secured a list of
comedy booking agents he even
went so far as to book nationally
known Ian Shoaies (a regular on
National Public Radio and Nightline),
but he had to cancel at the last
minute to appear on NBC.
Well, Dan Barlow isn't exactly a
household name either in Chapel Hill
dwellings or anywhere else, but his
ipath thus far. as well as his aspira
tions, are perhaps typical of the rising
new comedians. A 1973 UNC grad
uate with an English degree and many
semesters of creative writing under
his belt. Barlow began writing free
lance humor for a couple of local
newpapers and a skiing magazine
here and there before he decided to
give comedy a try.
"I noticed that Steven Wright was
doing some of the stuff I was
writing." he said. He gave stand-up
a shot for the first time last summer
at the Carrboro ArtsCenter's Monday
Night Live.
The Daily Tar HeelThursday, October 1, 19375
e ban
The ArtsCenter, like La Terraza.
specializes in live music, but on
Monday nights in the summer any
thing goes, including a fair amount
of comedy. Mary Ruth, theater
director at the ArtSchool. says that
although the summer amateur nights
are over, you'll still hear laughter in
the halls of their new building on
West Main Street, particularly on a
Thursday evening. It is then that
' "Transactors" take the stage, a group
of four actorscomedians who keep
the audience laughing with what she
dubs "performance improvisation."
In essence, the way it works is simple
and, in practice often simply
hilarious. The group asks the audience
for, say, a current event and an object.
Then, with "the mining of the gulf
and "eggplant" as their guides, they
jump immediately to cable Iranian TV
and a how-to show on disguising a
mine as an eggplant.
Ruth says that as far as conven
tional stand-up comedy goes, "We
haven't considered it seriously, so to
speak. But it's not barred from the
realm of possibility." Presently, she
plans to concentrate on building an
audience for the Transactors.
But back to Barlow, the represen
tative comic. He went -from the
ArtCenter to a total of four shows
at what comes closest to a true
comedy club in Chapel Hill. Theo
dore's on Franklin Street. It was
Barlow's start as a professional
comedian.
Indeed. Theodore's has given quite
a few comics an audience to entertain,
and it also gives the money collected
at the door generally about $100
to the winner of its amateur night.
The bar is owned and operated by
two students. John Treece and Mike
Ussery, who are now seniors at UNC
and N.C. State, respectively. They
opened the "Bar and Comedy Club"
last spring because, Treece said, "at
the time comedy was really booming.
So we figured we'd bring comedy to
Chapel Hill."
Though they have found their plan
thus far successful, the proposition
is not as simple as it may sound."
"There are a lot of misconceptions
about comedy," says Treece. "It's not
cheap, believe me." It can cost from
$550 to $1,200 a night to bring a
comedian in, often on top of a night's
lodging and meal. And because
Theodore's only seats 85-90 people,
the two owners sometimes find it
tough to get a return on their
investment. Though he says their
comedy line-up is "kind of haphazard
right now." Treece hopes within a
couple of weeks to be featuring
comedy every Thursday night, per
haps with the help of The Comedy
Zone, a major booking agent.
But Barlow didn't stop with Theo
dore's. He has just finished a five
night run at the granddaddy of area
comedy clubs, what Barlow calls "one
of the better nightclubs in the
country outside of New York and LA."
Charlie Goodnight's in Raleigh. In
comedy, all roads seem to lead to the
neighboring comedy club. As Ruth of
the ArtsCenter says, "Charlie Good
night's has got the market cornered.
And they do a good job."
But, says owner Tom Williams, a
good job doesn't come easy: "We've
paid our dues ... by stubbing our
toes a little we built our club into
one of the best clubs in the country."
When he started the venture four
years ago it was the first full-time
comedy club in North Carolina. After
a lot of learning from mistakes and
from other clubs in larger cities, "We
book the best comedy in the country
. . . comics like Jay Leno (who will
be performing at Raleigh's Memorial
Auditorium Oct. 15 as part of Good
night's 4th anniversary celebration)."
Williams says. "When we first started
you could put anyone up there. Now
people want more sophistication.
They don't want some joke about
AIDS or the Iranians."
Becky Barnes, Goodnight's publi
city manager, credits the area for
coming out to see a. more sophisti
cated humor. "Obviously the Triangle
area has a tremendous sense of
humor. Research indicates that
intelligence correlates with a sense
of humor. Well, they're very percep
tive around here. You've got to be
quick to pick up on comedy. You can't
exactly wake up and get it the next
day."
Barnes' flattery of the Triangle,
misplaced or not, raises an interesting
question: What is it that makes
people around here laugh? Theories
about laughter range from those
branding humor an expression of
human aggression to Freud's notion
of joke as sexual release mechanism.
Williams tends to take a lighter view
of the art: he sees it as based in
common experience.
"Everybody's been in the 7-11.
Everybody's been behind the guy who
won't run the yellow light. That's the
basis for comedy."
Barlow says his deadpan variety of
comedy went over very well at
Goodnight's. Asked what he does for
a living outside of comedy he replied,
"I translate driver training manuals
into braille" just deadpan enough
to keep one journalist quietly scrib
bling for a couple of seconds. He also
works "part time on an ant farm
4
. " '
r -
Comedian Don Barlow is trying his luck as a stand-up comic
cleaning mud out of the grooves in
little tiny tractor tires." Along with
a few "Wheel of Fortune" jokes.
Barlow also includes some specifically
local humor in his act. notably
concerning one Dean Smith.
UNC humor also figures into the
dual act of Rodney and James, and
for good reason they're both
students at the University. The pair
of speech communication majors
have performed at Theodore's twice
(to "buckets of laughter," according
to owner Treece) and hope, as most
area comics, to make it to Charlie
Goodnight's eventually. Most of their
routine, according to Rodney Honey
cutt, is built from "things we come
up with just sitting around talking."
A good portion is based upon child
hood memories, "a think-back-to-things-that-you-have-experienced
type comedy," says Honeycutt.
reminding not to forget the hyphens.
Sexual jokes don't figure heavily in
the show. "We figure we should draw
from experience." he says. He claims
most of the profanity comes when
the audience heckles.
Around the nation, however,
whether audiences have been heck
ling or rolling in the aisles, they have
been going out in unprecedented
numbers to see. and pay for, come
dians. Honeycutt believes stand-up
comedy to be more popular now
because "comedians are getting
respected as actors." He notes the
box-office success of ex-stand-ups
such as Eddie Murphy and Whoopie
Goldberg. "
Becky Barnes sees television as
doing much for comedy, especially the
recent increase in cable viewers. Spots
on HBO and Showtime have increased
comedians' audiences tremendously
and have made watching stand-up
comedy an acceptable form of enter
tainment, she believes. Williams
views comedy's popularity as not only
good for him and his club, but also
for the folks on the other end.
J
13
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Jay Leno will perform Oct. 15 at Raleigh's Memorial Auditorium
whether a housewife with three
screaming kids or a student who's
just failed an exam.
"Laughter is a great therapeutic
device. It's used for therapy for
depression," he said. "Here's Vz
hours that nothing's going to go
wrong." Williams says, "and he's
telling jokes about flunking tests and
crying babies."
Perhaps, then, as trusty Reader's
Digest claims, laughter is indeed the
best medicine. Certainly for Williams
and an increasing number of local
comics and businesses, it seems to
be just what the doctor ordered.