For the second year in a row, my improv troupe was voted by San Diego Channel 10 viewers as the #1 Live Comedy show. We beat out the Comedy Store in La Jolla and the Mystery Café Dinner Theater. It’s funny but our competition TheatreSports came in 5th and they closed several months ago. I’m not sure if we won because we have really loyal fans or our ballot stuffing campaign worked. I will say that this year it was one e-mail, one vote, so I only got to vote 3 times this year.
http://kgtv.cityvoter.com/winners/10news-com-s-a-list/1997/arts-and-entertainment/live-comedy
Our owner is pretty proud of this honor and I am too. Let me start by saying that I am just a part of a large group of performers. In fact, I only perform on Saturdays. But what it does say is that we have a really great fan base and we produce a good product.
Not too brag, but our competition (other improv groups) is lucky to pull in 20 people per show. We average about 60 per show and it’s not unheard of to sell out once in a while. That’s 105 seats sold. We are also the longest running show in San Diego. (Thank God, Triple Espresso closed a few months ago)
I’ve been with the theater for 7 years and I’ve seen the audiences come and go. I was hear when we were sold out solid from January to June. I was also here when we were lucky to get 20 people per show. For us, I truly can gauge the quality of the show based on the number of people in the audience. When we were on our run of sold out shows, we were good. Our improv was tight and we were funny. When our numbers dropped, our show stunk. I was on the verge of quitting because I hated the show we were producing.
Now we have a nice group. Sure there are improvements that need to be made, but it’s a quality show. There’s a mistake that our competition has made when it comes to improv and I’ll blog about it on another day, but we are just not into what I call wacky improv, where we stand on stage and do weird things. Our style is very scene and story oriented. We are able to connect to the audience and make them laugh at the same time.
Enough of my bragging. It’s an honor to be recognized in San Diego. Come see me for the next few Saturdays before the holidays start.
National Comedy Theatre, 3717 India St, San Diego. Friday and Saturdays 7:30 p.m. and 9:45 p.m.
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