Funny Business

It’s the start of another four-week run of stand-up comedy classes at Stevie Ray’s School of Improv, the eponymous training center Steve Rentfrow named for his comedic alter ego. He does a pretty good Cosby impression, a bit that is intended to make a point about imitation, the fifth of what’s just been defined as the seven levels of comedy. Eleven nervous students sit on uncomfortable kitchenette chairs, balancing notebooks awkwardly on knocking knees.

This scuzzy office in the Calhoun Arts Center at Lyndale and Lake makes for an unlikely classroom, but these hopefuls appear serious about their stand-up comedy studies. But is it possible to learn much of anything over the course of just four two-hour classes? Especially about something as ineffable as comedy? Could the joke really be on us—with only Stevie Ray laughing, all the way to the bank? Our dutiful instructor didn’t address these questions during his introductory remarks at the beginning of class, probably because he was busy collecting everyone’s tuition checks.

It’s not that I mind paying my $100. I understand Stevie Ray’s running a business. And he’s certainly not alone. All kinds of folks around town would willingly accept my money in return for sharing a few not-so-funny, not-so-secret insights. The Brave New Workshop has offered comedy improvisation classes for years. And a thriving local improv scene has resulted in myriad options to study improv. If growing enrollments are any indication, dire times are leading more and more desperate people to these classes, too. Because comedy beats working for a living, right?

Stevie Ray also offers improv training, but my peers and I want to make our mark with just a microphone and some jokes—in other words, embarrass ourselves solo. This vague notion is one of the few things we have in common. We’re a hair stylist who once booked Cedric the Entertainer and now wants her own turn at fame, a tiny quick-walking and talking Vietnamese jewelry designer, a high schooler eager to get revenge on her teachers, a shy professional clown into New Age philosophy, and a few others probably worth crossing the street to avoid.

The first two weeks of class we examine what makes people laugh. Stevie Ray’s lectures begin with Aristotle and end with the construction of a one-liner. These same topics comprise the majority of Stevie Ray’s Medium-Sized Book of Comedy, which is something of a self-published jumble and the class’s only required text. I’m inclined to forgive the book’s rough edges, because it was written by the busiest man with two first names in Twin Cities comedy.

Stevie Ray’s credentials don’t begin or end with the textbook. He graduated from Moorhead State University with a degree in a course of study he created: Theory and Performance of Comedy. As a stand-up, he’s worked with Paula Poundstone, Marcia Warfield, and “Sniglets” creator Rich Hall. In 1983, he served as Pee Wee Herman’s bodyguard. And according to the author bio in the back of his book, he’s a holder of three black belts who keeps bees and harvests organic honey in his free time. That he’s also a qualified beekeeper and humorist, we’re just expected to believe. Stevie Ray uses the stand-up of professionals and former students to illustrate his ideas. He performs little of his own routine in class.

Week three, we trade our pens and paper for an unplugged microphone to create the three-minute routines we’ll get to perform at Stevie Ray’s Comedy Cabaret out at the Radisson Hotel in Bloomington after classes are done.

The hair stylist does a happy little rant about purchasing tampons. The jewelry designer speeds through an unintelligible bit about his thick accent. I spend my time describing southern Indiana, where I grew up. The area could quite easily be called North Kentucky, I joke, except in Indiana, we don’t marry our sisters—just date them. It’s not exactly Woody Allen or Steve Martin material, but my classmates chuckle.

During our final class and dress rehearsal (the mic is now connected to a small guitar amp), Stevie is the only one who laughs at me. I appreciate that solitary hoot. The Saturday before my first stand-up performance, when I should be polishing my set, every lesson I’ve learned escapes me and I die a slow, serious death in front of everyone except Stevie Ray.

Stevie Ray offers suggestions for improving our routines. He recommends ways to tighten set-ups and punch up our punchlines. He laughs even when all hope seems lost, probably because he’s had his share of students for whom there was no hope. Odds are that in every class, between one and five students just aren’t very funny. But their checks cleared, too, and humor—after all—is subjective, right?

How I’ll survive my fate in front of total strangers, I can’t imagine. But something funny happens the night of my stage debut. My three minutes quickly come and go. Too quickly. And I do, in fact, survive. The audience, drunk and disinterested during the other student sets, responds well to my simple hillbilly humor. They laugh. They applaud when I’m finished. Total strangers go out of their way to congratulate me afterward.

Afterward is when I remember what I decide is the best advice Stevie Ray ever offered—advice I figure is worth about a hundred bucks: “At the start of classes, people always want to know if they’ve ‘got it.’ At the end of classes, they always want to know if they should go on,” he said. “I always tell them the same thing: The audience will let you know if you’re funny and if you should continue.”