ComedySportz brings competitive improvisational comedy to Las Vegas

All apologies for the upchuck on the infant.

“I feel so bad about your baby,” the blonde consoles, miming the removal of her pretend regurgitation from a newborn child at an imaginary amusement park. “I don’t normally vomit on kids. I get nauseous on these rides.”

“Did you have too much funnel cake?” a concerned-looking man next to her wonders.

And with that, a whistle blows shrilly.

“Christy! Dead trout!” bellows the man in charge of the proceedings as said woman falls to the floor at multipurpose venue The Space.

It’s a Wednesday evening and class is in session at ComedySportz, an international, competitive improvisational company that opened a Vegas branch over the summer.

About a dozen performers are practicing various improv games, currently honing their chops at Dead Trout, where they role-play in various settings while trying to avoid certain keywords associated with that setting.

Saying one of those six terms — in this case, “funnel cake” — which are provided by the crowd while the players are out of the room, results in a performer getting branded a deceased fish.

He or she then has to plop down “dead” onstage until time for the scene expires or one of two competing teams has no players left.

For two hours, the improvisers, who range from 20-something college students to schoolteachers to older cutups, work on their skills for upcoming ComedySportz shows at The Space, where two teams compete for laughs and bragging rights in front of crowds made up of everyone from little girls dressed as unicorns to glow stick-waving elders old enough to be their grandparents.

These are the ComedySportz “pros” who had to audition and make the team.

There are also classes here on Tuesdays for beginners and up-and-comers who want to learn improv technique.

Anything-goes atmosphere

The vibe here is raucous, madcap, borderline delirious — think of a kindergarten class field trip to a gummy bear emporium.

But with adults.

Adults acting like children — or at least getting in touch with their inner 8-year-olds.

“What’s funny is that we all do it when we’re kids; we all make up stories,” says Justin Green, the whistle-blowing ComedySportz coach who serves as its creative director. “So, when you’re an adult, you’re basically learning to just go back to that. It’s something that we already did growing up; it’s just that we grow up and we feel more judgment, however society thinks we should be.”

ComedySportz is all about putting on blinders to some of adulthood’s expectations — you know, like those pesky prohibitions against acting like a human water sprinkler in public — inuring oneself to these creative inhibitions.

“The main thing we’re teaching is just to let go and not worry about what you’re going to say,” Green explains. “Of course, there’s technique about proper scene work or how to play certain games, but it’s more just letting people bring what they have, letting that be enough. You kind of go with whatever happens.”

Improv origins

The ComedySportz brand dates back to 1984, when it was founded by a group of local comedians in Milwaukee.

In the years since, it’s expanded to more than two dozen cities across the globe, from Chicago to Berlin, with such notable alumni as Jason Sudeikis, Nick Swardson, Iliza Shlesinger and Wayne Brady, to name but a few.

The Vegas ComedySportz was years in the making.

It began with actor-filmmaker Robert Cochrane, who’d go to ComedySportz performances in Los Angeles back in the ’90s when he was studying his craft.

“I fell in love with it,” says Cochrane, sitting backstage at The Space, wearing a Las Vegas ComedySportz T-shirt whose logo is a leering bighorn sheep. “It was the greatest show. We went to it all the time.”

Upon moving to Vegas in 2000, he worked with the Second City improv troupe for a time. When that company left Vegas last decade, Cochrane attempted to launch a ComedySportz branch here but was unable to secure a license.

Ten years later, he looked back into it and was able to get the green light.

Cochrane was put in touch with Lana Green, Justin’s mother, who’s a pro player and board president for ComedySportz’s Buffalo team. She was looking to start a Vegas squad, and with Cochrane, her son and The Space owner Mark Shunock on board, ComedySportz began in earnest here in June, its first show taking place in September.

Motley crew

The cast here is diverse.

“It’s a mix,” says Green, an animated 22-year-old whose smile flashes with the frequency of a blinking strobe light. “We get lots of people with lots of experience in theater and comedy, and we get people who’ve never seen a show before and just want to do something fun.”

For Cochrane, the tools that can be gleaned from ComedySportz go beyond learning how to elicit laughs. The core principle of improv is “yes, and …” which means accepting another person’s idea and building on it, which can be applied to just about any setting in life.

For instance, Cochrane, a former film and television studies teacher at the Art Institute, used to lead his students in improv exercises in class.

“It had nothing to do with performance at all,” he says, “but for communication, for opening the students up — especially the first week or two — to really get them to know each other, to build teamwork, to get a foundation going. Then, the other stuff would flow more easily as opposed to everyone kind of saddling off and trying to be the best individual student or individual employee.

“It’s a philosophy,” he adds. “It works in schools. It works in businesses. It just works in life in general.”

It also works onstage.

At a ComedySportz show earlier in the month, the crowd revels in bellowing out the most absurd scenarios for the players to act out, including — but certainly not limited to — hiking to Red Rock with Big Bird as a backpack and doing the dishes with kittens in place of soap.

Come for the laughs, stay for the opportunity to make strangers mime flying a spaceship fashioned out of Tom Brady.

“All we do is just have fun,” Green says. “That’s all you gotta do: hop onstage, have some fun.”

Contact Jason Bracelin at jbracelin@reviewjournal.com or 702-383-0476. Follow @JasonBracelin on Twitter.