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Something’s stirring in the local comedy scene. After a decade of dormancy, new clubs and shows are cropping up all over the island, troupes are forming and major headliners are coming back to perform in greater numbers. In a business where success is notoriously elusive for comics and clubs alike, it remains to be seen if any of this will stick. But while we wait to find out, there’s not much to do but sit back and laugh.

You can’t say the F-word in Honolulu’s only stand-up comedy club. Well, you can say it, but whoever’s on stage can’t. The late George Carlin might have had a choice word or seven to sum up just what’s so counterintuitive about Hawai’i Comedy Theater’s line of thinking. Stand-up comedy is supposed to be raw, uncensored, surprising, even shocking. Audiences go to hear comics say the things they can’t say and do the things they can’t do. But in Honolulu, the performers can’t say or do them either.

The Golden Age

It wasn’t always like this. In the golden age of stand up, an era when audiences were fresh off seeing Eddie Murphy break profanity records dressed head-to-toe in purple leather, mainland comedian Brian McKim said Honolulu was one of his favorite circuits to play.

“There was this great spot, Honolulu Comedy Club, and we used to do that every couple of months,” he said. “You’d do that club, then two nights on Kaua’i, three on Maui, two on the Big Island, it was great while it lasted, but then business went soft. Almost everyone went down around ‘95.”

Discussion of the great industry collapses of the 20th century evokes images of smokestacks, whaling ships and assembly lines more than empty stages in brick-walled comedy clubs, but there’s a consensus amongst comedy insiders that the downturn in the 1990s changed the industry significantly. No one can say definitively what happened. Some comics point to a ratcheted up marketing campaign geared at women that turned professional sports into the co-ed group activity that comedy had once been. Others say it’s the natural for any industry’s popularity to surge and ebb over the years. Bo Irvine, who tells jokes with a bleach-bright smile and a head bob that calls Jay Leno to mind, has been a regular on local stages for more than 20 years. He performed at the Honolulu Comedy Club in its heyday, and helped found Hawai’i Comedy Theater.

“I think comedy kills itself sometimes,” said Irvine. “It gets oversaturated or it gets mediocre. In the ’80s, every time you turned on a TV, you saw comedy. It became so you didn’t need to go to a comedy club. It killed itself.”

Andy Bumatai, among the most recognized names in local comedy, started doing stand-up in Honolulu in 1977.

“The only guy who really made it work here was Eddie Sax,” said Bumatai, whose own attempts at starting a local club failed. Sax and his wife, Charlotte, founded the Honolulu Comedy Club and ran it so well that businesses still emulate it today. “He understood that you need to get a comic out here then run him through the islands because you get more bang for your buck. He was a really smart businessman.”

Part of what worked for Sax was flying comedians to O’ahu, then running them through a circuit of clubs on neighboring islands, and putting them up at condos that he owned. It was financially shrewd, but Sax said timing was a major component of the club’s success.

“Comedy was so hot at the time,” he said. “That, and airfare was so cheap. Just the combination of those two things put us over the top…Now the same just flat-out isn’t true. We were the only game in town because we gave it everything we had. The Improv had come in looking to try to open. I could give you an entire list of all the major chains who came in looking to open another club but when they took a look at the market, how we handled it, where we were positioned and how we did, they said, ‘no.’”

So when, after eight years of dominating the local comedy scene, the Saxes decided to pack up and move to the mainland, there was no one to pass the torch to. The void left by the closure of the Honolulu Comedy Club meant comedians had few options–a serious problem in a business that cannot exist without an audience, and cannot draw an audience without the right venue.

“You can’t just give someone a megaphone and a milk crate and tell them to stand up and tell jokes and expect it to work,” said Bumatai. “You wouldn’t expect someone to perform Hamlet that way. What you’re asking for is a laugh and that is extremely inclement. You have to take it seriously. You are going to take a loss but you have to myopically tread forward. It’s not all fun and games.”

The business side

Plenty of aspiring club owners have learned that the hard way. Just this past summer, local comic Ozell Daniel added a Wednesday open-mic night, solely for comedians, to Anna Bannana’s entertainment schedule. After a couple of weeks, he scrapped it.

“The energy wasn’t right,” Daniel said. “And you know I’d love to open my own club, but the biggest thing is expense. It’s a huge undertaking. You have to be able to promote. You could have the funniest line-up in the world but if there aren’t asses in those seats, you’re done.”

Daniel, a mechanic by day and relative newcomer to the scene, first took the stage four years ago, and said he’s already alienated crowds for making fun of the Special Olympics and for a joke he tells that involves a Rodney King piata. He’s the man behind the Hawai’i International Comedy Festival, a week of showcases and workshops that will take place at Brew Moon the first weekend of October. He said he started the festival in part because there are too few stages where aspiring comics can hone their acts.

“Your options here as a performer are really that you have to be a tagalong, and ride the coattails of someone established, or swallow your pride and hit Sharkey’s,” he said.

Sharkey’s is Hawai’i Comedy Theater’s second production in a Friday and Saturday night line-up that kicks off with Comedy Polynesia, a show that mixes stand-up elements with a performance by costumed Samoan Chief Sielu Avea, who does everything from telling jokes to husking coconuts. Sharkey’s, the show that follows Comedy Polynesia, is pure stand-up, and it ends with an open-mic session that costs performers $5 for stage time, as long as they swear not to swear.

“I can do a clean act, but I prefer dirty,” Daniel said. “Forty hours a week I’m at my day job where I can’t say shit and I want to be allowed to.”

The censorship mentality at Sharkey’s is partly a survival tactic. The show has stayed alive in a market where countless others–at comedy clubs, hotel lounges and elsewhere–have closed in the past decade. One of Sharkey’s founders, Wanda Shipp, said ensuring clean entertainment is a big part of what’s kept her business afloat.

“The majority of the calls I get from people who want to come to our shows are questions about whether or not the show is clean,” she said. “And the idea of using language to shock people doesn’t work in this day and age. Bad language isn’t shocking anymore, and usually it isn’t funny. It can be hard to say that because, to a degree, it sounds rather arrogant, but when it comes down to it, it’s a fact. We have a reputation to uphold and a business to operate. The comics know that.”

It’s possible that the kinds of people who like a dirty joke laced with expletives aren’t the sort to call a club ahead of time to inquire about the level of verbal filth they might encounter. Sharkey’s used to cater to that crowd.

“Back when I did Sharkey’s, it was all military guys in the audience and they swore worse than anyone on stage,” said Bumatai. “It became this big ‘fuck you’ free-for-all. And comedians who swear are in a limited market because of that language. So Sharkey’s is clean, but now if they try to broaden the market, guess what? It might be too late.”

It’s hard to imagine that getting comics to start dropping some F-bombs would be harder than getting them to stop, and Shipp said there’s no plan to change the club’s image anyway. For better or worse, Sharkey’s has made itself a necessity for young or unknown comedians in the area since it’s the only venue of its kind. Bumatai may be far past the point in his career where he’ll play to just any crowd that’ll listen, but he understands well the challenges young comedians face in a city with such limited stage space.

“There’s no place to be bad anymore,” said Bumatai. “The clubs come and go but Sharkey’s is really the only game as far as a standup place where you can go and be bad. The problem with stand-up is it’s not like a saxophone. You can’t lock yourself up and practice for hours and be better when you leave your room. You need interaction with the audience.”

New blood

As recently as six months ago, the lack of stage space for aspiring comics in Honolulu was so glaringly absent that Dawn Nash decided to do something about it.

“There were a bunch of us sort of wandering around looking for places to perform” said Nash, the 33-year-old founder of Hawai’i Funny Business. “There wasn’t a lot of opportunity for local artists, so we decided to create it ourselves. Nothing had been going on for a really long time and a lot of people have talent, so we decided to be proactive.”

Hawai’i Funny Business is a network of about a dozen local comedians interested in all forms of comedy, from stand-up to sketch to improv and even comedic writing. They perform every first and third Saturday of the month at 4 Plays, a venue upstairs from the Dixie Grill in ‘Aiea, and they have performances scheduled next month at the Pipeline Cafe. Nash said 4 Plays is a space where anyone can come out and try jokes.

“We just want people to show us what they’ve got,” she said. “There’s no charge to perform, no restrictions, anybody’s welcome. I don’t want to say it’s a training ground but it’s definitely a place to test material. It’s your basic military bar. You can tell dirty jokes and if you bomb, they’re gonna get over it in a second.”

Hawai’i Funny Business also has a hand in what could be called guerilla comedy, the premise of which is a lot like that of television shows Candid Camera or Punk’d, in which performers will secretly video tape their interactions with strangers, then–with permission from those taped–post the footage to their web site.

“We’re going down to Waikk all month and pulling pranks on tourists,” Nash said, just to see how tourists will react.

Tourist factor

Tourist reaction to the local scene may be more important here than any other city in the country, and the sheer volume of visitors to Honolulu throughout the year has a significant impact on comedy culture.

“In Hawai’i, you have to be able to bring it to any kind of audience,” said Sax. “If there are a bunch of tourists sitting out there, and there always are, you have to have something you can hit them with. And if plan A isn’t working, and you don’t have enough wherewithal to shift to something that will work, that’s going to be a long night.”

Most comics agree that it’s a delicate balance, and that simply catering to a crowd’s demographic won’t ensure a good show. The resounding theme: Funny is funny is funny.

“Everyone always wants to see that local humor,” said Jordan Savusa, a 23-year-old University of Hawai’i graduate, who started at Sharkey’s open-mic night just two years ago and now opens for headliners that the Laugh Factory brings into town. “It’s really hard to determine what works and what won’t work in Hawai’i, not just in comedy but across the board, because when tourists come, they think of Hawai’i in a certain way, and it doesn’t always match up with what local people think of Hawai’i. Not everyone is going to get the nuances of local humor but funny is funny no matter what.”

Young talent

Savusa, like many young local comics, said he would leave the island if it meant getting a chance to better progress his career.

“I want to tune my craft in Hawai’i and then make the jump to L.A. or New York,” he said. “Hawai’i is great. I am from here and I love it, but to be honest, I could count the venues on one hand. I could practically count them on one finger.”

The paradox of young talent contributing to the growth of a comedy scene, only to leave it in search of a niche in a bigger market, seems an inextricable part of Honolulu comedy culture. That’s something that may never change, but the local scene is stirring for the first time in a long time. In addition to Hawai’i Funny Business planning shows and pranks all over town, the Laugh Factory ended its hiatus and has started flying in big names and featuring local favorites like Da Braddahs for shows at Cirque Hawai’i in Waikk. Just two weeks ago, improv comics Shannon Winpenny and Kim Potter opened Laughtrack Theater near the border of Chinatown, the island’s only venue devoted solely to long-form improv. It’s a space where students in their improv classes can take the stage and test what they’ve learned. Brew Moon at Ward Center has been offering up its dining area stage to comics on Thursday evenings since June, and Pipeline Cafe’s new owners have slotted comedy spots each Wednesday night. On top of that, there’s buzz in the industry that more in coming. Arcade bar Dave & Busters is in talks with Hawai’i Funny Business about the possibility of one of its troupes performing comedy there on a regular basis, and there are whispers that Jon Lovitz may open a comedy club in town, following a short-lived run for the club he opened in San Diego last November.

“I feel that we’re having a resurgence of local comedy in Honolulu,” said Hawai’i Comedy Theater owner Shipp. “Back in the 80s, comedy was number one, not just here but everywhere. Its popularity does run in a cycle.”

That cycle has played out in the past, and at times left the scene in a moribund state. But most comics agree that whether or not this is the beginning of a new era in Honolulu comedy, it will never go away completely.

“Comics are our court jesters and we need them,” said Bumatai. “When the economy is down and we are up to our eyeballs in rail transit disputes and we just need the pressure valve released, we need the court jester because he’s the only one who can say the king is fat without getting beheaded.”

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