Will Work for Giggles

Improv stalwart Joe Bill kicks off Comedy Month with a lesson plan for laughter.

by Daniella Wexler

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Published: Nov 3, 2010

Joe Bill (left) and Dave Razowsky

If you're a hardcore fan of improv, you may want to start wetting your pants right now. The great Joe Bill is coming to town to play Comedy Month — a three-week chucklefest created by the Philadelphia Improv Festival, Philly Sketchfest and the Philadelphia Joke Initiative.

Most people probably don't recognize the name or the face. So what's the big deal? The short answer is: He's funny. The long answer? Read on.

In the mid-1980s, Bill left his home state of Indiana to work and study at iO Chicago and Second City under former Saturday Night Live coach Del Close. In '87, he teamed up with 19 other "dysfunctional" comedians to create Annoyance Theater, a venture that not only allowed him to create a brand of comedy all his own, but the opportunity to "enchant and horrify" through a medium he likes to call comedy burlesque.

The troupe instantly became notorious for putting on vulgarly bent crowd-pleasers like Screw Puppies, Manson: The Musical and Coed Prison Sluts — a show that still holds the title for longest-running musical staged in Chicago. All lewdness aside, though, there's a reason the company chose to use the word "theater" instead of "comedy" on its marquee. "I'm just as happy to get riveted silence from an audience who's compelled by characters emotionally affecting each other as I am by knee-slapping laughter," says Bill. "If you put the word 'comedy' out front of your theater, you have to deliver laughs."

This unlikely mixture of crude and serious seems to have paid off. Today Bill is regarded as a master of scenic and comedic improvisation and, as a sought-after adviser for comedy theaters across the country, he's able to open doorways for promising comedians who would otherwise have a hard time making an impact in larger comedy havens like Chicago. "I'm big into building the improv community," he says. "I want to help people do in 10 years what it took me 20 to do."

But with all the teaching and mentoring of newbies, he still has an insatiable itch to be on stage. Tomorrow night he's splitting the spotlight with Dave Razowsky, a fellow Annoyance Theater founder who shares his opinion that a successful show shouldn't be taken for granted; a comedian has to work for it, they agree. The two have actually never played together at a comedy festival, but Bill says the laughter should be plentiful. "He's a little Jewish guy, and I'm a big plodding Irish guy," he says, "so of course we're gonna be funny together." It's this type of uncanny chemistry that revs up his passion for improv and readies him for the trademark, off-the-cuff reactions he's known for. "You're not going to get better than that unless you offer instantaneous non-contact orgasms," says Bill. "[But] I don't think you can do that legally in America — especially with the Tea Party getting bigger."

(daniella.wexler@citypaper.net)

Razowski & Bill play Fri., Nov. 5, 9 p.m., $10, Philadelphia Ethical Society, 1906 Rittenhouse Square, 215-685-0750, phif.org.

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