They’re still doing shows at The Comedy Zone. But are more than five people laughing?
A funny thing happened at The Comedy Zone in Charlotte on Saturday night, and by funny, we do mean funny. But also ... a little weird.
Jeremy “Burpie” Alsop, for instance, did his stand-up set wearing blue latex gloves, and after he introduced the next performer — Todd Riley — the two men elbow-bumped each other skittishly as Riley emerged and Alsop exited.
“Keep it going for Jason and Burpie,” Riley then said, referring to opening act Jason Allen King and to Alsop.
Five people clapped.
“First off, thanks for not being here, I guess,” he quipped, as he locked his eyes on one of the rolling cameras.
Five people laughed.
There were only five people in the audience that night at The Comedy Zone (which was built to accommodate 400) because, well, four comedians plus one owner (Brian Heffron) plus five audience members equals 10, and 10 is the new magic number for gatherings in the age of the coronavirus.
One week ago, like so many other restaurants and bars and live-performance venues throughout North Carolina, the popular AvidXchange Music Factory club announced that its doors would close for the time being due to the pandemic, temporarily leaving dozens of staffers — and many of the comedians it books — out of work.
But just two nights later, The Comedy Zone unveiled plans to do something similar to what other comedy clubs around the country are doing in the age of COVID-19: It would take its shows online, and hope that in doing so, it would help keep at least a little bit of money in its employees’ wallets by soliciting donations from those watching.
So, on a basic level, Saturday night’s debut felt vaguely like one of those old Jerry Lewis MDA Labor Day Telethons, with a Venmo username and a GoFundMe link emblazoned on the bottom of the screen instead of an 800 number.
“Donate to these families,” Burpie implored toward the end of his set. “These people gotta take care of their families, man. I know y’all come here, and y’all don’t wanna tip sometimes. But this is your tip. This is when you tip. You make up for that tip that your a-- missed two years ago by donating now.”
And while the show’s four comedians — King, Alsop, Riley and headliner Shaun Jones — all had plenty of jokes that could have been used pre-pandemic, they also took ample opportunity to make light of the immediate fallout from the coronavirus.
Burpie, wearing his latex gloves: “I normally grab the s--- out of this microphone when I’m performing. Not today!”
Riley: “I’ve got three leftover toilet paper rolls in my car right now as merch that I stole from the hotel last week.”
Jones: “It’s a hard time we’re going through, man. Ain’t nothing in the grocery store. ... I went to Whole Foods. They need to call it Half Foods, ’cause half the s--- was gone!”
It’s awkward to see stand-up comedy and hear but a smattering of laughter. But for the most part, the performers seemed to take it in stride.
In fact, Jones told the Observer on Monday that he’s had experience with similarly minuscule audiences quite recently, also thanks to COVID-19. A weekend prior to the Charlotte show, he did multiple shows at Chuckles Comedy House in Jackson, Miss., as public fears about going out were coming to a head. There were two shows per night on Friday, March 13, and Saturday, March 14, he said; about 50 to 60 attended the early shows while there were only eight and six people, respectively, at the later shows.
“Then I think Sunday’s show might have had nine people. ... But honestly, I’ve kept very positive about it. I mean, what are you gonna do?”
King, meanwhile, copped to briefly being uneasy as the first of the four comedians to take the stage Saturday.
“I would say for the first minute or two it was a heightened nervousness compared to what I was used to, yes,” he said by phone on Monday morning. “But after the first couple jokes, I got back into the rhythm of what I was doing.”
“When you cut your teeth doing open mics,” he continued, “you definitely get a crowd of comedians who are non-responsive because they’re thinking about their own work, so I’m not completely unfamiliar with a very light room. But it was definitely different. ... I got some good advice from Heff (Comedy Zone owner Brian Heffron) before I went up, and that was, ‘Do your material. Trust that there are a lot of people watching. You can’t rely on reactions. Just keep going. Plow through.’”
According to Facebook, more than 5,400 people watched the first half of Saturday night’s show. But that number dipped to just over 2,800 for the second half. The problem was: Technical difficulties arose midway through Burpie’s set, and for several minutes, he literally had a total audience of just those five people in the club, since it took time to get the live feed up and running again. In other words, there wasn’t supposed to be a first and a second half.
The event succeeded in at least getting the ball rolling, though: By late Monday afternoon, more than $2,600 had been raised, and The Comedy Zone said donations will be distributed between the performers and the staff. (The club did not pay the comics up front, and it isn’t keeping a dime to itself.)
“It’s a great thing they’re doing,” Jones said. “I mean, we don’t have 401Ks, we don’t have Aflac that will pick up the slack. We depend on these gigs. So do the servers, and the sound guy, and the guy who works the door, and the people who do the seating.”
He said that although he personally is losing thousands on canceled gigs in April, he’s continuing to try to look on the bright side.
During his set on Saturday night, he joked: “It’s amazing that a natural disaster can show you how much you can’t stand your damn kids.”
On Monday, however, the 50-year-old father of three was more serious: “I look at all this as a chance to reconnect with them. To just enjoy each other, and just really take a step back and say, ‘You know what? Despite all the turmoil, I do have good things in my life.’”
But he couldn’t keep a straight face for long.
“If you need to call me again ... I ain’t doin’ s---. Call me back in five minutes,” he said right before signing off. “I’ll go get on Rosetta Stone and learn Spanish real quick, and we can do it again in Spanish.”
The Comedy Zone said it will continue to host shows for online audiences live from the club at 7 p.m. every Saturday until it reopens, and will continue to solicit donations. The GoFundMe campaign is at www.gofundme.com/f/the-comedy-zone-charlotte-staff-fundraiser, or donations can be made by sending direct payments to The Comedy Zone via its Venmo account (username: ComedyZoneCLT).
