A sell-out crowd of about 90 people, all waiting to laugh, filled the Magic Lantern Theater in downtown Spokane. Before long, a young man with screaming yellow hair, wearing a referees uniform, bounded out onto the small stage and began interacting with the packed house and popping one liners.


The referee was soon joined by six others, three in matching red baseball jerseys and three in blue jerseys, who for the next hour and a half improvised routine after routineand kept the audience guffawing and yelling out suggestions.


The frivolity was music to the ears of Kasey Christie, the co-owner of Ducks-in-a-Row Productions Inc., an improvisational comedy company here that does business as SpoComedy, and puts on shows at the Magic Lantern, 123 S. Wall, every Saturday night.


My goal is to get this business going well enough that I can hire players full time, Christie says. Unlike many performance groups, SpoComedy operates as a business, rather than a nonprofit organization, which heightens the sense of professionalism of those involved, Christie says. He currently has 18 less-than-part-time employees. All are players in the improv troupe; some also help Christie run the business.


SpoComedy is one of 27 licensees of Milwaukee, Wis.-based Viewers Like You LLC, which provides a blueprint for shows and instructional programs called ComedySportz. Since June, SpoComedy has worked to entertain audiences with weekly shows. SpoComedy also holds classes at the theater to train people in the art of improv, performs road shows for private events, and offers comedy-driven team-building seminars.


So far, no one is making a living through SpoComedy. Viewers Like Yous well-established licensees elsewhere, however, are growing businesses whose players make good livings and dont need to hold down other jobs, Christie says.


Currently, SpoComedy pays its players per performance from a portion of ticket-sales proceeds. Because the players are employees, Christie believes they take their roles more seriously than they would if they were volunteers. He says that dedication, hard work, and high standards are necessary to establish and maintain a successful business.


Christie, who also practices law here at Lee & Hayes PLLC, had no experience in theater or performing before taking a ComedySportz class in Portland, where he lived until just over two years ago, on a whim after attending a show. While watching the performance, he thought, Wow, thats amazing! Howd they do that? After learning the ropes, he became a player there, and wanted to continue his involvement in improv after moving to Spokane. He started and co-owns SpoComedy with ComedySportzs Portland licensee.


Christie says people can learn a lot about themselves and others through improv, and dont need any particular background to be successful.


I can teach funny, he says.


ComedySportz shows


Many peoples only exposure to improv comedy is the ABC television show Whose Line is it Anyway? hosted by Drew Carey, who at the top of each segment sets the scene for four comedians to invent skits, games, or songs in front of a live audience. While Spo-Comedys style of improv is similar to that seen on the TV show, Christie says the two shows are very different.


SpoComedys shows, like all ComedySportz shows across the country, are designed to be highly interactive and family friendly, he says.


At the Magic Lantern show, after a spoof of the classic seventh-inning-stretch song, Take Me Out to the Ball Game, the red team and blue team squared off to try to earn points by being funny. Audience members were asked for suggestions, to get them involved and to show the players werent working from scripts. Then, the audience was asked to judge which team performed better by holding up red or blue fly swatters called judges whopners.


SpoComedys Web site boasts that the shows are funny enough for a bachelor party, clean enough for your grandmother. To keep things clean, the referee calls a brown-bag foul if a player or audience member says or does something the referee considers to be rude, crude, lewd, socially unacceptable, or otherwise offensive. The referee then places a brown paper bag over the head of the offender, which must remain in place until the end of the activity. The ref also can call a foul on a player who makes a joke so bad that the audience groans.


During a spelling bee, the ref asks the audience to suggest increasingly difficult words. As a team tries to spell the word, each team member calls out one letter at a time. Then, the team has to use the word in a sentence, with each person saying only one word at a time.


Another contest is an improvised musical drama based on a topic suggested by an audience member. In that event, players develop characters and a plot and sing portions of the story, complete with rhyming lyrics.


Road shows, for events such as company parties, are essentially the same as the Saturday night shows, and can be tailored for different venues and budgets, Christie says.


SpoComedys players are chosen not through formal auditions, but through classes called Improv 101 and Improv 201, which SpoComedy sponsors. Because the classes run for several weeks, Christie says they give him more opportunity to assess a students ability, drive, and dedication than he could during an audition.


In Improv 101, participants learn the basics of improv, which include not only being funny, but working as a team and paying close attention to what others are doing so one can respond appropriately and augment the humor.


One such exercise involves telling a story in a circle. Each person says only one word, and does so as quickly as possible. Then, the next person comes up with an appropriate follow-up word quickly.


Things dont always go smoothly. At a recent class, players uttered: The most incredible thing I ever did was to run away from the bulls . Pamplona is a very large and town that is loving caring and full of bulls. After a few times around, things deteriorated to: Crock pot flu and contagious smallpox . My word what pressure!


While most of the attendees were college-aged, Christie says other classes draw people of all ages. Some are experienced actors who want to improve their skills, while others arent involved in theater, but think improv would be fun, he says. The seven-week Improv 101 class costs $95, and participants get four free tickets to a ComedySportz show. Improv 201, a drop-in class for graduates of Improv 101, costs $5 a session.


Team-building seminars


SpoComedys team-building seminars for businesses use activities to achieve several ends: to break the ice, to get people to listen to one another, and to demonstrate the necessity of effective communication.


An activity Christie has seen work well at seminars starts with a group of people walking in a circle. When anyone claps their hands, the participants must change direction. Inevitably, someone will clap several times in quick succession, which leads to confusion and chaos, he says.


Often, the participants will start arguing about which direction is the right way to go. Thats when the seminar leader steps in and explains nothing is gained by arguing over how many times someone clapped their hands, and the only right way to go is the one that makes the circle flow smoothly.


A main theme of the seminars is the importance of the entire team, rather than of the individual.


SpoComedy hasnt yet done many such seminars, which are customized to fit businesses time and budget requirements, but Christie says hes working to get the word out that the seminars are available, and he expects demand for them will go up.