In the storage closet-cum-dressing room of the DSI (Dirty South Improv) Comedy Theater, there sits on a shelf an entire crate of fortune cookies, although there's no Chinese takeout to be found.
"It's for a game," one of the DSI cast members says. "It's props."
Welcome to DSI, where anything can be material. Two guys get on stage and use a song from an audience member's iPod as a jumping-off point for a series of scenes. For one show, called "Mister Diplomat," a local celeb will be invited to tell stories from his or her life and the DSI cast will weave a tapestry of funny moments from the stories. Another show, "PT Scarborough Is A Movie" features a player named PT Scarborough (who kind of looks like a young, bearded Orson Welles) who does his own audio for the opening 25 minutes of a movie - particularly a bad movie - that's played on a screen for the audience.
Located in the back of Carr Mill Mall in Carrboro, this 100-seat, black-box theater is basically the city's comedy temple - and people flock to it. "Carrboro's a great community for the theater and for improv," says Jeremy McDonald, who will go into his fourth year in the DSI cast come January. "The community is really supportive of this theater. Like, every week, we'll have new people come in. So whether you draw in from the [UNC-CH] campus or just people around town that have caught wind of or have seen us online or in some sort of media, it draws a big crowd."
While the Triangle is home to several improv companies and theaters - ComedyWorx in Raleigh, Duke University Improv (DUI) in Durham, Transactors Improv and the Chapel Hill Players (CHiPs) in Chapel Hill - DSI is a multifaceted comedy store. Improv (either long- or short-form), sketch comedy, stand-up, one-man or one-woman shows - it's all done at the DSI.
"I mean, we've been open since October 2005, in some of the worst years of our economy," says DSI founder Zach Ward. "And we've managed to keep a for-profit arts organization open, to just keep the doors open. But not only keep the doors open, grow the theater."
Born in Seneca, S.C., Ward, 33, grew up in Chapel Hill and started doing improv in high school at the now-defunct ComedySportz. "A lot of high school students have their extracurricular activities," he says. "Mine was improvisation. Mine was comedy."
He started the DSI Comedy Festival in 2001 (first at UNC-CH), while living in Chicago and studying at such improv meccas as Second City, ImprovOlympic and the Annoyance Theatre and Bar. "Basically, I treated Chicago like it was my comedy grad school," he says. "I did as much as I could to sort of see: How are these theaters running? What things were successful about it; what did I like; what can I take home? And then also, what are some of the things that I would never do when I opened my own theater?"
Keeping on your toe
Since the theater opened in 2005, the performing schedule has expanded from two nights to three, Thursday through Saturday. On the other days, classes are taught: sketch classes, stand-up classes, improv classes. The theater also gives on-your-toes training to business professionals.
Many of the students end up being in the DSI cast, a company that can have 40 to 50 players.
Hillsborough resident Amanda Shirley has been in the cast for three years and found working with DSI to be far different from the plays she used to do in her home state of Indiana.
"When you're doing a play and you're learning your lines, you can sort of fall back into certain patterns," Shirley says. "And, with comedy, you have to constantly be on your feet, sort of listening to your audience and hearing them laugh and getting those responses."
Ward says since DSI began offering classes in 2003, two years before the theater was open, more than a thousand students have passed through. Some have gone on to perform at the Upright Citizens Brigade theaters in New York and Los Angeles, and in theaters in Chicago. "And so, it's really great that actually people are moving out of this area and going into comedy in some of the larger, sort of metropolitan areas in the country. And they're going there with DSI on their resume."
Comic performers, inside and outside the state, have come to the theater to flesh out material. When New York comedienne Sara Benincasa found herself in the Triangle last year with time to kill, she got together with Ward (whom she'd never met), who gave her the theater one Saturday night to perform a rough draft of her one-woman show "Agorafabulous!" at the theater.
"Working with DSI was a great, encouraging, inspiring experience," says Benincasa. "It once again affirmed my belief that North Carolina is the most fun state in the nation, bar none."
Thanks to those shout-outs, Ward has been called to major cities, including Philadelphia, Boston and Atlanta, to mentor theaters looking to persevere as DSI has.
"There are just so many things that we've done here in this market, in a town the size of Carrboro - and obviously surrounding Chapel Hill - that just sort of boggles the mind of some people in the major markets that are trying to do the same thing," says Ward.
