It’s just after 7 p.m. on a Tuesday in July and I’m following the godfather of local comedy, Louis Lee, around Acme Comedy Co., the punchline palace he founded in the North Loop in 1991 when the neighborhood was dead and, as Lee notes, comedy was, too.
Photo by Ackerman + Gruber
We’re in the theater where Lee begrudgingly is getting his portrait taken. He sits like a patron. He stands in the back corner by the mixing board (a favorite perch where he can see comics, but comics can’t see him). He stands in front of the stage. But when our photographer requests Lee—who has spent his life in comedy but has never told a joke on stage—pose behind the mic, he balks, unwilling to sully the sacred, comics-only space with his “not funny” self.
After, I follow Lee through a door in the back that leads into the club’s diminutive office. Arranged with a couple desktop computers, a basic printer, and a cache of binders in various states of dishevelment, it has the ho-hum feel of the manager’s office at a Bennigan’s.
“Do you have anything?” says Lee as we enter.
“Yes, sir,” manager Carlos Urrutia spins in his chair holding a sheet of names. “There’s a lot of first timers.”
It’s open mic night, and they’re discussing the make-up of “the list.” Acme’s open mic is a comedy institution, and its list is near mythical. Major acts like Nick Swardson, Mary Mack, and Chad Daniels got their starts on said list and worked their way up and, eventually, off it.
Lee created the open mic in 1992 in an attempt to grow the comics he needed to revive the era’s dead comedy scene from scratch, and since, it has become something of a Minnesota comedian rite of passage—a comedian school of hard knocks that can turn a raw but dedicated talent into a national act.
It has been two decades since Lee ran Acme’s open mic himself, and he rarely attends in person anymore (he watches the taped highlights instead), so it’s a bit of an event that he’s in the building tonight.
Urrutia—only the fourth manager Lee’s trusted enough to run the mic—is fairly new to it, but he’s already got Lee’s recipe licked. An established comic kicks the list off, and then it dives headlong into a handful of Acme first timers. The list then ascends to return comics that Acme deems worthy of more mic time, and the show ends with Acme vets working out new material.
Newbies get three minutes, the next wave gets five, and an Acme mainstay might get seven. The goal is to stage a 90-minute show capable of entertaining serious comedy audiences, which is the main differentiator between Acme’s and just about any other open mic.
“We have the largest open mic in the country,” Lee says, as the 250-seat theater on the other side of the door audibly begins to fill. “You’re lucky to have ten or 20 more people than the comics elsewhere.”
The door from the theater opens. It’s the night’s emcee, Max Chapman.
“You think I could get a sheet printed off?” asks Chapman, who looks straight out of “stoner comedian” central casting.
“No,” Lee deadpans as he hands him a list. “Not for you.”
“You’re so mean, though,” Chapman says, leaving. “Damn it, I do nothing but give you…”
As Chapman trails off, I notice Urrutia, who’s been checking email, has one about Stormy Daniels open.
“Wait, is Stormy Daniels doing comedy now?” I ask.
“‘Stormy, coming to your block,’” Urrutia reads. “‘Stand-up comedy and Q&A.’”
“She’s been doing it for a few years,” Lee gripes as he heads out to watch the show. “Novelty act. Not funny.”
Chapman starts strong with an ear infection joke (“I thought that was a baby sickness”), follows it with an observation that MinuteClinic is healthcare’s version of Valvoline, then loses the room during a “I’ve gotta quit smoking weed” bit that unravels badly enough for him to acknowledge it.
“Really got the crowd going for our next comedian,” he sighs. “Alright, your next comic—I love this name—everyone, give it up for Cricket!”
Cricket, a high-energy trainwreck, kicks off a fever dream of upstart comedy that includes a guy’s “three-minute Netflix special” that lasts two minutes, a somewhat gruesome take on inept spouses, and one guy who mainly just bounds around the stage exclaiming, “Freaking frat!”
The audience’s sense of bemused uneasiness is palpable by the time newbie Will Pepper hops up and snaps the room into full-on laugh mode for the first time all night with a clever, well-written set. As Pepper concludes, Lee momentarily pops back into his office.
Laughs flow somewhat freely from there. I even catch Lee—arms-crossed all evening—grin during Ahmed Khalaf’s set about translating pop culture trends to his Somali-immigrant mom.
But a couple comics later, Greg Coleman, who wasn’t even on the night’s list yet somehow seized the evening’s penultimate spot anyway, manages to steal the show without ever actually telling a joke.
The Minneapolis comedy vet shouts out Lee’s presence—the only comic to acknowledge it—as he also becomes the first comic of the night to use the stool for his butt rather than his joke notes. Unapologetically workshopping new material, he stops and starts bits based on the sorts of people he sees in the audience and never completes a single one. But punchlines be damned, in an evening filled mainly with amateurs, Coleman has comic gravitas, and even when he says nothing, the audience laughs.
After a frenetic closing salvo by Lily Meyer, patrons are reminded to tip their servers, the house lights erupt, and Lee slides back into the office.
“That was funny,” he says stone-faced. “I was pleasantly surprised by how the early people did. And then one guy, I had to see if he was a first timer because he’s pretty good.”
He’s talking about why he left after Will Pepper’s set. He tells Urrutia to give Pepper a longer slot if he signs up again. Pepper’s Acme ascent begins.
Throughout the evening, Lee discusses why he loves comedy—the depth of it mainly—and how difficult it is to balance real life with writing jokes about real life for a living. He loves witnessing and fostering the artistry of the process.
I mention that it seems like we saw that at play tonight, especially in Coleman’s set.
“Greg had the worst luck in the world!” Lee grows animated for the first time all night. He recounts how a few years back, Coleman impressed a major comic who referred Coleman to his agent—one of, as Lee says, “the top three in the world.” The agent booked a major run of dates in NYC. It was Coleman’s big break.
Then, the week before those dates?
“COVID,” Lee laughs for the first time all night. “He was that close.”
IF YOU GO: Catch Acme Comedy Co.’s legendary open mic every Tuesday. Doors open at 7:30 p.m., the show starts at 8 p.m., and admission is free. acme is Located at 708 N. First St., Minneapolis.
