“This is kind of where it starts,” Jack Hall says, “this is the first rung of the ladder.” He is seated on an inflatable couch in a bright little room that contrasts starkly with the loud, dim comedy club on the other side of the door. Time is occupying that liminal, anticipatory space it so often does before a show begins.
The Comedy Studio is located in — or, more aptly, under — the heart of Harvard Square. The club offers live comedy seven nights a week. On Tuesdays, the stairs that lead to the underground club mark a descent into what has been dubbed “Comedy Hell.” The guide for all souls who venture down here is Hall. He, in his own words, “wears a lot of hats” at the Comedy Studio, including director of technology, member of the booking team and show host. Comedy Hell is Hall’s inherited baby, and he is the one who has raised it to be the individual it is today. “We get something like 50 to 60 sign ups every week, which is significantly bigger than any other open mic in the area,” he tells me. This is Boston’s definitive stand-up open mic, where anything and anyone goes.
The lineup tonight is a motley crew of ages, experience levels and personalities. “We are kind of an island of misfit toys,” Hall says. “There are so many different types of people who you’ll find performing stand-up.” One man is doing stand-up for the first time in his life, another has been doing it for 22 years. There are those who relentlessly self-deprecate and those who mockingly brag. Some clutch the microphone for dear life and others casually hang off it, both groups with voices like bells and motors. Delivery ranges from the deadpan to the cartoonish. They come across as apathetic and apprehensive, as enthused and assured. Everything is on the table: upside-down pineapples, abortion, priests, suicide, chess, sex positions, celibacy, American Girl dolls, cocaine addiction, IHOP, ulcerative colitis, resurrection, racism. Trauma is exploited; Björk is impersonated. The spotlight puts these performers under a microscope. They, in turn, put the world under a rhetorical microscope of their own.
Another key player in the Comedy Studio — and Comedy Hell by extension — is Jeff Zamaria, the production manager. Zamaria handles booking and quality control, among other things.
“It’s nice to see a lot of local talent, at least one day a week,” Zamaria says. “A lot” is par for the course in Comedy Hell, where each person has only five minutes to make an impression on stage before a red glow tells them that time is up. These five minute increments of words and silence do not pass evenly. Some are an eternity; others pass in the blink of an eye. “What’s really exciting, particularly in the open mic scene, is watching people try and discover their voices,” Hall says. No performer is alike, each coming with an unpredictable style, pace and perspective. The audience — watching in the darkness, eager to be entertained — takes pleasure in the whiplash.
But what separates the funny from the unfunny? According to Hall, the answer is complicated. “Comedy is so subjective, it is kind of an intangible thing,” he explains. “What makes me laugh is different than what makes you laugh.” Zamaria puts his own philosophy in plain terms: “If you’re funny, you’re funny… You can teach them how to do comedy, but you can’t really teach them to be funny.” Behind the art, there is the artist. In stand-up comedy, perhaps more explicitly than any other artform, the creation and the creator are inseparable; one cannot exist without the other. “There’s a million different ways to write one joke,” Hall says. “What is your brand, essentially? How do you come around to that joke?” Who is making the joke matters as much as the joke itself, so the development of a comedic persona is key. According to Zamaria, a good comedian is made by “a little bit of smart, a little bit of struggle, a keen eye and a sense for… something humorous in everything.” Hall’s take is deceptively simple: “A good comedian is someone who knows their voice and knows how to use it.”
Comedy Hell is a collage, and the glue that holds it together is a shared pursuit. All who step up on the Comedy Studio’s stage strive to elicit that most human of responses: laughter. The lines between comedy and tragedy, pain and pleasure, are blurred. Squint, and the collage becomes a composite image. Suffering is distorted into satisfaction. “There is nothing more fun than being in front of the most amount of people you can be in front of and making them all laugh,” Hall says. “It’s somewhat like a drug. So when you first start out, you might get a huge rush from doing 15 people… but over time, you get used to that.” Laughter is ephemeral and so is the high it gives. In Comedy Hell, everyone has a chance to rise, to take the high to new heights. All they need is a microphone.
Clarification: The initial version of this published article used the phrasing "Squint, and the collage becomes a composite image of suffering." It has been updated for clarity to the following: "Squint, and the collage becomes a composite images. Suffering is distorted into satisfaction." This article was updated January 28th, 2025.
