The most fun I’ve ever had on stage is with the college comedy troupe called Standing Room Only. We were short-lived: only 1991 (or slightly before) to 1995, but we went through the gamut of experiences and emotions together: incredible crowds, bad crowds, crowds who didn’t understand English. We were often well-rehearsed, sometimes improvised, and once not-rehearsed. If you’ve known me since college, then you’ve seen Standing Room Only at least once, but you definitely don’t know the whole story. I will reveal that now, along with a hyperlink to every sketch (that I could locate) that I wrote myself (or mostly wrote myself). I have several others, but since they were written by others, I don’t feel comfortable posting them here (unless I hear from said writers and that is what they desire).
In the Spring of 1990, one of the three funniest people I had ever known was my next door neighbor. His name is Tony Leech. We had performed together in theater productions and made a strong comedy double. One individual noticed this. His name is Mark Leonard and he lived across the hall. In the spring of 1990, he had an Advanced Television project coming up where he had to direct (for television) a live half-hour show of some kind and he asked if Tony and I would be up for writing and performing sketch comedy for it. Neither Tony nor I had ever done this, nor were we an established team - so, of course, we said YES!
Tony and I pained over those six sketches for weeks until we felt like we had something that definitely wouldn’t embarrass us. The sketches were each wrapped around just two comedians, but there was a featured third in a couple of sketches, so we asked one of the other three funniest people I had ever known: Rob Yanovich, who lived down the hall. Yano was definitely going to be a golf pro and had no career comedy ambitions, but man was he as funny or funnier than any of us. We rounded out the rest of the cast with bit walk-on players.
Mark named the show “Standing Room Only” as a joke because we weren’t really allowed to have much of an audience inside the classroom studio. That tape still exists somewhere, and it has a smattering of laughter and applause at best. Full disclosure, it wasn’t great. Nothing about that first half-hour was great (I mean, Mark did great and got an A. I’m referring to the comedy content.) It was all forgettable, BUT - and there’s that all-important but - it was FUN. Tony and I really enjoyed the pair-up, we had at least written some quality jokes and a coherent structure. We patted ourselves on the back and chalked it up to experience.
Fast-forward to my Senior Year 1991. I was a few months from graduation and Tony was already gone. The college’s Student VP of Student Activities Laura Brash had seen me in “Charley’s Aunt” on the theater stage (which, I admit, was a rollicking good time) and asked if I would be willing to put on a comedy show for Homecoming. I told her about what Tony Leech and I had done for the Television Class the year before. She knew Tony and thought a two-man comedy show would be perfect - but please, do new material, and make it as much as possible about student life.
I approached Tony. They were willing to pay us a little bit. Enough to spread it out if we wanted to bring anyone else on. Tony was in - but we decided quickly that even though Tony and I would write it all, we wanted to spread out the acting. We asked Rob Yanovich to join, we asked my brother Dav to play a few roles and choose and lead a rock band for in-betweens, and then we filled out the cast with Tony’s brother Dennis and our favorite actress on campus Shana Hughes, who told me a thousand times that she didn’t do comedy. “Perfect,” I said, “we’ll all play off you.” We wrote and rehearsed and shot and edited video for three weeks, and then. . .
On Thursday, February 14, 1991, on the eve of Homecoming, Standing Room Only performed our first live show in the basement underneath the Dining Commons. A sandwich shop called The Depot. We retained the name Standing Room Only as a joke because we were quite certain the audience would be empty. To our shock and stress, our little homemade sketch show challenged the Fire Code with a wall-to-wall crowd of people sitting in chairs, between chairs, under tables, and lining the walls. We felt pretty vulnerable with a bath sheet for a curtain giving us a space three feet wide, six feet tall and five inches deep for a backstage.
That night, we did a cold open imitation of the University President, a two-man stand-up intro, our first Gunthrie Boys medley, a couple of gross pieces, some comedy music with the band (which consisted that first night of Dav Steele, Arlie Whitlow, Ronnie Willhite, and Adam Waugh. We had some real clunkers in that first live show, but the crowd was generous. Especially when we brought out our secret weapon: Rob Yanovich’s Brandin.
Now, to this day, none of us know precisely where Rob Yanovich gleaned his inspiration for Brandin, but it was truly inspired. A scoliosis-stricken, vision-impaired dweeb with a massive underbite who thought he was cooler than everyone in the room, yet eternally embarrassed. He often wore Hawaiian shirts and bragged of his dozen girlfriends. His laugh was infectious and he walked like there was a cushion of air between his feet and the ground. It was an inventive, ridiculous, sympathetic character - and the audiences loved him. Over the years to come, we would have Brandin perform in a “We are the World”-esque fundraiser song, reveal a bevy of siblings (his father played by Men’s Chaplain Mike Ewoldt), beg to go to Sea World to see Shamu, be killed (and resurrected) by his doppelgänger The Brandinator, get married, and eventually star in his own stage musical.
From that first show onward, the Student Association brought us out to perform a brand new (with all-new content) Standing Room Only twice a semester. We would do a show at the end of September, right before Christmas, Homecoming weekend, and the weekend before Dead Week. We did this for three years and fourteen shows before we stopped doing shows on campus. By this time, we had occasionally featured other actors in SRO like Kamwyn Bartlett, Charmione Rose, and Tyler Marcell and Nate Nelson had stepped in as the band bassist. We had other guest hosts like the aforementioned Mike Ewoldt and Missions Directors Bill and Lisa Shuler. We had taped comedy bits with Petra and Carman. And we had also added as a full-fledged writer and performer, the third of the three funniest people I’ve ever known: Cory Edwards. Because of the size of the audience, we had to move from the Depot to the Music Building’s Timko Performance Hall, which was supposed to seat 100, but we began filling up with almost 350 wall-to-wall. Over the years, every one of our performances started at 10 pm, which did something electric to the shoulder-to-shoulder audience. It was big enough to feel like a success, but late and small enough to feel like a special secret for the audience.
In retrospect, it’s clear that our writing tendencies were to craft anachronistically childish adult characters: the Brandin saga, a psychiatrist who trades playground barbs with a patient, buddies who eat out of the garbage, men behaving like pigs, a Cupid school where we sumo wrestled in diapers. We also found a lot of laughs in playing jovial and kind characters who were completely ignorant like in “Tomahawk Chop,” “Actor’s Workshop,” and two favorites: “Getting It Straight” and The Really Great Gunthrie Boys. Even Brandin himself could fit in well as a happy ignorant. We also mined comedy out of rage - as many of mine and Tony’s characters ended up shouting platitudes and insults at one another by the end of the sketch. At least once per show. Maybe this was how we let out the steam of such a stressful production and pairing. I think we all inherently understood that comedy comes from conflict, so each of our characters had conflict with everyone in the sketch - including him or herself. In a school that reveled in the highbrow and holy, it seemed appropriate that we dig into the shockingly juvenile without crossing the line into anything truly offensive. It was an enjoyable yin to the yang of my weekly newspaper column, where everything was expected to make a significant point.
By the time we stopped doing shows on the college campus, it was because we were getting so many other requests to perform other places. Not to be crass, but those other offers paid more and allowed us to reuse material instead of writing and rehearsing something all new every time - very helpful when we all had 40-hour-a-week day jobs. But none of those opportunities were ever as special as performing on campus. The aforementioned never-rehearsed show was the terrible “Sound of Music” musical murder mystery parody. What we had written was actually quite clever, but we had performed two brand new shows of all-new comedy sketches (each) the two previous nights. We were all exhausted, riding on fumes, and there weren’t enough hours in the previous weeks to be adequately prepared. From that point on, we managed our yeses more carefully.
SRO then went on to travel to different churches and college campuses (including Cory’s alma mater of Anderson University) and bring our comedy chops to other audiences. Cory’s college pals Brad Knull and Todd Edwards (his brother) moved to town and joined the troupe, bringing all new flavors that inspired new and better writing.
We moved into a house together - well, almost all of us. For a season, myself, Tony, Cory, Dav, and Dennis all shared one rented home in mid-town Tulsa that we called The Bungalow. Eventually, Brad Knull and Todd Edwards moved in. We hosted Thursday Spaghetti nights and Halloween Costume Parties and continued to try and make our community laugh one at a time.
We opened for Carman and Steven Curtis Chapman and started getting hired to write and act comedy segments for video series and television programs and live events. We were actually making a career out of this.
Then, Tony moved out of town. He was pursuing a real career as a screenwriter and there just wasn’t a place for that in Tulsa.
The group basically fell apart. We continued taking a few events here and there, Cory filling in where Tony had performed so many of the roles.
Then, ORU asked us back a year after our last show. A new Student Association VP of Student Activities was in place (a bit of a space cadet) and she asked us to perform in Howard Auditorium. This was of concern to us because a) Howard is 1000 seats. The last time we were on campus, we topped out at 350 and b) Howard Auditorium was a black-hole sound nightmare where the performer felt a mile from the audience. She told us not to worry, filling the crowd would be her job. What we didn’t know is that the SA was going to try and make a profit and charge tickets.
She did not do a good job.
We put together a spectacular show with a set, lights, music, curtains, everything - extremely polished. We performed for two nights. And about a hundred people got to see it. The one upside to that evening: Tony Leech surprised us all and showed up for the improv segment. But all in all, it was a low-point for the group. The precise low-point was when we were carrying our gear back to our cars after the final show, very downcast, and a group of students stopped us and said, “HEY! IT’S SRO! When are you guys gonna perform on campus again?” To which Cory responded, “WE JUST DID!!!”
We stayed away from campus for the next year and performed only when invited to other events. During this time, however, the writing got sharper - and Cory and I got married (separately).
In 1995, Tony was coming back to town for his Five-year Reunion, which would also be the 5-year anniversary of the troupe. Another SA VP of Student Activities (this time, whip smart) asked us if we would do an SRO 5th Anniversary Special for Homecoming. We were reticent because of what had happened in Howard, but the SA VP assured us that we would keep the show in the 100-seat Timko Performance Hall.
As the weeks passed and absolutely ever member of the troupe and band including Todd and Brad agreed to either come to town or stay in town to perform, we realized that this would be one last huge bash before we all went our separate career ways. The sketches were coming together - and I felt they were really good - significantly better than they had been in the past. Everything looked solid. The show would be in the Timko Music Hall - at a much earlier time: 7 pm, when more people would be interested in attending.
Then, we got the call from the SA VP that the Music Hall had already been booked and we would need to move the show to Howard Auditorium. I told her that there was just no way we could do that. After experiencing audience-interaction comedy in that building, it simply didn’t work. She said there was only one other option: Christ’s Chapel.
Christ’s Chapel seats 5000 people.
After much debate and hand-wringing, we decided it would be better to perform in Christ’s Chapel, rope off almost all of the seat sections - but actually see our audience, than it would be to relive what had happened in Howard.
The SA VP then broke one more bit of bad news: “Evidently, the Mabee Center (a university-owned facility) is hosting a live comedian that same night at eight. We aren’t allowed to compete, so you won’t be able to start your show until ten.”
Ironically, it was clear that it would be in our last show that Standing Room Only as a title would be the joke it was intended to be.
We wrote and rehearsed a fantastic show. A bang-up line-up of sketches. We agreed that, even if it felt like there was nobody out there tonight, this show was for us. Our swan song.
And then, to our utter disbelief (I still don’t know how it happened), almost 4000 people filled out that audience. Over 3000 more than the Mabee Center stand-up comedian had received. The show went perfectly, and finished with the greatest sketch we ever put together: “Brandin: the Musical.” SRO indeed went out on a high note.
When I left SRO, it was because I was on a stand-up tour called Comic Belief. I continued to tour and perform solo stand-up for the next decade simultaneously with my writing and film production career. Many of the remainder of the group rebranded as “The Bungalow Boys” and continued to do sketch comedy for a few more years. They even have a terrific album out there somewhere.
Rob Yanovich went on to indeed be a golf pro, and I hear that he’s one of the best there ever was. I doubt he ever does Brandin.
Most of the rest of the gang moved out to Los Angeles to pursue filmmaking. Most of them, including Todd Edwards, Cory Edwards, Brad Knull, and Tony Leech, teamed up as Blue Yonder Films. Cory, Tony, and Todd made the animated feature Hoodwinked and Todd wrote and directed the Sundance feature Chillicothe. Tony then went on to write and direct the animated feature Escape from Planet Earth and the live action Variant.
Over the next decade, every once in a while, Tony and Cory and I would be hired and called upon to write or perform for some project somewhere: a comedic series of commercials here, a pre-produced sketch for a musician there. We always picked up precisely where we left off.
This is the Archive of Standing Room Only sketches that I wrote - and have been able to locate. I will add more as I dig them up. There are many more out there, likely on audio or video recordings, but not likely on paper, because they were almost all hand-written. I’m not here to say that they are all genius, nor are they all necessarily funny at all anymore. Some may even be offensive, but I stand by them as a testament to the window of time we were in - and the people we were. If you were there in the audience, be sure to comment in the section below, and tell us what it was like to be in that cramped room.
I loved those days - and I hope you will enjoy this trip down memory lane as you revisit them.
HYPERLINKS TO EACH SKETCH:
“TUNELESS” (Originally performed February 10, 1995 in Christ Chapel)
“THE DEPARTURE OF MONTY STATES” (Originally performed February 10, 1995 in Christ Chapel)
“BRANDIN: THE MUSICAL” (Originally performed February 10, 1995 in Christ Chapel)
“THE ACTOR’S WORKSHOP” (Originally performed February 10, 1995 in Christ Chapel)
“SOMETIMES I THINK I AM” (Originally performed April 22, 1993 in Timko Performance Hall)
“SCHIZOFRIEND!” (Originally performed April 22, 1993 in Timko Performance Hall)
“MISTER NO-VERBAL-SEGUE” (Originally performed April 24, 1992 in Timko Performance Hall)
“GETTING IT STRAIGHT” (Originally performed April 24, 1992 in Timko Performance Hall)
“WHAT WOMEN THINK OF MEN” (Originally performed on April 22, 1993 in the Timko Performance Hall)
“GREAT IDEA FOR A SKETCH” (Originally performed on April 22, 1993 in the Timko Performance Hall)
“THE REALLY GREAT GUNTHRIE BOYS” (Originally performed on February 14, 1991 in The Depot)
“AS THE LIGHT HIDES” (Originally performed February 13, 1992 in The Depot)
“BLOW ON IT!” (Originally performed on April 18, 1991 in The Depot)
“DANCE LIKE MIKE” & OTHER SONGS (Originally performed February 11, 1993 in Timko Performance Hall through February 10, 1995 in Christ Chapel)
NEXT: An SRO Comedy Sketch: “TUNELESS” (Originally performed February 10, 1995 in Christ Chapel)