Our History

I'm the first to admit that what we do seems ridiculously simple. In fact, it's impossible to explain to others who haven’t seen us perform why our shows are so funny and entertaining. How is it that a bunch of actors, improvisers, stand-up comics, and voiceover artists… just standing on stage and reading old radio scripts from the 1940s and 1950s can be that entertaining?! But it is and I knew it the moment I first saw the show. 

The year was 1998. My pal Robin Jones gathered a few old-time radio scripts and some very funny friends. Once a month, they gathered at the Border's bookstore on La Cienega Boulevard in Los Angeles and read or “performed” the scripts out loud. The reenactments were so underground, that they were nearly invisible. This, despite the fact that many of Robin's friends were up-and-coming or established comedians like Maria Bamford, Tom Kenny, and Jeff Garlin.

Word spread. Slowly. The show moved to the now-defunct Fake Gallery, kind of in Korea Town, kind of in Little Mexico. Sometimes, twenty people paid to see the show. Sometimes eight. And sometimes, a very loud Mexican brass band played at the event hall across the street for a Quinceañera and drowned out the actors. Fun times.

One Christmas, Robin invited me to join the cast for a reenactment of the original radio broadcast of "It's a Wonderful Life". He'd thrown together an entire program for the evening: a musical act, a sketch he'd written in the style of an old radio show, and then, the main act: a radio script from 1947 performed by a hugely talented cast who would suddenly improvise off the script at key moments. 

I was stunned. And totally hooked. I begged Robin, his wife Mary, and his brother Brendan to let me help produce the show in some way. A few years later, I got my chance when they moved to the East Coast. I took over as Artistic Director in 2003 and fumbled my way through what Robin had started.

It was rough going at first because there were many moving parts and no rehearsals. You read that correctly: no rehearsals. We never held rehearsals for the cast because:

1. We performed holding and reading the scripts, so no memorization was required.

2. Robin wanted the show to look and sound "fresh" which… certainly happens when you don't rehearse.

3. The show was designed to be as easy as possible for cast and guest stars to participate because, in Los Angeles, it's hard to attract top talent.

Instead, the actors got notes during our one-hour soundcheck with the talented (and, sadly, departed) Dan Foegelle. It worked, but the theatre snob in me flinched every time the cast made a mistake during a performance. However, the comedian in me was amazed at how the cast improvised a brilliant solution every time a mistake occurred. Robin's format stayed.

Nearly 20 years and hundreds of shows later, our performances have grown exponentially. We've now performed in theaters all over Los Angeles and Portland, Oregon. The press has praised our cast, our singers, our sound design, and our hallmark of weaving improvisation into our shows. “An uncanny sense of a time warp gone horribly right” is how the LA Weekly put it.

We couldn’t agree more. If you can't see us perform live, I invite you to listen to our previous shows or watch some of the videos we’ve made available. You'll soon discover what we've known for years: that broadcasts from "The Golden Age" of Radio are still just as entertaining today as they were over fifty years ago... especially when we add in a bit of improvised fun. 

We're honored to be creating new generations of radio fans.

We'll see you at the theater!

David Koff,
Artistic Director