ComedySportz QC typically performs every Friday and Saturday at 7 p.m. at the lower-level Spotlight Studio. (pictured: Gregg Hampton, Emma Regnier, Brooke Bolt, Dave Levora, and Amelia Wirz)
For the first time in 10 years, ComedySportz (CSz) Quad Cities will host the world championship for the improvisational comedy group, and for the first time at Moline’s Spotlight Theatre (1800 Seventh Avenue, Moline IL).
Boasting teams in 24 cities including Manchester, England, CSz will bring its worldwide tournament here July 9 through 12. There will be improv workshops held during the day on Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday, and matches will take place during the evenings, with the ultimate winner chosen (from a tournament bracket) on Saturday night. According to the Quad Cities' team's co-owner and improv veteran Bob Kelly, the comedians will perform three shows per night on the Spotlight main stage. CSz-QC has hosted the world championship several times since 1997, and has won every time.
ComedySportz was founded in Milwaukee in 1984, and the championship was held there last year for its 40th anniversary. Typically, CSz-QC performs in the Spotlight Theatre's lower-level Spotlight Studio every Friday and Saturday night at 7 p.m. though there won’t be regularly scheduled matches the weekend before the tournament. There will, however, be more than 150 people participating in the following week's championship.
CSz has been in the QC since 1990, first in Rock Island at the precursor to the Circa ’21 Speakeasy, then at the former Establishment Theatre (now Center for Living Arts) across the street, and since November 2022, at Moline's Spotlight Theatre. Kelly runs the local branch with his wife Kasey, who handles the business side of the organization, and after the live-performance delay of COVID-19, Kelly said that many veteran players rejoined, and that they added new faces, as well.
“The Quad Cities is just rich with talent – whether it’s music, comedy, theatre,” Kelly said. “I’ve been to New York and seen shows, and I’ve seen shows equally good in the Quad Cities. When we started back up, we did auditions right away and we got a really big class.”
Kelly has long been close friends with Spotlight co-owner Brent Tubbs, another improv veteran, who first suggested the Moline venue as ComedySportz's new home.
“He had the vision in there before I did,” Kelly said, noting that Tubbs initiated the renovation of the space for the family-friendly improv group.
CSz currently has a roster of 40 rotating performers. Of those who auditioned and joined since 2022, said Kelly, 80 percent had never done improv before.
“It’s interesting that some improvisers are quite introverted off the stage,” he said. “When they get on stage and you give them the parameters of improv, they elevate and make their partner look good. They just seem to glow.”
CSz-QC shows feature teams of two, usually with three comedians per team, competing against each other, and the audience determines points. “Some people find those situations liberating and some find them terrifying,” Kelly said of improv. “If I told someone to walk around the room as a cat, one person will say ‘I know exactly how to do that,’ and another will say, ‘Man, there’s reruns on I’d like to be watching.'”
Kelly, however, said he finds improvisational comedy exhilarating, and added that there are no “wrong answers” so long as you have a willing partner. In that situation, Kelly said, “You can’t fail. The core of improv is 'Yes, and … .' We’re gonna take what our partner says and run with it. And those moments that are very honest almost always get the best laughs.
“Your partner is your script,” he adds. “You’re reading your partner. It’s new information. One of the other great joys of improv is, we’re all experiencing it together for the first time. With a scripted show, everyone performing it knows all the lines. They know what’s going to happen.”
Music and Comedy Overlap
Kelly, whose day job is a realtor with Ruhl & Ruhl, also plays bass with the band Wicked Liz & the Bellyswirls, which this year will be inducted into the Iowa Rock & Roll Hall of Fame. He acknowledged there's some crossover between music and improv.
“I’d say it’s focus and being able to be a team player,” said Kelly. “As a musician, there are times when I sing and it’s my job to deliver the song. Then there are times when I hold the groove. It’s the same in an improv group.”
Kelly started performing with ComedySportz in 1999. Once people are picked from auditions, the organization gives training on improv and how to work together – up to several weeks' worth, depending on the performer.
Brooke Oehme, an assistant professor at Scott Community College, got her Ph.D in communication studies with a focus in theatre, specializing in improv as pedagogy. She’s been in CSz since it opened at Spotlight and runs the group's summer camps for kids.
“You have to listen to people next to you, what opportunities they’re giving you,” Oehme said of improv. “Most conversation is improv -- it works as long as you keep the conversation going.”
In CSz, Oehme said she isn’t the best at pun games, but loves the guessing games. Those are the ones in which a player has to leave the stage while the others subsequently create a scene the audience has suggested. The returning player then has to guess what the activity is, such as brushing teeth – but instead of a toothbrush, using a porcupine, and instead of toothpaste, using cement. The players also have only gibberish and mime to make their teammate guess the activity.
Oehme went to her first ComedySportz World Championship last year in Milwaukee, but didn’t perform; Oehme simply wanted to learn from others.
“It was really nice,” she said. “I got to meet people I had only e-mailed with. It was really interesting for me to pick up what they were doing; I borrowed some ideas for my own. And it was incredibly helpful for me as an improv educator, being a theatre person, I wanted to learn how to do theater better.”
Learning improv is applicable to life, Oehme said: the top skill to help people develop confidence, cooperation and collaboration.
“When you have a conversation, sometimes it feels like competition,” she said. “'Prove they were wrong.' It gets very heated. With improv, it’s always a negotiation strategy. Like with jazz – another person adds on, and before you know it, you made music together.”
Tell Me Something You Find in Your Kitchen
In a typical ComedySportz show, a referee explains each game and calls points and fouls. They start and stop scenes with a whistle, each scene lasting usually three to five minutes. There are “groaner” fouls, so named for including jokes that make an audience audibly groan. “It’s a painful joke,” said Kelly, “and you know it when you hear it.”
For every round of play, the captain of each team picks a game and the referee goes to the audience for suggestions of topics or prompts. CSz typically stays away from politics, sex, and religion, but an audience may be asked, for instance, “Tell me something you find in your kitchen,” or “Give me a place you want to visit but never have.”
Over the decades, the format has proven enormously popular with both audiences and players.
“I just really like being able to spend time with people that are my friends, laugh together and play,” said Annie Huston, a seven-year member. The 2017 Augustana graduate performed improv with the college's comedy troupe Heywire.
“It’s so much fun, and people always leave with a smile,” said Huston, a K-5 music teacher, at Davenport's Jackson Elementary, who noted that she played at the 2024 championship in Milwaukee.
“That was amazing. So much fun,” she said, adding that during world-championship week. “I’ll be going to lot of the workshops, volunteering, and performing, as well.”
Amelia Fischer, a CSz member since 2017, said of the troupe, “It’s very welcoming – positive vibes all around,” adding that the inclusion of new performers challenges everyone. “You don’t know what they’re gonna do.”
Fischer, who serves as the wedding and event coordinator for Bally’s Quad Cities in Rock Island, also went to last year's Milwaukee championship, and said she got new perspectives from different players and workshops.
“It’s fun to have a competition, but our goal at the end is there are no winners or losers. We’re all having fun.” Regarding this year's local world championship, she added, “You get to show people, on your own turf, that this is what’s cool about our city.”
Monta Ponsetto, a CSz-QC veteran since its 1990 beginning, arranged for the cities of Moline and Bettendorf to declare July 6 through 12 “ComedySportz World Championship Week” and have the I-74 bridge lit up in the CSz colors of blue and red on July 11 and 12. (The Spotlight, which usually has varied light displays on its building exterior, will also be lit up during the tournament.)
“For the players,” said Ponsetto, who has taken part in many world championships including the QC's first, “they’re already over the moon. They’ve talked about how cool this is.”
Meanwhile, Spotlight co-owner Brent Tubbs – who performs with the comedy troupe roughly four times per year – started with CSz while a student at Rock Island High School, and also did improv in California, where he lived for 11 years following his 2001 high-school graduation.
The last time the Quad Cities hosted the championship, said Tubbs, “It was a blast. It feels like hanging out with 200 of your best friends you haven’t met yet. Everyone is coming from the same world, centered around this art form everyone knows and loves. It’s a very eclectic and goofy group.”
Kelly will schedule who gets to perform for the championship tournament, but Tubbs will not be a player, instead handling sound and lights for the theatre … and admitting he'll be jealous that he’s not on stage.
“You think, 'If I can make this group from Los Angeles laugh … !' It hits you in the gut. And when they’re laughing, it kind of raises the bar for everybody.”
The ComedySportz Quad Cities team will be performing three times during the week of July 9 through 12, and patrons can get an ultimate fan pass for $35, which includes entry into all 11 shows. There will be three shows nightly (at 6, 7:30, and 9 p.m.), and two on the event's final night. One-night passes are available for $20. For more information on the CSz and the world championship, visit ComedySportzQC.com.
