Introducing 20Q(-ish). A new feature in which Sketchcenter, and it’s intrepid Staff, interview the best and the brightest in the sketch comedy community.

Sketchcenter Staff member, and member of New York's The Royal We, Matt Johnson sat down at Moriarty’s, a tavern in downtown Philadelphia, with Kurt Runco and John DiFelice of The Waitstaff on, appropriately enough, April Fools Day. Their troupe was gearing up for two big events – the first was their first appearance at the DC Comedyfest, and the second was a change in their show process – moving from a monthly cabaret show downtown to a bi-monthly revue in a larger venue in University City, which lies just west of Center City Philadelphia.

Q1 Matt Johnson; Staff, Sketchcenter: The Waitstaff started in 2003. Why?

Kurt Runco: Various drug habits that needed to be paid off. We spent our first year working out of another theater in town, and then we spun off.
John DiFelice: The theater we came from was for writers, and producing plays by new writers. So we were a theater program there, and then we got really popular, and that’s how we got into our monthly format.
KR:. The theater was based on new playwrights and they would have these 10-minute playfests. So we’re all actors, and we’d be backstage making each other laugh, and then Jim Boyle, our founder, said, “You know, we should get a sketch group together – do you want to be in it, Kurt?” I remember going, “Yeah, yeah, Jim, like that’s gonna happen.” So we got it together and then we found out that we were one of the first ones to do it in Philadelphia. When we started it up, I couldn’t believe how successful we were. It was really surprising to see people coming back every month – like, a hundred people at each show. I’ve been in shows where 24 people is a big audience, and all of a sudden we were seating a hundred people every month. It probably started off with a lot of friends and family, but it quickly spread through word of mouth. We started up in November 2003, and we did one show over at Mumm Puppet Theater, before we went over to the Five Spot. So we did November and December, and then in January 2004 our show was on a frigid, frigid day, and we thought we weren’t going to get much of an audience. And then we had 117 people cram into the space, and that really felt great. It was interesting to discover Sketchcenter.com and find out that this is in the zeitgeist, like “oh wow, everybody’s doing this, there’s a whole bigger thing out there.”

Q2 Matt: Who is The Waitstaff – is there a unifying characteristic or theme to your work beyond sketch comedy?

KR: We all come from a theater background, that’s definitely a big part of our show –
JD: Actors and playwrights –
KR: So we always approached it that way, in the way we rehearse, in the way we structure the show.
JD: We usually come to the first rehearsal of a new show with scripts.
KR: We’re very heavily writing-based.
KR: I guess, for us, anything goes – we basically do “classic” sketch, in that we do anything. We usually like to comment on something with all of our stuff. But understand, our writing has evolved – when we first started off, it was like “blow job joke, blow job joke, we’re talking dirty onstage!” You know, you have that initial period where you’re doing parodies and that sort of stuff. And then you get a little smarter and the material changes. In the stuff we’re taking to the DC Comedyfest, we’re commenting on religion, sketch and improv, business, politics. The best stuff I write is when I write from anger about something, so I think we’re always trying to say something. As for a point of view… Republicans are bad? (Laughs) We’ll also just do completely absurd work –
JD: Yeah, we like silly – we like to have that in there as well. I don’t think we’ll ever do a show without it being silly. Our motto is, if it makes us laugh, it’s in the show.

Q3 Matt: Why the name “The Waitstaff?”

KR: We had that big thing where we had to figure out our name, because when we left the theater, the theater wouldn’t let us keep our old name – we were originally called “The Dive.” We took a month and posted names on our user group on Yahoo, and then we voted. The one I came up with was “Surgeon General’s Warning” (Laughs) because we’re all smokers.
JD: I forget who first suggested the name “The Waitstaff” –
KR: Jeremy [Chacon] came up with it. And we’re all actors, so we had all been through the whole unemployed actor/ waiter thing, so it seemed to be a good fit for us and who we were.

Q4 Matt: A lot of businesses and groups in this city name themselves with a pun on the name: PhilaDanCo, Floradelphia, Philadeli. Did you guys ever consider that?

KR: God no, we’re smarter than that.
(Kurt and John were saved from coming up with a punny name on the spot by our chatty waiter and his tale of woe.)

Q5 Matt: Walk me through the process of writing a Waitstaff show.

KR: We just started something new, actually. We’ve always been a very good ensemble – we’re really free about throwing out ideas in rehearsal, shooting them down, and coming up with new ones. Now we’re doing more ensemble writing, and with our new every-other-month schedule, we have more time. So we still come in with scripts, but I might just have an idea, I wouldn’t even call it a script, and we’ll read it, and we’ll help each other and we riff and build up the idea. At the same time, sometimes someone will take a script someone submits, and maybe it’s not even theirs – this happened to John this time – and they’ll read the script and realize it’s a really funny idea, but it’s a little too long, it needs to be cut down a bit. So we sit there and we give ourselves the permission now to take someone else’s script and change it. Knock on wood – we’ve never had a shortage of material. We did a brand new monthly show for over three years. And our shows used to be an hour and a half long! Everybody contributes – John here is definitely the biggest writer. John, Jeremy, Carolyn [West] and I contribute the majority of the material, but other people are now starting to get more into it. And that gives us – having so many people in the troupe, and everyone writing for the troupe – I don’t know if you could call that a point of view, but it gives us something, with 14 different people contributing styles and viewpoints.

Q6 Matt: How do you manage such a large group of people?

KR: Can we turn off the tape recorder? (Laughs)
JD: We actually created a subgroup to produce shows.
KR: Yeah, we finally got smart. We call that the production committee. It’s their job to cast shows, to produce the shows. JD: Obviously not everybody can be in every show. So their job is to resolve the various conflicts that can arise if somebody wants to be in a show and there are too many people in the cast already.
KR: We’re limiting the cast for each show to six or eight, but we used to go as many as 12 – that was insane.
JD: We also have one main director, but we’ve been having other outside directors come in from another theater company that we like, and that’s been working out.

Q7 Matt: According to your group bio, The City Paper called The Waitstaff “Philadelphia’s Hardest Working Comedy Troupe.” Are you guys really hard workers, or are the other comedy troupes just lazy?

KR: (Laughs)
JD: It’s a testament to how insane we are. Most troupes who we’ve talked to do a show or two a year. We’ve been doing a brand new show from September to June for – it’ll be four years in June. I remember telling people that the first time we went to Chicago and having people look at us like we were crazy.
KR: But it’s really helped us a lot because we have a ton of experience crammed into four years.
JD: Plus a library of a few hundred sketches that we can draw on.

Q8 Matt: You also find the time to be “Philadelphia’s Hottest Sketch Group” according to The Philadelphia Inquirer. What’s your secret? Caffeine? Pay-offs to reporters? Lipo?

JD: We have some sexy people in the troupe. And we have a loyal following, and we kind of outgrew our space. We were filling our 100-seat space, so it was hard to measure whether we’re growing. But last year we played at World Café Live and filled a 250-seat space, and we felt really good about that.
KR: An improv group in town called me and said, “We know about you guys, you’ve been around for a while, I’ve seen you. Could you give me some pointers for advertising and how to build an audience?” And I said, “The first thing I’m going tell you – if you put up a good product, people will find you.” And there was this pause on the phone, because I think he was expecting me to tell him “advertise in paper X.” But, look, we’re funny people, there are a lot of funny, talented people in this town and in this country. But we know – and maybe it’s the theater background – we know how to put a show together, and we bust our asses working. We rehearse three times a week, three hours a night, and during the week of the show just about every day. So we’re always working hard, always putting stuff into it, always trying to get better. We’re our own hardest critics. If you just know what you’re doing and you put the work in, audiences can tell who has put the hard work in and who hasn’t. And that’s why after Chicago we were getting kudos on our performances. We put about 40 hours of rehearsal into that 40 minute set. Some people posted on Sketchcenter about us and how tight our set was and our transitions, everything was there because we put the effort and work into it.

Q9 Matt: What’s the Philadelphia comedy scene like these days? I mean, I grew up in the Philly suburbs and there never really used to be one here.

JD: Improv, improv, improv. And then Helium Comedy Club opened in Center City.
KR: Yeah, they get national comedians at Helium, so that’s helped. We’d love to play there, too, but they built their stage as big as this table. If they had had more foresight, they could be getting improv troupes in there, and those guys bringing their audiences, they could be getting us in there, and we could bring our audience – instead, all they can book are stand-up comics. Are they a comedy club or a stand-up club? Apparently a stand-up club, because there’s no room for anyone else to do comedy in there.

Q10 Matt: Have you considered running a sketch festival here?

KR: Too much work. Not that we’re not hard-working but we have so many other things going on, it doesn’t make sense right now.

Q11 Matt: You were early arrivals in the local scene, and came out of theater. Where did you build your audiences – was it the theater crowd looking for lighter fare or people looking to start a night out with something funny?

JD: I would say in the beginning it was a theater crowd.
KR: It varies because sometimes we’ll have other writers and actors out in the crowd, and then we’ll have the people from Geno’s Steaks. They love us down at Geno’s. They have a picture of us in their window. One of our guys was riding by on a bike and they called out “Hey! You’re from the Waitstaff!” and they gave him a free steak. They all come to our show and they sit in the front row.

Q12 Matt: Philadelphia has birthed some major talent over the years. Hall & Oates. The Hooters. M. Night Shyamalamadingdong. Is the Waitstaff part of that tradition, or will it rise above “Maneater” and “Signs”?

KR: Oooo… (Grimaces)
JD: How about “The Village”? Can we rise above that?
KR: But if you're asking if we make a point of doing local humor, then no.

Q13 Matt: Okay, here are some de riguer Philadelphia questions: Pat’s or Geno’s?

Both: Geno’s.

Q14 Matt: Temple Owls or Villanova Wildcats?

Both: Wildcats.

Q15 Matt: William Penn or Ben Franklin?

Both: Ben Franklin.

Q16 Matt: Best 76er – Wilt Chamberlain, Dr. J or Iverson?

Both: Dr. J.

Q17 Matt: Best movie about Philly: Rocky, Philadelphia or The Philadelphia Story?

JD: I’m gonna have to go with “The Philadelphia Story.”
KR: I’m gonna have to go with “Rocky I.”

Q18 Matt: Is there any food in Philadelphia that can’t be served smothered in melted cheese?

KR: No! Not even melted cheese.

Q19 Matt: Shifting gears, you guys have been to the Chicago Sketchfest twice now. How do you like the whole festival experience?

KR: GREAT – we love you, Brian!
JD: I really liked it.
KR: They do a fantastic job of organizing it, and that’s what’s so great about it. I had a blast out there, just seeing all the other groups and hanging out.
JD: I had fun this second time. I was more laid back because it was the second time around. KR: We probably can’t say anything about it that hasn’t been said a hundred times. It’s great, the organizers are great, we had a lot of fun. I didn’t hook up, but…

Q20 Matt: What made you interested in sketch to begin with?

KR: I know growing up, my biggest influence was “The Carol Burnett Show.” I love Carol Burnett, I loved the writing and the performances were obviously fantastic. Harvey Korman and Tim Conway – golden. As I’ve grown older, comedy has always been very important to me. And sketch comedy is a way that you can actually participate in the full theatrical process – you get to write, you get to perform, you get to produce the thing. To me, seeing one of my sketches on stage with the audience laughing is more gratifying than anything, even more than performing, even more than me getting laughs as a performer. It’s the closest thing to being a father I’ve ever experienced. I love writing something funny and then seeing people laugh at it. I get off on it.
JD: Uhhh… How do I top that? I’ve always enjoyed sketch and I remember being a little kid and watching “Saturday Night Live.” I just love comedy – I really love Mel Brooks and Woody Allen and that kind of humor, and I took a crack at writing it. I wrote a couple of sketches, and came to see these guys at a Fringe Festival, and I thought I’d like to write for them. So I submitted the sketches –
KR: We said they suck.
JD: So I wrote a couple more, and that was it.
KR: John is a machine. He’s written several full length plays, he’s having one produced in April that a few of our people are in, and a novel. He’s a writing machine.

Q21 Matt: People often say that you’re either a Stones fan or a Beatles fan. For argument’s sake, let’s say the same is true “SNL” and “Monty Python.” Where do you fall on that dichotomy?

KR: I’ll go “Monty Python,” especially with the state of “SNL” now.
JD: I would go classic “SNL” – the best of “SNL.”
KR: I find really absurdist humor hilarious, and I think it’s a really hot trend right now – if you watch “Aqua Teen Hunger Force,” “Stella,” “Wondershowzen” and any of the Adult Swim stuff, they have all this absurdist cartoon stuff. And then you look at “Monty Python” – those guys were really absurd, and they were really ahead of their time with that, and now I think a lot of people are starting to catch up with the absurdity that they were already doing 40 years ago. JD: I’m a big “Monty Python” fan as well, but there’s something I like about the American style of humor on “SNL.” It’s looser, more rock ‘n’ roll.
KR: I think the future of comedy is seriousness.. Look around – everybody’s a comedian these days, all your friends, your family, movies are parodies of movies and commercials are sketches – you can’t get away from it. I think the next trend is going to be doing sketches of two guys discussing whether or not Microsoft SMS can be set up in a fault tolerant mode.

Q22 Matt: Okay, you’ve built this self-sustaining sketch group that rocks Philly regularly and tours the nation. What’s next for The Waitstaff?

KR: I just want to do lines of coke off of strippers asses.
JD: I’m married, so I just want take pictures of Kurt doing that with my camera phone.
KR: We’re still having fun, and I feel like I still have something to say. That’s what I love about sketch, is that it gives you a chance to express your voice. And we’re still evolving exponentially. We have become much more focused and sharp, and we have a lot more to say with our sketches, and I love that I’m able to have my voice out there talking about all this stuff that I’m angry about in our culture. It can even be something minor – I just wrote a sketch about how clueless horror movie cops are. You know, the girl’s screaming that the killer’s right behind the cop, and the cop’s like, “Calm down, Miss.” I wrote a sketch we did in Chicago about improv vs. sketch and how most people don’t know the difference between the two. And through sketch I’m able to put that out there. That’s why I love theater, because even if it’s just 20 people in a darkened room, you’re reminding them of something unsaid, you’re calling them on bullshit, and that’s a lot of what comedy is.
JD: I guess we’re looking at what could be the possibilities for the troupe. I know we’re changing the way we operate, we’re focusing more on crafting a really strong show as opposed to having to do the monthly grind of new shows, and I guess our short term plan is just to do that and be seen, however that may be.