Clara Bijl has had trouble training her dog to not jump on people entering through her front door.
It’s been a problem, of sorts, with a contractor who shows up each day for a renovation project. He complains about the dog pawing at his crotch, Bijl explained to a crowd on a recent Sunday evening at the Punch Line, bending over and holding her groin while feigning the worker’s feeble groans. The pain is too much, he tells her — he can’t work.
“Oh, really?” she says. “I didn’t realize you need your penis to finish the wall."
The crowd laughed easily, a solid start to Bijl’s seven-minute performance. But it was also a work in progress. The act was one of about a dozen at the S.F. Comedy Showcase, where every Sunday evening, novice comedians looking for their break mix with “passed,” or more experienced, performers like Bijl, who often use the format to experiment with new material.
“There was one point where I felt like I messed up in my wording, so I wasn’t one hundred percent satisfied with the reaction,” Bijl said in a post-set interview. “But overall, I thought it was good.”
Local aspiring standups may sit in the Showcase audience for years before finally getting tapped to do five minutes on stage. A designated gatekeeper decides on the fly which comedian goes up next from a pool of prospects. Members of the public, who make up about half the audience, may not necessarily understand the format at the outset, or that the other half of the room is composed of comedians. But they soon get a sense of it, which adds to the anticipation, and the stakes.
The Showcase, which takes place only on Sundays, has been going for 40 years. As one of the few showrunners, Steve Ausburne’s job is to give newcomers a shot, and if necessary, backload the program with established regulars, including himself, to maintain momentum and ballast. Greener acts, of course, can fumble on their first go, he said.
“I’ve watched a guy repeat a joke because he forgot that he’d just said it,” Ausburne said. “You’re trying to impress, to show that you have what it takes to work here as a regular.” The Showcase, he adds, can be “jarring from an audience perspective, because there’s so many voices coming up,” all of varying quality.
The Punch Line’s nondescript location — above a garage in San Francisco’s Financial District — belies its hallowed ground in the world of comedy. Inside, the aura of aspiration and accomplishment is palpable. Ellen DeGeneres, Sarah Silverman, Jerry Seinfeld — the list of appearances over the years is monumental, and others including Patton Oswalt, Margaret Cho, and W. Kamau Bell have come up through the Showcase.
Robin Williams performed there frequently, sometimes unannounced. It’s a favorite of Dave Chappelle, who continues to make spontaneous appearances. In 2019, Chappelle was instrumental in sparing the Punch Line from the real estate scourge of Big Tech.
About 400 performers in the Bay Area and beyond have achieved the status of a “passed” standup at the Punch Line, meaning they got and passed an audition to host shows, including the Showcase, and can appear as a feature, performing for twenty minutes before a headliner, and sometimes headline.
The “passed” imprimatur means the club believes a comedian is dependably funny, and pays them for it. It allows the standup to perform as openers to other acts at Cobb’s Comedy Club in North Beach and the Punch Line in Sacramento. Another benefit: they have leeway to experiment or refine their acts at the Showcase.
Dvontre Coleman passed at the Punch Line last year, after fewer than three years as a standup. In the lineup after Bijl at the recent Showcase, Coleman, 29, started his act by acknowledging two audience members in the front row to his right, saying it was nice to see Black people at the show. He then turned to white audience members sitting straight ahead of him, also in the front row, resting their feet on the stage.
“You must be comfortable,” he told them in his disarming, deadpan voice – and to a big laugh.
“Your mother taught you to do this?” he continued.
Coleman paused, waiting for the laughter to stop.
“White people live such different lives,” he said.
Coleman said afterwards it was the first time he’d done much crowd work at the Punch Line. He was surprised to see Black audience members at the Showcase.
“Any time I see Black people in a mainstream room, it’s exciting, because it’s like, yeah, you’re finding out about this,” he said. “What I want to do with my comedy is bring it together. I would love to perform in diverse crowds, but most of the time it’s mostly white.”
He, too, was testing out new material.
“Any set where I can make the crowd laugh, and make for a good show, while also growing as a comedian is a good night for me,” he said afterwards. Coleman’s set was something of a farewell to the Punch Line. He’s moving to Los Angeles because he accepted an offer to work at The Comedy Store.
When local comedians get big enough, they usually relocate to Los Angeles or New York, where they can join a writers’ room or work their way up those much larger circuits. The Punch Line and its Showcase persists because of local standups’ love of the game, which in turn is the reason for its high quality — if not national recognition.
Sean Keane, who passed at the Punch Line 15 years ago, was one of the most veteran performers in the lineup. Comedians can make money doing standup, the 45-year-old said, but most have a side hustle. His have included writing for television during a stint in Los Angeles, sportswriting, and royalties from his album.
Also in the lineup after Bijl and Coleman, Keane’s act included a piece about the switch on the Bay Bridge that activates an “impenetrable barrier” preventing people from visiting Oakland when they move to San Francisco.
Once you're driving east, he told the audience, “you’re not allowed to stop until you reach Lake Tahoe.” Preferences change when people move to San Francisco, he said. When he asks his San Francisco friends to join him in the East Bay, he told the crowd, they’re likely to say they’d rather stay put because they want to try the “Slovakian popup with natural wine that’s only $78 per person."
The Punch Line has only grown in importance as venues doing independent comedy — and opportunities like the Showcase — disappear, Keane said. Closures include the Dark Room in the Mission, the Hemlock Tavern, which was converted to condominiums, and Cynic Cave, which was downstairs, below the Lost Weekend video store.
Almost everyone who starts out doing standup is “kind of terrible,” Keane said. Getting a chance at the Showcase requires swallowing one’s ego, hanging out and absorbing the act of comedians you’re jealous of because they’re on stage, he said. Once passed, though, the Showcase continues to be formative.
“It’s incredibly valuable to be able to go to a comedy club with a real audience, and to have seven to ten minutes where you’re kind of allowed to fail because you’ve already proven you can do it,” Keane said.
That the room may also be filled with as many as 50 comedians makes it unique. After a standup performs comedy for a certain amount of time, “you sort of stop laughing at jokes,” Keane said. “When you can get the disinterested people standing by the bathroom to laugh — that’s a bonus.”
