Hurts so good

Whether you know them yet or not, you’ll come to the Mutiny for the regulars. But instead of Cliff, Norm and Frasier, Open Wound Comedy attracts its own loyal crew: Crossing Guard Charlie, Mike the Psycho Bus Driver,
Lil Princess, the occasional rat and the token drunken audience member who chucks his beer mug at a performer’s head or hands out maxi pads.

After a brief stint at the Pontiac Café, the potluck series has festered in the dim, gritty back area of the Mutiny’s lovable Logan Square confines. The monthly show celebrates its two-year anniversary on Sunday 4. “It’s been through a lot of mutations, but it’s always been improv, stand-up, sketch, tomfoolery, food-throwing…,” says host Clare Kelly, who has taken classes at Second City, I.O. and the Annoyance, and has performed with improv groups like Three-Legged Race and her current troupe, TBC (Thick Black Cock).

An Open Wound evening starts with an improv showcase, followed by performers who sign up beforehand and then featured acts. After that, who knows? One night, Kelly stuck her tongue too close to an outlet and electrocuted herself. “I wanted a place for me and my friends to play and get stage time and feel comfortable onstage—and give other performers the same opportunity,” she says. “The only rule of Open Wound is no rapping the Fresh Prince of Bel-Air theme song—you will be tackled.”

And she’s not joking—she’s tackled this budding stand-up comic three times at least, and it hurt more than a silent audience. Admittedly, I’m the reason for the ban: That rap was the first and only thing I did when I first got onstage at Open Wound—my entry into comedy. I later added more material (“My name’s Lee-uh, not Lay-uh—like Leah Diarrhea, Leah Gonorrhea…I’ve had them all”), but I still included it in every act, which got kind of painful. It’s telling that you’ll get mauled for singing something by Will Smith and DJ Jazzy Jeff, but not for, say, describing your prom by pretending to sit down, making a crying-newborn sound and ending on a toilet flush.

Kelly sometimes sets the tone (say, having a vibrator drop from her skirt) for the other twisted voices waiting to commandeer the microphone. Mike the Psycho Bus Driver talks about the time a woman pissed him off so much that he started driving backward (how he ended up in the psych ward), and then breaks into his trademark “but that’s not funny, wanna hear something funny, I’ll tell you something funny…!” (probably about his wife). And Lil Princess is known for reading her grim, performance art–style blogs—her “69 reasons why I should’ve been aborted” includes: “(24) I can’t stop making fun of fat people; (25) I flush my tampons down the toilet, and it gets clogged; (26) I don’t shave my legs; and (27) Sometimes I’m too lazy to buy tampons so I use toilet paper, or sometimes just drip. But not pee! I never drip pee!”

Shows tend to take on a life of their own, thanks to the trigger-happy audience. One night, a woman bolted onstage and said, “I just have one joke I want to tell…I dated that guy!” and pointed to her ex—stoned on one of the bar stools. Two suggestions for an improv scene were once combined to make a “gynecological telescope,” and a scene about hippies not showering, involving Kelly and coperformer Paul Sigworth, morphed into the creation of “poop soap”—which will be handed out as gifts at the anniversary show.

Aside from its regular antics, Open Wound has become a venue for touring performers and scenesters—like Tony Blanco, Jack Calhoun and Hannibal—to try out new material. Jeb Cadwell, who recorded a stand-up run of 400 shows in under ten months, praises Open Wound for things like the random dolly, something he can mount and pretend he’s a cop on a Segway.

“It’s hit or miss…and you can’t be jokey, you have to be straight,” says Cadwell, who mentions the benefit of lax time restrictions. “It was 2am one night and [Calhoun] just kept going. Everyone eventually left, even me—
I was supposed to give him a ride home. He stayed up there for another 20 minutes, performing to an empty room until the owner unplugged the sound system. Only at the Mutiny.”

Open Wound’s second anniversary show infects Sunday Mar 4.