Let's Comedy: open mics, a festival, and comedy outside the club

Founded March 2015 — the Tiger Room and stages across the city

The company: The club era's second institution was built for the comics rather than the room. Let's Comedy was formed in March 2015 by Ryan Ehle, Jared Busch, Haley Johnson, and Alex Price, who had noticed the gap plainly: Snickerz was still standing but booking fewer shows, and no one under twenty-one could attend there — there was no open mic circuit where local comics could work. Their first open mic, upstairs at the Pint & Slice restaurant, drew seventy-five people. The venture's standing home became the Tiger Room at Calhoun Soup, Salad & Spirits, where Ehle already booked music, and its stages spread to the Brass Rail, Deer Park, and O'Sullivan's, with charity and corporate bookings besides.

The festival: Let's Comedy's largest work was its August festival. The company's own early account calls its first the Maumee, Mary, & Joseph Comedy Festival and records its headliner moment: Emo Phillips, brought in to headline, fell into fifteen minutes of joint improvisation with the comic Morgan Miller on stage, to the crowd's delight — the festival's best-documented single performance, and an improv footnote in a stand-up record. By 2019 the festival ran as Let's Fest — the third edition, August 1–4, 2019, spread across venues citywide, with events including "Fort Wayne Ha!" at Wunderkammer and a set by Broken Pencil Improv at Pint & Slice, the earliest named improv troupe in this record. The two festival names stand in the record as the two accounts give them; the company is the same, and the festival is documented as annual by its third edition. Let's Comedy's founders stated their thesis to Whatzup in terms the record can quote without endorsing: "We believe that Fort Wayne can be a comedy city and is slowly becoming one."

Sources:

1. FortWayne.com, "Let's Comedy Brings Laughter to Fort Wayne" — the four founders, the March 2015 formal founding, the Pint & Slice open mic and its seventy-five attendees, the Tiger Room at Calhoun Soup, Salad & Spirits as primary home, the Brass Rail, Deer Park, and O'Sullivan's, and the first Maumee, Mary, & Joseph Comedy Festival with Emo Phillips and Morgan Miller's joint improvisation.
2. Whatzup, "Laugh it up at festival of comedy" (2019) — Let's Fest 3, August 1–4, 2019, across city venues; "Fort Wayne Ha!" at Wunderkammer; Broken Pencil Improv at Pint & Slice; the Fort Wayne Comedy Club's role in carrying the scene; and the founders' statement as quoted.