At Baton Rouge’s new Boomerang Comedy Theater, you’ll find laughs of a caliber you may not have known existed.
That’s because what you won’t find is your run-of-the-mill comedy club where any average Joe can stumble into an open mic and try out his not-so-tight five.
Inside their comedy club, tucked in Mid City in the former Hearthstone Drive home of The Leather Apron Theatre Co., Boomerang owners Angi and Travis Noote say they strive to bring high-quality, professional standup and improv comedy to town.
|
|
|
They accomplish that in large part with their training curriculum—divided into 101-, 201-, 301- and 401-level classes—which aspiring comics must progress through before they can take the Boomerang stage.
“My passion and my background has always been providing a framework for other people to accomplish whatever they’re accomplishing,” Travis says. Both he and wife Angi have backgrounds in corporate communication and team-building workshops. “I want to make that framework so that anybody who comes in the door—whether audience member, performer, or worker or volunteer—is gonna have a good time.” 
Before or after drinks or dinner at nearby spots like Elsie’s Plate & Pie and The Radio Bar, audiences can enjoy standup shows, improv showcases, musical theater productions and more. The venue even hosted the second annual Baton Rouge Improv Festival this past spring.
The attention to quality that undergirds all of Boomerang’s operations has two sides, the Nootes say: Training performers to deliver professional-caliber standup and improv creates a more consistently enjoyable experience for the audience. On the flipside, “if people are going to pay to go see a professional show,” Angi says, “then we feel like the performers should be treated like professionals.”
Part of that is the performer experience, with Boomerang’s backstage greenroom boasting numerous amenities and refreshments that create a professional feel for performers. And while that certainly helps, the real kicker is this: Performers get paid. In the world of ameteur comedy, money for aspiring pros can be as rare as a puppeteer selling out a stadium.
But Angi and Travis don’t just want their performers to feel like professional comedians; they want to equip them with the tools to make a real go of it. The training is a big part of that, but to take things further, the two owners have outfitted their club with professional-grade cameras to film performers’ sets and assemble submission reels that they can send to comedy festivals and the likes as they forge ahead in their careers.
This might all make it seem like Boomerang is some high-stakes comedy bootcamp designed to create nothing less than the world’s next Richard Pryor or Robin Williams.
But the vibe is much more lax; the Nootes say they simply want to give anyone who shares their passion all the tools they can. In fact, their long-held dream of opening their own comedy club originally had nothing to do with upping the ante of local comedy, but of spreading awareness and appreciation of its offstage benefits.
“I think that’s at the root of my love for it,” Travis says. “There are myriad benefits, as simple as just getting up and moving.”
He and Angi place great emphasis on the ability of comedy—group improv in particular—to help people break out of their comfort zones, cooperate better as teams and overcome social anxiety as individuals. They’ve even been in talks with groups of military veterans who have found improv to be an effective treatment for some of the lingering psychological effects of their combat experiences.
“You have to be a little bit vulnerable to be that ridiculous,” Angi says. “There’s something really freeing about not having to meet any expectations other than just what’s right there in that moment.”
So that’s what you’ll find at Boomerang Comedy Theater: a space for quality performers, a passion to foster their talents and a well-intended suggestion to try it out for yourself.
Another new comedy space
“I want to heal the world with laughter. This is a place for people to forget what’s going on in their lives and laugh the pain away.”
[Shedrick “Seddy Sed” Marshall told 225 earlier this year about Silly Rabbit Comedy Club, Baton Rouge’s first Black-owned comedy club, which opened in January]
|
|
|
FALL RADAR
Find Boomerang Comedy Theater’s schedule of classes and shows at boomerangcomedy.com.
The venue is at 455 Hearthstone Drive.
This article was originally published in the October 2022 issue of 225 magazine.