Remembering The Manhattan Punch Line Theatre
By Chad Fasca
"The Punch Line was mostly reviled by the people who lovingly worked there—by playwrights because the Xerox machine seldom worked and you weren't supposed to use it anyway, by actors because checks were not always quite on time, and by designers because they had a set and costume budget just under two figures. But Steve Kaplan's Manhattan Punch Line Theatre was a paradise because it annually gave you the chance to shine in one-act form and the [New York] Times regularly came with a light meter to report on your brilliance."—David Ives, playwright and Punch Line alum
"Hyperbole, exaggerations all," says Steve Kaplan, co-founder and the principal force behind the Manhattan Punch Line Theatre, in response to Ives' statement. Kaplan recently got to the Punch Line with (a)(u), discussing in detail the history of this mecca of modern comedy.
"When I first started my career in theatre in New York, theatre involved people in black turtlenecks playing characters like 'T,' 'She' or 'The man with a big pain in his head.' These anthropomorphic neuroses sound very funny, but it was not meant to be funny, it was meant to be taken seriously. I thought 'If I have to see people in turtlenecks and tights running around the stage one more time I'll have to kill myself.'"
Rather than 'kill himself,' Kaplan got together with a few friends and started the Manhattan Punch Line Theatre.
Envisioned as a place where comedy received the same treatment accorded to its more serious cousin, drama, the Manhattan Punch Line Theatre tread on new ground, especially where funding entities were concerned.
"Comedy was not necessarily taken seriously. It was not seen as art; and the funders were looking to fund art. So we had to make a case that comedy was art and that making people laugh had its own aesthetic and deserved to be supported," Kaplan says.
The year was 1979; Comedy was synonymous with Stand-Up.
"But we were doing something no one else was doing," Kaplan says. "While there were thousands of stand-up clubs around the country, we were the only company trying to find playwrights, directors and actors who were good at comedy."
For Kaplan that aesthetic was always embodied in the Punch Line's festival of one-act comedies. The festival, presented each year, became a proving ground for writers of comedy. And the laundry list of alumni reads like a who's who of comedy in film, television and theatre. The event brought together 200 people—actors, directors, technicians and writers—all dedicated to creating great theatrical comedy.
"It was back-breaking and budget-breaking, but was the best fun I had all year," he says. "And it was glorious."
The festival owed a big debt of gratitude to the granddaddy of them all, the Ensemble Studio Theatre's Marathon series. Established in 1978, the EST Marathon premieres twelve one-acts over a period of six weeks, pairing four one-act plays together in an evening series.
"We borrowed a lot of the logistics from this," Kaplan says.
By performing one-act comedies in succession, the Punch Line could roll the dice, take chances.
"If you did not like this one, wait a second, and you've got another one coming and that may be amazing. It allowed us to spread the wealth and allow production to as many as we could.
With the EST marathon always occurring in the spring and the summer, the Punch Line had the fall and the winter to choose from for its Festival of One-Act Comedies.
"The last thing we wanted to do was compete with them. And we could not do it in the fall, because it took so long to gather people and concentrate on the work."
So they decided to hold their annual homage to the comedic form in the winter. Noted New York Times theatre critic Mel Gussow fondly called it "the Winter Brightening Festival."
"Mel was our own bete noir," Kaplan says. "He was surrounded in a room that was roaring and he'd write the next day, 'It was amusing.'"
Proving Ground
Kaplan says the festival is part of the reason why the Punch Line boasts a large body of accomplished alumni, because it gave them plenty of room to succeed or fail.
"And we tried hard to help them succeed; And sometimes the failures weren't poor," Kaplan says.
In addition to David Ives, a number of accomplished writers and actors cut their chops or spent significant development time at the Punch Line. Writers Peter Tolan, "Analyze This" and "The Larry Sanders Show"; Michael Patrick King, writer and executive producer of "Sex and the City"; Winny Holzman, "My So Called Life"; David Crane, "Friends" and "Epic Proportions," comprise the Honors list of Punch Line's distinguished alumni. The Punch Line also helped develop talented performers including Oliver Platt and Illeana Douglas.
"From our point of view, the only line, the bottom-line was talent: Were they funny? It did not matter what credits they had or what credits they did not have. It did not matter where they went to school. It only mattered that they were funny. It was an open door policy for anyone interested in becoming funny in New York. And it allowed us to present true talents and David Ives was just one of them."
The Punch Line staff would read, go over, argue every submission until ten or twelve battle-tested scripts remained. Then, they would produce the survivors. (Hmm. Sounds like the makings of a new television program.)
Blame it on the copier
"We struggled. We scrimped. And occasionally we did not pay all of our bills on time," Kaplan says. "We were a bunch of people who were fascinated by and dedicated to the science and art of comedy."
In 1992 NYSCA received a 70 percent cut from the state legislature. It was only a matter of time before arts organizations felt the loss in their budgets. Like a number of companies, The Manhattan Punch Line Theatre struggled to survive after the funding drought began, but succumbed to its own necessities.
The Punch Line's demise falls squarely onto its copying machine. The source of much frustration among playwrights and actors, the Xerox machine was also the company's lifeline and when a man came up with a hand cart to take away the machine because Punch Line could not meet payments on the copier, the end was near.
"The economics weren't there," Kaplan says. "I was making only a few bucks more in '92 than I was in '79. Funding was almost nowhere. It did not make economic sense any more to continue the Punch Line."
The Punch Line folded and Kaplan moved to the Left Coast where he became a personal manager. Kaplan is president of his own production and management company, SK Management. Post Punch Line, Steve created the HBO New Writers Project (NWP), an effort to develop new screenwriters, among other projects. He has directed HBO NWP alum Sandra Tsing Loh's "Aliens in America" at Second Stage. He teaches Comedy Intensive workshops in Los Angeles.
"Even though I am doing other things it is still my passion to convince some entity—some deep-pocketed, well-heeled entity—to revive the Punch Line theatre."
Punch Line's Return?
At the Ojai Playwright's Festival, Kaplan ran into Ives and they shared "moist reminiscences" about the Punch Line. Kaplan's goal is to set up the Punch Line in New York again.
"There are a couple of institutional theatres that would love to house it, but it is not a cheap program to run. So it is not within any of these theaters' budgets to accommodate it. We are trying to find funding for it," he says.
"I hope to make David a happy man some day. All we need is a couple hundred thousand dollars and we can find more David Ives. Not that he'll want that."
Kaplan's Advice to Budding Artistic Directors
Where you a member or part of the Manhattan Punch Line Theatre or Have you found the next Punch Line? Write to us, here.
