Comedy takes the stage in Ferndale for 12th Detroit Improv Festival

FERNDALE — Ferndale’s burgeoning comedy community is celebrating the return of the Detroit Improv Festival.

The Detroit Improv Festival will take place Aug. 6-9 at several comedy venues in downtown Ferndale. This includes the Go Comedy! Improv Theater, The Magic Bag and Orchid Theatre.

Now in its 12th year, the festival is known for bringing comedy artists originally from Detroit back to the area to celebrate their craft with their fellow metro Detroiters. This year will feature more than 40 groups performing at the three venues.

“It’s a lot of work to put this together. It’s all volunteer-run and we do it out of love,” Producer Corene Ford said. “My favorite part is probably just seeing everything come together, seeing all the people from all over the country and people from Canada coming in and having fun and laughing with each other. Seeing people who don’t really know what improv is, who just show up to see what it’s all about, falling in love with it, it’s just the whole aspect of the whole festival itself. It’s just so nice to see everybody enjoying themselves.”

The last couple of years have had a weird vibe, according to Ford, as the comedy and improv scene was huge before COVID-19, but both it and the festival took a hit and are still rebuilding.

While scattered a bit, Ford does think things are getting back to normal.

“Everything is kind of starting to build up again,” she said. “I see that happening again with newer people taking classes, newer people getting into the art form, getting excited about it. So, I think we’re starting to build back.”

Ford said Ferndale has been a great area for the festival, proven by the partnerships with local businesses that also help promote the shows.

“Everyone’s really excited about it. They’re more than willing to let us put posters in their businesses promoting our event,” she said. “It’s a great place to have it and it’s great that there’s so many venues so close to each other, because then it allows the ability for people to go from one venue to another show. They’re not trapped in one space. And it also has them walking out and about in Ferndale, seeing what else is in Ferndale and what else they could patronize.”

Returning to the festival for another round is the comedy show Flying Chuck, headlined by the professional wrestlers Nic and Ryan Nemeth.

While currently performing as a tag team for TNA Wrestling, where they recently were tag team champions, outside of the ring the Nemeth brothers have been active members of the comedy scene, taking part in both improv and stand-up comedy.

“I love performing and blending improv and stand-up and comedy and anything with a wrestling crowd or wrestlers at all,” Ryan Nemeth said. “It’s so fun.”

Ryan Nemeth began performing improv comedy when he was in college, though he took a step back when he started training to become a wrestler. When he moved to Los Angeles, he started to do more shows again, and that’s where he met Detroit natives Sam Richardson and Mikey Wilson.

The show the brothers are performing, Flying Chuck, is a long-form improv show where a guest, usually from the world of professional wrestling, tells stories and then the brothers and their improvisers will perform scenes based on the wrestler’s stories. The current scheduled guest storyteller is AEW wrestler John Morrison, and the improvisers are Brian Hunt, Brett Guennel, Andy St. Clair, Marc Warzecha and Mikey Wilson.

“You get the best of both worlds,” Ryan Nemeth said. “You get some fun, crazy wrestling story for two minutes, and then you get insane, wacky fun. And these are some of the best improvisers in the world, in my opinion, these guys who come from the Second City Detroit, and they moved out here to LA and it’s a blast. It’s super fun.”

When comparing the first time he performed comedy to his beginning in wrestling, Nemeth said it was harder getting used to wrestling at first due to its physical component.

Performing otherwise, he shared, is just something that came to Nemeth naturally.

“Comedy and acting and that kind of stuff has come a lot easier for me, because it’s just something I’ve been doing casually since I was a child and then formally since college,” he said. “So, I think I have an easy time getting through that first moment of stage fright when you’re trying something new, whether it’s … an acting class for the first time ever, improv class for the first time ever, wrestling school — the first day ever. I always feel like, all right, cool, just do the part that sucks and you don’t know what you’re doing, and then you’ll figure it out.”

Nemeth said he’s excited to come back to the Detroit Improv Fest, as Ferndale has a thriving comedy improv community that he’s jealous of and that amazes him.

“To see Detroit and the Midwest have this amazing community there of improvisers and fans of improv, it was like blowing my mind,” he said. “It was exhilarating. So I loved it. I was happy to be around.”

For more information on the shows and tickets, visit detroitimprovfestival.org.