Union Comedy seeks to become the area’s third bricks-and-mortar comedy club, founders said Monday in announcing a $50,000 crowdfunding campaign to build a performance space.
A new, second-floor Union Square space above a Fortissimo Coffeehouse and the Hot Tomatoes Italian restaurant would open in March with around 90 seats according to current plans, said Emily Holland, marketing director for the organization.
The group, which just wrapped its annual improv festival in Somerville’s Davis Square, holds regular weekend shows and classes at a 30-seat space at 593 Somerville Ave., Spring Hill, where the group has a five-year lease ending Sept. 1, 2026. “Our expectation is to keep space for classes and rentals there” while turning the new 73 Bow St. space into a primary stage, Holland said in a call Monday.
The new space is intended to become a comedy destination, a goal made easier with the foot traffic of Union Square than at the current Spring Hill location between Union and Porter squares, Holland said. “Comedy brings people together, and Somerville deserves a space to laugh and create,” founder Pat Kearnan said in a press release.
The new space, which is already leased, would wind up with three or four rooms after renovations and a refresh of the space, providing Union Comedy with a lobby, backstage area for performers and classrooms in addition to a main stage. Upgraded theater tech is including in the fundraising amount, according to the online campaign.
For Union Comedy, which formed in 2017, the existing Somerville Avenue space was a fallback after three years of work building a club at 434 McGrath Highway fell through in July 2019 – something founders called “emotionally and financially devastating” in a blog post at the time. The hoped-for address is one comedy fans will recognize as the new home of the Goofs Comedy Club led by Ryan Howe (listed now as 432 McGrath Highway), which opened in October after nearly seven months of delays. (Work got far enough along that Union Comedy left behind a stage for Goofs to use.)
Goofs’ opening followed that of The Comedy Studio in Cambridge’s Harvard Square on Sept. 12 after more than two and a half years without shows as its founder and investors planned, fundraised and built out a new basement space.
Union Comedy is the only dedicated space in Cambridge and Somerville for improv comedy – which relies on teams taking suggestions from audiences – since ImprovBoston closed in Cambridge’s Central Square in December after being unable to recover from losing its stage in November 2021, during the Covid pandemic.
Backers of the new Union Comedy space can choose from rewards such as T-shirts, contributing to a time capsule and naming the bar. The campaign runs until Dec. 9 – which may seem short, but is “based on our research into Kickstarter campaigns and their length vs. how much people wind up getting back from them,” Holland said. “We have the capability to extend if we need to.”
The crowdfunding campaign is here.
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