The Material

Can comedy be taught? Someone, at some point, seemed to think so. The teachers and students at the Chicago Stand-Up school all know how to make people laugh - in theory. They know the line between sharp and cruel, that sad becomes funny at the right angle, and that any moment of your life is a punchline waiting to happen. They're all afraid of that. Artie may be too handsome for stand-up, Olivia reluctant to examine her own life, and Phil afraid to cause harm. Kruger concentrates more on commanding his father's respect than his students', Ashbee is too detached. And then we have Dorothy - the only woman on the faculty - who, though preparing to launch a comeback tour, can't tell whether she's too abiding, ambitious, or ambivalent. Whether a visiting comedian - the famous, controversy-steeped Manny Reinhardt - will do more to help or harm their cause remains to be seen. But he'll be arriving sooner than anyone thinks. Riffing keenly across an array of perspectives, The Material examines life through the eyes of a band of outsiders bound together by whatever it is about themselves that makes them so desperate to make others laugh.