S.F. sketch comedy troupe Killing My Lobster to suspend operations

San Francisco Chronicle​

a day ago

Sketch comedy troupe Killing My Lobster plans to suspend operations at the end of its 2025 season, potentially ending a 28-year run of wildly inventive laughs and opportunities for hundreds of artists.
Artistic Director Nicole Odell and Executive Director Emma McCool wrote in a joint letter sent to the company's community that they hope to use the pause in production to come up with a more sustainable financial model. Still, they admitted, 'We are unable to say with certainty what will happen after the close of this season.' The company's next project, 'Legends & Laughter,' a Dungeons and Dragons-themed show running Aug. 29 through Sept. 13 at the Eclectic Box, could be its last full production.
The letter, published Tuesday, Aug. 12, comes less than 24 hours after Berkeley's Aurora Theatre Company announced it was laying off staff and vacating its building.
Last October, Odell and McCool went part-time in the hope of redirecting their salaries toward 'artists and productions, where they belong,' they said in a statement at the time. As of Tuesday's announcement, they're now volunteering.
Their letter blamed changes in foundation and government support for the arts. In a separate email to the Chronicle, Odell cited the Performing Arts Equitable Payroll Fund as one hoped-for grant that fell through. The $11.5 million program was established to help small performing arts organizations comply with AB5, the gig-work law passed with the goal of forcing Uber, Lyft, Instacart and others to treat their workers as employees instead of independent contractors. While those behemoths have so far escaped the costly consequences of the law, theaters, opera companies and sketch comedy groups haven't — with devastating downstream consequences.
Circus Bella is another San Francisco organization whose PAEPF grant application was rejected. Executive Director Abigail Munn forwarded the Chronicle her rejection notice, which said, 'We anticipate that the approximate $11.5 million in available funds will be depleted before we reach your application in the queue.'
'I was hoping that the PAEPF was going to be a lifeline for Circus Bella,' Munn told the Chronicle, 'and we were going to be rewarded for our expensive efforts of making all our performers employees.'
Odell told the Chronicle that KML was also counting on PAEPF. 'If our application had been accepted, it would have covered 80% of our artist payroll, which became a critical need given rising labor costs and our commitment to AB5 compliance,' she said.
She declined to single out other funders who rejected KML but added, 'We can share that several of our rejection notices mentioned an unprecedented volume of applicants this cycle.'
For nearly three decades, Killing My Lobster has served laughs centered on an astonishing array of niche interests. Subjects of individual shows have included the women who get rescued in action movies ('Don't You Die on Me!'), Charles Dickens ('A Bag of Dickens'), Agatha Christie ('J'Accuse!') and Alfred Hitchcock ('North by North Lobster'). It frequently centers marginalized voices, as in 'Model Minority Report,' 'My Parents Came to America and All They Got Was a Kid Who Does Comedy' and 'Honey, I Shrunk The Whites.' Complementing those projects behind-the-scenes is KML's New Voices in Comedy Fellowships, established in 2015 to broaden access to the field for historically marginalized talent.
Laura Domingo has acted for KML since 2019, going on to write and edit and audio and video for the company as well.
'We have this inside joke in the Killing My Lobster community that we're a cult,' which she believes is the crew's joking way of saying they're each other's chosen family.
In any KML show, she might play 10 to 15 characters across as many three-minute sketches. 'It teaches you how to just make an impact immediately, both as an actor and a writer,' she said.
Renowned Bay Area theater actor Phil Wong, who credits the company for giving him one of his first cracks at directing, appreciated how at KML, he's never working from an off-the-shelf script. Everything's from scratch.
'It's an incredible opportunity to just sit down and make,' he said. 'Everyone pitches the idea, and then we just build it from every single angle, up and down, left and right, side to side.'
Though comedy can get a bad rap as an unserious art form, Domingo said, its accessibility is a potent tool for commenting on issues of great import. Audiences aren't 'being talked down to or taught,' she explained. Laughter opens them up, and they start thinking about messages later. 'It sneaks up on you,' she said.