The Tokyo Comedy Store is an English-language comedy show held in central Tokyo, Japan, which features stand-up comedians and improvised comedy. The Tokyo Comedy Store was founded in 1994 as the "Tokyo Comedy Club" by Kevin Burns. Burns gathered together stand-up comics and a hypnotist by placing many ads in the Tokyo Classifieds, calling for performers. The first show was held at the Tokyo American Club, and the second at the British Club in Ebisu, Tokyo. Roughly around the same time a separate group called the Tokyo Cynics started an all stand-up comedy show in the Takadanobaba area at a bar called The Fiddler. By about 1998, Burns was no longer involved, and from that time up until the mid-2000s the group was run first by Nick Abrahams, then Michael Naishtut, who had been independently performing improv comedy in Tokyo, and Chris Wells, one of the founding members of TCS. Naishtut was also hosting the "Tokyo Cynics" shows, and the two groups were effectively merged. Around the same time, the name was changed to the "Tokyo Comedy Store". Since then, the Tokyo Comedy Store has held multiple shows every month at various venues. Venues come and go, and so over the year shows have come and gone, or moved locations, but there were usually between three and six shows running at any one time. Other shows around Tokyo had been organized by Dave Gutteridge, who since the early 2000s had been a show runner, performer, and administrator of the website. Some shows involved stand-up, some involved improv, and some involved both. The cornerstone show continues to be held on the last Friday of every month and featured stand-up comedians in the first half until 2015. The second half of the show consisted of an entirely improvised comedy by "Spontaneous Confabulation", the resident improv troupe. The show usually ended with music-based improvisation. In 2015 the cornerstone show was rebranded ”The TCS Improvazilla Show” and changed to an all-improv format. The standup performers now perform at several different venues around town, including through Standup Tokyo. The TCS Improvazilla Show now features a long-form montage based on audience responses to a monthly changing question, an audience member interview, or a spoken word performance in the first act, and a long-form musical in the first act. These are called “What’s on Your Mind?” and “Musical Premiere”, respectively. The performers are now referred to as simply “the Improvazilla cast.” The a musical Premiere is done in various genres throughout the year, including a 1940’s love story for February’s Valentine’s Day special, and a zombie-themed musical in October for the Halloween Special. Currently the director of the Tokyo Comedy Store is Chris Wells, who runs the Improvazilla show at the Crocodile live-house in Shibuya, attracting audiences of around 80, the vast majority of whom are non-Japanese, as well as the TCS School of Improv and Acting at Studio Gokko, a black box theatre and workshop space in Shibuya-Ku, which opened in April, 2019. The school offers improv and acting lessons in Japanese, English and Spanish on a daily basis. At about the same time the Tokyo Comedy Store was first founded in 1994, Jun Imai started to teach improvisation classes for Japanese performers and stage improv performances as "in the moment". In 2004, he brought the In The Moment improv troupe to TCS and produced the first ITM + TCS shows, which were based entirely on improvised comedy. These became known as TCSj, and the group performed twice a month in the same venue as the English version through 2011. TCSj cut down on their shows in 2012, and now perform several times a year at the Crocodile and other venues, under the rebranded name TCD:D. Although it features the same type of improvised scenes as the English show does, it has several different show formats with different casts. Currently TCS:D has a cast of over 20 improvisors. Jun Imai directs improvised and scripted plays at Studio Gokko and teaches improv and acting classes there on a weekly basis. He is the author of five volumes on improvisation, including the long-selling “Jiyu ni naru no ha taihen na no da: Impro Manual”. TCS directors Chris Wells and Jun Imai teach internationally, and have been invited to teach at improv conferences in Europe, Asia, the Middle East and the Americas.
''Tokyo Comedy Store'' film
A documentary film about the Tokyo Comedy Store was made and released on in 2008. The film is a narrative account of director Brian C. Anderson's experience performing with the stand-up comedians of the Tokyo Comedy Store. Anderson's film explores the differences between Eastern and Western styles of comedy, and showcases various acts he encounters as he progresses as a stand-up comedian in Tokyo. Anderson made the film while stationed overseas in the United States Air Force.
