Milwaukee Comedy’s Matt Kemple on the ‘Need to Laugh’

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Matt Kemple is Milwaukee Comedy’s father of invention. Or at least, he’s the facilitator of other people’s inventiveness.

“There is a need to laugh and a desire to perform, so when there are not enough places to perform, people from all cities and walks of life will create a space that can fulfill that need,” he says. Along with founding Milwaukee Comedy, he runs the multi-purpose Underground Collaborative venue in the basement of the old Grand Avenue mall. The space fills the gap in a city that currently lacks any full-time comedy clubs.

“We have fulfilled a need for comedy in this city—as I mentioned before, there is a desire to create what is lacking. My business has grown because we have great spaces that can be utilized for lots of things, not just comedy,” says Kemple. He goes on to explain the flexibility of Milwaukee Comedy’s way of operating, “As the clubs closed over the years, we knew that business model of a traditional comedy club was not what we wanted to be. So, we decided to not just create in one place, but to bring comedy to different places around town and create something unique.”

However, Milwaukee isn’t alone as a metropolis where entrepreneurs such as himself seek to fill the void of dedicated comedy venues, Kemple readily admits.

Neither may it be novel that Milwaukee Comedy's current bustling activity and success has its origin in a festival. Kemple co-founded the Milwaukee Comedy Festival, going on its 14th year next month. “The Festival was founded to bring more awareness to the comedy scene, originally called the Milwaukee Sketch and Improv Festival, and later changed to Milwaukee Comedy Festival when stand up was added in the third year,” he says 

“After some early success with the first few years, I established the website milwaukeecomedy.com as a place to collect info on upcoming comedy events and to use the domain as a promotional tool for the festival. I decided I wanted to produce more comedy when I was also performing quite a bit, so over time Milwaukee Comedy was established as an LLC and began producing three or four shows annually. Now, we have grown to produce 10-12 shows a month.”

If being professionally funny has come as a sharp turn in the lives of many of the comics Kemple books for Milwaukee Comedy events, his time on stage and behind the scenes has been a natural, if still somewhat unexpected outgrowth of his upbringing. “Comedy has always been a part of my life. Humor was something my family instilled in me at a very young age. I never meant to make a living off of comedy, I sort of fell into it, and over time, the business grew to where it is today.”

And Milwaukee Comedy has grown under Kemple’s leadership with a curatorial philosophy that doesn’t aim for the shock value prized in some circles. Of his approach, Kemple says, “There are plenty of acts that might be profitable because they are controversial, but that’s not why I do this. I look for the best talent I can find and want to work with people that are professional and funny. If someone is in the news for something negative they may sell a bunch of tickets, but that's not the kind of show I am interested in.”

Alas, Kemple’s own time on stage has been cut back since he and his assistants, Kaitlin McCarthy and Greg Bach, have nurtured Milwaukee Comedy’s growth. When asked if he still comes out to do stand-up, improv or anything else to get some laughter out of a crowd nowadays, Kemple answers, “Other than the occasional hosting gig, no…”

Here he is from a couple years ago, explaining how his and other creative people’s weirdness can be an asset in a speech for the national Creative Mornings series, which are kind of like TED talks for non-techies:

And here are Kemple and Bach interviewed by co-hostesses of WTMJ Channel 4's “Morning Blend,” acquitting themselves amiably and, perhaps, a bit weirdly: