Rudyard’s has doubled down on comedy and The Riot’s Brian Gendron may be the one to thank. After transforming their space in December, the new upstairs at Rudyard’s is ready to show its stuff with the jam-packed four-day extravaganza aptly called The Riot Comedy Festival.
Gendron, the festival’s producer and a stand-up comic himself, shares his gratitude on the partnership he’s built with Rudyard’s. “Rud’s was the first place I performed and been a space for comedy for decades,” he says. “I started doing public speaking formally with Toast Masters about five years ago. That kind of morphed into a special kind of public speaking we know as stand up comedy. Rudyard’s is a five-minute walk from my house and I said, you know what, I’m gonna walk down there, try my five-minute set and that will just be a thing I do for fun. It obviously turned into something bigger than that.”
In less than a decade, the comic went from “bombing” during his first set, to running the show and giving platform to so many fellow funny people in the city.
Previewing the festival itself, Gendron describes the weekend-plus as an all hands on deck affair with comedy in every direction. “We’ve got over 60 comedians on the line-up, over 50 comedy shows including stand-up, podcast, sketch and even music. We also have some street performers! What we’re doing is we’ve got our new comedy room, we’re also building a smaller room, a podcast studio, on the first floor of Rudyard’s, right where the shuffle table is.
“Then we’re going to be shutting down that stretch of Waugh Drive between Indiana and Welsh and across the street there is going to be an 82 by 82 foot tent and in there we are expected to get about 500 people. It will be open-ended so the backside of the tent will actually be open and we’ve got big screens going up so that more people can actually be there for the larger shows. We’ll be able to do three shows, three stages at the same time – but we’ll stagger them the best we can.”
Headliners across the four nights include some Houston favorites like Andy Huggins, Josh Wessling, Victor Tran, Josh Stokes and a man who Gendron credits with him getting onstage in the first place, Grady Pruitt. They’ll be sharing the bill with some exciting touring headliners including Gianmarco Soresi, Steph Tolev, Joe Machi, Ian Lara, and Lara Beitz.
In addition to hosting, Rudyard’s has spared no expense in their design of their upstairs comedy space ahead of the festival. Renovated in December, Gendron is excited about all the changes as they’ve added seats and moved the staging area. “That room was designed for music, for punk bands and what was typically booked at Rudyard’s,” he explains. “It was that kind of shotgun style room. We took that all down. What used to be the stage is now seating – it’s still elevated, but we call it the Mezzanine. Of course, its not a Mezzanine…”
“We have about 30 seats that sit on what was once the stage and we created an 8 by 12.5 foot stage on the long side in the center of the room and now that gives us an additional 40 seats to the room. It’s opened a bit more space, but it’s also giving us a space closer to a traditional comedy club with people surrounding the stage on all sides now. We’ve also added in now sound, new lighting and new tables and we’ve even got a few more things coming like brand new speakers and more stage lighting. We’ve got a new end table ordering system and new ambient lighting. Everything is kind of new.”
With Rudyard’s renovations, and a healthy number of shows returning after a brief COVID depression, Gendron seems to see the future as bright for not only his show, but the Houston scene at large.
“With Secret Group coming off the heels of a successful festival, the sturdy and trusty Improv has been in the market, we’ve got some other rooms in Houston, Phil and Derik’s, there’s The Comedy Lounge on the northwest side. And of course our stage, an 140-seat room now set up for comedy.
“The talent continues to be strong, not only the talent on the come up in Houston but some of our people who have moved on like Victor Tran and Josh Stokes, starting to have some early success in New York. Same thing out in LA. We’re really starting to put Houston back on the map. There was a time when we were the Third Coast of comedy, and we’re trending back to that with all this activity.”
The Riot Comedy Festival is running from Thursday, March 23 at 6 p.m. through Sunday, March 26 at 11 p.m. with different events scheduled through the weekend at The Riot Comedy Club at Rudyard’s, 2010 Waugh. For more information, call 713-264-8664 or visit theriothtx.com $25-209.
This article appears in Jan 1 – Dec 31, 2023.
