Mike Rubino, one of the Arcade Comedy Theater’s co-founders, recalls that, soon after the Pittsburgh Cultural Trust gave him and his team their original space at 811 Liberty Ave., they scrappily got the theater ready for business.
“We built a little stage, and we hung lights, and we got curtains donated and got some chairs from, like, a barn in Beaver County,” Rubino tells Pittsburgh City Paper. “The space was put together in this homemade way.”
Tickets sold out for its bustling first weekend.
“And then literally, the next weekend, we had, like, three people buy tickets for our first show after grand opening weekend,” Rubino says. “And it was a sobering reminder that, oh, we are going to be open for every weekend now forever, and we have to figure out how to both program in this space and tell people that we’re here.”
Cut to 10 years later and Arcade, now located at 943 Liberty Ave., will celebrate this milestone anniversary with nine shows embracing the theater’s signature focus on variety, with improv, stand-up, family-friendly comedy, and more.
Arcade will, from Thu., Nov. 2-Sun., Nov. 5, present an improv show from Irony City, a Stand-Up Laboratory with new materials from Pittsburgh comedians, and a unique, nostalgic late show on Friday night. Comedian Sean Collier and magician Lee Terbosic — both of whom performed at the grand opening a decade ago — will appear as part of Unlocking 811, the only show located at the venue’s original building, now in operation as Liberty Magic.
The weekend of anniversary shows comes after a year of planning, according to Rubino.
“We’ve got a lot going on,” Rubino says. “It’s really gonna be something awesome that highlights so much of our community. That’s the big throughline for this weekend … is that we have this giant community.”
Rubino, a comedic performer himself, describes the early 2010s comedy scene in Pittsburgh as “decentralized.” Performers scattered their work around the city, and the Arcade founders saw an opportunity to host a variety of different types of comedy in the thriving cultural district in Downtown Pittsburgh.
Brian Gray, one of Arcade’s early performers and producers, co-founded Irony City and says his improv group will do a show built around audience engagement with an “Am I the Jagoff?” theme (a riff on the viral Reddit page “Am I the Asshole?”). KDKA weatherman Ron Smiley will also join them.
“I think people in the broader comedy community are excited about what’s going on in Pittsburgh,” Gray tells City Paper. “And I think more and more, audiences understand that and love it, but it’s still pretty niche here. I’m amazed to be at this milestone. I’m super excited to be able to celebrate with Arcade.”
The theater’s 10-year anniversary follows a tough time for comedy venues around the world due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Though Arcade operates as a nonprofit, it still heavily relies on ticket sales, similar to standard, for-profit comedy venues, according to Rubino. While traffic into the theater has improved a lot since the worst of the COVID era, Rubino says Arcade still feels its effects.
“The theater-going public’s habits changed during the pandemic, and Downtown kind of changed a little bit during the pandemic. And we are definitely trying to build back in a smart way and get folks to come back Downtown,” Rubino says. “It’s very easy nowadays to just opt for all of the awesome stuff that’s on streaming.”
Rubino describes the struggle as “getting people back in the habit” — leaving the house for a trip Downtown can seem like a big ask nowadays, but Arcade and similar venues are trying to remind people that they used to do it all the time.
“When you come and you gather together in a room, and you see something funny, and you’re sharing a laugh together, it feels like something completely different than if you were just watching a comedy on your couch,” Rubino says.
Still, the show must go on — there will be more shows the next weekend, the weekend after that, and the weekend after that. For 2024, the Arcade team plans to create new types of shows to keep things fresh and keep audiences coming back for more.
“It’s really about building our organization, our staff, and our capabilities back in the smartest way possible so that we can be here for 10, 20, 30, 40 more years,” Rubino says.
