Un-Cabaret: The Los Angeles Show That Taught Stand-Ups to Tell the Truth

Un-Cabaret is a Los Angeles comedy show created by performance artist and comedian Beth Lapides in 1988. Its rule was simple and, at the time, radical: no club acts. Comedians were asked to tell true, personal, often unfinished stories instead of their polished sets. From late 1993, its Sunday nights at the West Hollywood music club LunaPark became one of the centres of 1990s LA alternative comedy, with regulars like Janeane Garofalo, Bob Odenkirk, David Cross, Margaret Cho and Kathy Griffin.

Where New York's version of the movement lived in a rock bar (Luna Lounge), LA's grew up in a show that deliberately borrowed from performance art and confession. Un-Cabaret's influence runs through stand-up storytelling, the podcast boom and the whole idea that a comedian can be funny without telling jokes.

Origins: the Women's Building, 1988

Lapides came from the performance-art world and found the late-1980s LA comedy clubs depressing: the stand-up boom had turned clubs into factories for interchangeable, punchline-every-few-seconds acts. She started producing shows in "alternative" venues, and in 1988, with writer-producer Greg Miller, launched Un-Cabaret at the Women's Building, a feminist arts centre in Los Angeles.

The name was a statement. It wasn't a cabaret, with its polish and showbiz; and it wasn't a comedy club, with its two-drink minimum and tight sets. It was a space in between, where comedians would talk to an audience the way they might talk to friends late at night.

LunaPark and the Sunday nights (1993–2000)

The show's big moment came in November 1993, when it was booked for three nights at LunaPark, a new music club in West Hollywood. The run became a weekly residency: every Sunday night for roughly the next seven years, Lapides hosted a line-up of comedians developing an idiosyncratic, story-based kind of stand-up.

The format was loose. Lapides hosted and talked with the performers, and comics did longer, more personal pieces than a club would allow. The ask was to bring something new and real: what happened this week, what you were afraid of, what you couldn't say anywhere else. Material that failed was fine. Material that you'd done a hundred times was not.

The audience understood the deal. They came for the risk, so a comedian could spend five minutes building a story with no laughs and be trusted to land it, or not. That kind of audience is extremely hard to build on purpose, and Un-Cabaret had it.

The performers

Un-Cabaret's regulars and frequent guests read like a register of 1990s LA alternative comedy. Among those associated with the show:

• Janeane Garofalo, whose notebook-in-hand, thinking-aloud style was perfect for the room
• Bob Odenkirk and David Cross, in the years around Mr. Show
• Margaret Cho, Kathy Griffin and Laura Kightlinger
• Julia Sweeney, who was moving from SNL into autobiographical monologue
• Andy Dick, Taylor Negron, Dana Gould and Scott Thompson of The Kids in the Hall
• Greg Behrendt, Jeff Garlin and Judy Toll

It also worked as a bridge between comedy and other forms. Writers, performance artists and solo-show performers shared bills with stand-ups, and several regulars went on to make autobiographical theatre and books as well as specials.

On television, radio and record

Un-Cabaret travelled beyond the room in several forms:

• Comedy Central special (1997). Hosted by Lapides, with Taylor Negron, Dana Gould, Julia Sweeney, Kathy Griffin, Andy Dick and Scott Thompson. It's one of the best snapshots of the LA alternative style at its height.
• Radio UnCabaret (2000–2001). About a hundred episodes produced for the Comedy World network and Sirius satellite radio. The show also featured on public radio programmes including This American Life.
• Albums. Compilation releases including Freak Weather Feels Different, The Un & Only and The Good, the Bad and the Drugly.

Lapides and Miller also produced spin-offs. Say the Word was a spoken-word show of first-person stories by television writers. The Other Network was a festival of unaired TV pilots introduced by their creators, with work from people like Robert Smigel, Conan O'Brien, Bob Odenkirk and Judd Apatow, a fascinating glimpse of what the industry rejected.

After LunaPark: moves, hiatus and revival

When LunaPark closed, Un-Cabaret moved, as long-running alternative shows do. It spent time at the HBO Workspace, where it was developed with Warner Bros., then at the Knitting Factory in Hollywood and at M Bar. In 2008 it went on an extended hiatus.

Lapides brought it back in 2012. The revived show mixed alumni with newer comedians and kept the original rule about personal, new material. In 2018 a 25th-anniversary event celebrated the show, counting from the LunaPark era. When the pandemic closed theatres in 2020, Un-Cabaret moved to Zoom, which suited its intimate, conversational format better than most comedy. It returned to live shows in 2021 and kept online editions running alongside them.

Un-Cabaret and the storytelling boom

Un-Cabaret arrived just ahead of a wider turn toward true, first-person storytelling in American culture. This American Life began on public radio in 1995, and The Moth started its storytelling nights in New York in 1997. Un-Cabaret was doing a comic version of the same thing in a West Hollywood nightclub, and the overlap was real: its performers turned up on public radio, and its emphasis on the true story over the constructed joke anticipated the solo shows and confessional specials that followed.

The clearest long-term descendant is the comedy podcast. A comedian talking at length, honestly and without a punchline quota, about their week, their fears and their failures is the Un-Cabaret format with the stage removed. When Marc Maron's WTF and its many imitators took off around 2009, the audience for that kind of comedy had been built up in rooms like LunaPark for fifteen years.

It's also why the show is regularly mentioned in histories of the word "alternative" in American comedy. Lapides didn't invent the label (British comedians had been using it since 1979, as our history of British alternative comedy explains), but Un-Cabaret was one of the places where Americans first saw what an alternative to the club set could look like.

Why Un-Cabaret mattered

Three things set it apart from the rooms around it.

1. It treated the host as an editor. Lapides wasn't just introducing acts; she was shaping what they did, asking about where the material came from and pushing for honesty. That curatorial role is rare in stand-up.
2. It built the right audience. A Sunday-night crowd that came specifically to see comics take risks made the risks possible.
3. It changed the comics. Performers who had to come up with new, personal material every week developed voices that their club sets never required. Much of the 1990s LA alternative style, more conversational and more autobiographical, was worked out there.

Alongside Largo and, in New York, Luna Lounge, Un-Cabaret is one of the venues that made 1990s alternative comedy a scene rather than a scattering of individuals. Unlike most of them, it is still going.

Frequently asked questions

What is Un-Cabaret?

Un-Cabaret (also written UnCabaret) is a Los Angeles comedy show created by Beth Lapides in 1988. Instead of polished club sets, comedians tell personal, story-based material, often new and unfinished. It was one of the key rooms of 1990s LA alternative comedy.

Who performed at Un-Cabaret?

Performers associated with the show include Janeane Garofalo, Bob Odenkirk, David Cross, Margaret Cho, Kathy Griffin, Julia Sweeney, Andy Dick, Taylor Negron, Dana Gould and Scott Thompson, among many others.

Where was Un-Cabaret held?

It began at the Women's Building in 1988 and had its best-known run at LunaPark, a West Hollywood music club, every Sunday night from late 1993 for about seven years. Later homes included the HBO Workspace, the Knitting Factory and M Bar.

Is Un-Cabaret still running?

Beth Lapides revived the show in 2012 after a hiatus that began in 2008. During the pandemic it moved to Zoom, and it returned to live shows in 2021 while keeping online editions.