The Thrilling Adventure Hour by Ben Acker

Even though the show’s creators sell out every monthly performance at $25 a seat, their homespun enterprise only breaks even, and they’re turning to Kickstarter to build for the future - to fund graphic novels, a web series and a concert film. Acker and Blacker do it because they love it - as do such industry fans as Once Upon a Time producer Jane Espenson, Lost star Jorge Garcia and Fringe co-executive producer David Fury, all of whom have tweeted their support. Except this hourlong show is all about comedy of the geekiest variety, with recurring segments such as the Space Western Sparks Nevada: Marshal on Mars and Beyond Belief, which basically is Nick and Nora Charles’ drunken adventures with the supernatural.

Actors, dressed to the nines in suits and gowns, perform onstage in front of microphones while working from scripts they’re holding in their hands, like the Mercury Theater of old. And the director, TV writer-producer Aaron Ginsburg - who tugs sharply on the vest of his three-piece suit like a naval officer who wants to look sharp before combat - mock pleads to a reporter, “Just make us look cool.”Ī sci-fi stage show in the style of old-time radio is how Acker and Blacker describe Adventure Hour. The show’s creators, TV writers Ben Acker and Ben Blacker ( Supernatural), have the thousand-yard stare that comes with writing and producing a live show once a month for the past eight years. There are guest stars - such as Parenthood‘s Jason Ritter, Southland‘s Ben McKenzie and Key & Peele‘s Keegan Michael Key - rereading their lines with the desperate studiousness of medical students on cadaver day. There is the cacophony coming through the velvet curtain from the stage at Largo at the Coronet, a charmingly old-school 280-seat theater on La Cienega, as the four-piece Andy Paley Orchestra rehearses. Jeremy Renner Shares Positive Messages During Road to Recovery: 'The Body Is Miraculous'īackstage at a performance of The Thrilling Adventure Hour is a bit like a circus.

The Thrilling Adventure Hour by Ben Acker