The Comedy Arena is a comedy club located in the Historic Downtown, McKinney co-owned by Von Daniel. The club features stand-up, improv, sketch, and comedy classes available for corporate gatherings and more.
Von’s Humble Beginnings
Von worked in corporate America for about 25 years. He was able to work for companies like Michael’s, JCPenney’s, and Amazon. He was the creative director and a visual communications major at the Art Institute of Dallas. He started doing comedy as a hobby about 20 years ago. That hobby then turned into a passion and then that passion turned into a career...
Von’s Favorite Part of Being The Owner of the Comedy Arena
... are the guests that come in. Because when they come inside the arena, they are coming in to have a good time and to laugh. Von says, “People are already in a good mood and then he gets to have conversations with them, find out about their lives, and just connect with the community.” Overall, connecting with people is the best part of his job.
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Classes Offered for People Wanting to Get Into The Comedy Space
Most people that take classes at the Comedy Arena aren’t really trying to be comedians, but they’ll take improv classes. The mentality and the methodology of improv classes generally comes from a place of accepting and collaborating with people on stage, just like with everyday life. The arena gets doctors, lawyers, teachers, and stay-at-home moms that just take an improv class just because it is something to get them out of the house.
The Comedy Arena also teaches stand-up comedy and comedy sketch classes. Their stand-up comedy classes can help guide aspirants by putting a structure to their lines that will make people really laugh at the things that they say. Sketch classes, on the other hand, will help people write jokes that sell in shows like Saturday Night Live (SNL) and know how to perform them with others.
They also do corporate training, where they go to a company or vice versa. They will do team building events with the companies which teaches teams on how to better communicate, how to nonverbally communicate (e.g. making eye contact), how to build things together, and how to come from a place of yes. For this matter, The Comedy Arena has worked with major companies like JCPenney’s, Amazon, and more.
School Collaborations
They offer summer camps each summer. After the camp is over, the kids would do a show for their parents. Their summer camp counselors are excellent because most of them are actually teachers at the local schools; three of them being drama teachers. They are performers that perform there on the weekends, but are teachers midday and by trait. They also have programs for kids during the school year where they will go to a school, meet with the drama instructor, put together a drama team for them, teach them improv, and teach them how to play some of the games that they play at their comedy sports show. Then they will do tournaments with each other and do competitions within their school or outside of other schools. These classes are mostly at junior and high school levels, because that’s the typical level where schools usually have drama departments, but can start as early as with third grade.
TO LEARN MORE ABOUT THE COMEDY ARENA
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