The 66 Kicks
Cody Mayo Studios
May 9, 2025
Great news for those of us whose brains are close to ruined thanks to short-form online content: improv sketch comedy is booming in Tulsa.
Ensemble-based, audience-prompt-generated, and created on the spot, this kind of comedy is a fast-moving high-wire act, with potential to spark as much disaster as genius. Troupes like New York’s Upright Citizens Brigade and Chicago’s Second City made it a thing; alums of those programs (like Tina Fey, Keegan-Michael Key, Amy Poehler, Bill Murray, Steve Carell) made it famous. And it has a few advantages over regular stand-up, especially for the attention-deficient among us.
For one thing, it’s a group rather than a solo act, which means your whole evening doesn’t hang on whether or not one individual has written funny jokes. It’s also theatre, in a way, which ups the stakes from “are they funny?” to “are they convincing as a computer scientist from Broken Arrow / a woman experiencing spontaneous conception at a puzzle convention / a stoned caveman?”
It’s strategy, too. There’s a whole industry around comedy improv training, so there’s a grab bag of games and tools and techniques in the background of shows like this, and it’s fun to guess how the improvisers are making the decisions they make.
It’s audience-participatory, but in a way that even shy people can feel comfortable with. You get asked non-threatening things like “what do you do for work?” and “what’s your favorite conspiracy theory?” They’re literally just looking for words; you don’t have to be funny in your answers.
In general, bombs in this kind of comedy are easier for an audience to brush off because a) you know things are likely to head in a completely different direction in about 30 seconds, and b) the baseline expectation is “there’s no way they’re going to be able to do anything with this ridiculous set of prompts.” And if something’s not working, everyone onstage instantly rallies to redirect or reinvent what’s happening.
All that said—it’s really, really hard to do well. Directed by Ryan Archibald (a veteran of The Second City, iO, and other iconic troupes), The 66 Kicks are the newest of several improv comedy groups now active in Tulsa, and they’re really, really good at it. Archibald founded the group with actor Cody Mayo, who trained with the Upright Citizens Brigade and offers acting classes and coaching for folks in the film and TV industry at his space on Studio Row. Archibald and Mayo gathered half a dozen Tulsans with improv experience (including at, you guessed it, The Second City) and set their standards high. They now deliver a show every other Friday—a tight, fast, fun, professional 75 minutes that’s different every time.