BREAKING THROUGH THE BRICK WALL : COMEDY OUTLETS TOSS OUT THE RULES OF STAID STAND-UP.

Byline: Janet Weeks Daily News Staff Writer

A half-dozen revved-up young actors draw plastic chairs into a semicircle on an otherwise bare stage. A thin blonde in the center announces, in a motherly tone, that it is time to say grace, setting up a dysfunctional-family-at-dinner sketch.

The actors clasp hands. ``I'm thankful for relentless, uncompromising discipline,'' says one, sneaking a quick, terrified glance at the man playing his stern father. The sold-out crowd of Hollywood hipsters - including rock div-ette Alanis Morissette - roars.

``Show me the money, Jesus!'' shouts another of the praying siblings, which prompts ``Dad'' to fake-slap him out of his chair. There's a pratfall, more laughter, and then a quick rearrangement of the furniture, signaling a new improvisational sketch.

Silly, unpredictable, different. This is the new sound, the new look of comedy. No airplane jokes, no brick wall, no two-drink minimum. No roomful of network executives looking for the next Seinfeld. No actors-turned-stand-ups going for a perfect 10 - 10 minutes of pat, tried-and-true comedy that will land them a sitcom.

No, the comedy of ImprovOlympic, a Chicago-based troupe that set up shop in Hollywood's Stella Adler Theatre last week, is smarter, fresher and riskier. It is part of an emerging alternative comedy trend that just might save a sagging scene.

Bring back the laughter

Indeed, live, performed comedy - a moribund art form for the last several years - seems to be on a slow comeback in Los Angeles. The renaissance - if it turns out to be that - is being fueled by some inspired format changes.

For starters, improvisational sketch comedy, a la ImprovOlympic and the Groundlings in West Hollywood, is attracting the kinds of audiences that flocked to the stand-up clubs in the comedy heyday of the late 1980s.

Deanna Oliver, director of the Groundlings and a member of the troupe since 1985, says sketch is gaining ground with people tired of the same old standup.

After all, for years stand-up filled not only nightclubs but the television dial and even movie screens (remember Eddie Murphy's ``Raw''?). The result was a public overdose and a subtle disintegration of the art form.

``Stand-up became quick-fix, fast-food comedy,'' says Oliver. ``It was joke-drink, joke-drink, let's go home. I think that today, audiences want to get more involved than that. They want to see characters and situations and acting.'

Of course, stand-up is still alive and, in fact, doing well in places that allow for alternatives to the unwritten rules that governed it for years.

Rule bending, in fact, is the rule at the Un-Cabaret, a Sunday night show in the downstairs room of West Hollywood's LunaPark bar and grill. It is unlike traditional stand-up in several ways.

For example, at the Un-Cabaret, comics get at least 15 minutes to perform. Some stay on stage as long as 20 minutes. In the old days, club owners packed lineups with more than a dozen comics a night, giving each only about five minutes to deliver their best stuff.

In such a competitive arena, comics had to kill (comedy parlance for succeed). That meant getting a laugh every seven seconds. Pressure to succeed prevented many from trying new material and led to a stagnant scene in which comics told the same jokes night after night.

``Because the laugh had to come every seven seconds, then what you could talk about was limited,'' says Beth Lapides, founder and host of the Un-Cabaret. ``It was comedy based on a standardized rhythm.''

Sitcom envy

Complicating matters, many of the folks in comedy during that era weren't necessarily dedicated to the art form. Some were simply using stand-up as a route to a television acting career, hoping to become the next Jerry Seinfeld, Ellen DeGeneres, Tim Allen or Roseanne. Especially Roseanne, who is legendary for the years she spent developing her stand-up act. When she finally got her shot on ``The Tonight Show,'' her career exploded. Her success triggered a flood of newcomers into comedy, looking to do the same thing.

Instead of taking risks, these actors concentrated on developing a smooth, guaranteed act they could perform for network executives and agents in a ``showcase'' - a show closed to the general public.

``There was no commitment to the community of comedy or the art form,'' says Marc Weingarten, a former owner of the Ice House in Pasadena and producer of ``Rick Dees Comedy Concert.'' Weingarten blames the problem on club owners as well as comics.

``Everybody was recognizing that comedy was something they could make money at,'' he says. ``But comics were just excuses to sell drinks. Then it became more difficult to get people out because they could see the comics on 12 different TV channels.''

Vive la difference

Recently, Weingarten started a new show at Studio City's Sportsmen's Lodge. Called ``Laff'n at the Lodge,'' the show combines dinner theater and comedy. And unlike clubs that thrive on young, cheaply paid comics, the Lodge show spotlights veterans like Tom Dreesen and Kelly Monteith.

``The future of comedy is that people want more than the brick wall and the microphone. You have to do something a little differently. You have to have the best comics. People are tired of going through two or three open-mikers. They want to see people who know their craft.''

Lapides goes a step further. She requires that her comics only perform material new to the Un-Cabaret. The result is timely comedy - so timely comics bring notes with them on stage. And unless it really happened, you are unlikely to hear anyone complain ``I just broke up with my girlfriend.''

One recent Sunday, Un-Cabaret subjects ranged from the shoot-out in North Hollywood to the death of China's Deng Xiaoping.

Here's a slice: Comic Andy Kindler said he heard on a PBS biography that Deng was known not only for the Tiananmen Square massacre but for having a lively sense of humor.

``The murdering humorist,'' Kindler mused. ``He was my favorite of the brutal, murdering, dictator stand-ups.''

Then he shifted gears. He was Deng the Murdering Stand-up.

``Why did the student cross the road?'' Kindler said, spoofing not only the PBS biographer but hack comics. ``To get away from the death squad! Ha ha! Put your business card in the bowl on the way out. It makes it easier to round up your families! Ha!''

Because Lapides came to comedy from performance art, she has a different perspective. Her shows are nurturing for comics. She hugs them and laughs louder than anyone at their jokes. And she treats their work seriously. Comedy, for her, is not a means to sell drinks.

``There's a resistance to treating comedy as an art form,'' she says. ``But because I come from the art world, I have no shame about being highfalutin.''

Keep it insult-free

She also insists comics respect the audience and themselves. That means no homophobic, racist or misogynistic jokes, or jokes that make fun of people in the crowd. There are plenty of clubs for those kind of comics, she adds.

``There are two strands of comedy: The Catskills and Lenny Bruce.'' She prefers what she calls ``original voices,'' comics whose material is wholly their own.

As a result, the Un-Cabaret's safe atmosphere attracts an impressive number of cutting-edge comedy writers and performers such as Julia Sweeney, Bobcat Goldthwait, Janeane Garofalo and Scott Thompson.

Topics discussed are different, too. Sweeney used her time at the Un-Cabaret to develop a one-woman show about her struggle with cancer. Former ``Cybill'' writer Michael Patrick King recently chose to make fun of the HBO-sponsored Aspen Comedy Festival.

And so far, Lapides' strategy is working. The Un-Cabaret sells out almost every Sunday.

At the opening of a Los Angeles ImprovOlympic branch last Saturday, the enthusiastic crowd laughed and applauded even before the actors opened their mouths, and giggled and guffawed throughout the two-hour performance.

The format of ImprovOlympic is something new to Los Angeles, although the troupe has been in Chicago for 15 years. It's long-form improv - the members move in and out of a succession of off-the-cuff sketches with only occasional interruptions by a narrator, whose rambling stories tie everything together.

Bush leagues

Both the Groundlings and ImprovOlympic benefit from reputations as training grounds for bright new stars. Groundlings graduates include Phil Hartman, Jon Lovitz, Lisa Kudrow and ``Suddenly Susan's'' Kathy Griffin. ImprovOlympians include Chris Farley, ``NewsRadio's'' Andy Dick (who performed with the group last week) and ``Wayne's World's'' Mike Meyers.

Charna Halpern, founder and producer of ImprovOlympic, says she got the idea for the show one day while hanging out with a bunch of young comics.

``It's all based around what used to take place in my living room 15 years ago when everybody was just starting out,'' she says.

Lapides has a similar philosophy for the Un-Cabaret: ``One day I thought to myself, `Why am I laughing more with my friends on the phone than I am at comedy shows?' ''

She tries to re-create the funny easiness of a phone call with an innovation she calls ``the back mike.'' In the back of the room, she has a microphone over which she can comment on a comic's routine.

``It keeps people conversational.''

And that, she believes, keeps the crowd coming back.

``It's starting to be sort of an interesting time,'' says Lapides of the L.A. comedy scene. ``There is something in the air. People want to laugh.''

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6 Photos

Photo: (1--3--Cover--Color) Funny Stuff

Stand-up comedians breaking old rules, new ground

(4) Jennifer Coolidge is the center of attention during a Groundlings sketch at the improvisational comedy troupe's West Hollywood theater.

Hans Gutknecht/Daily News

(5) Andy Kindler works out at LunaPark's Un-Cabaret, joined on stage by host Beth Lapides. The format gives comics more time on stage - sometimes as long as 20 minutes.

Tina Gerson/Daily News

(6) The improvisational sketches flow rapidly in ImprovOlympic at the Stella Adler Theatre in Hollywood.

Gene Blevins/Special to the Daily News