If laughter is the best medicine, improv can do a body good

Afamiliar sensation comes over Kent Skov whenever he’s improvising onstage and his audience is right there with him. “It’s an adrenaline rush,” he says. “In the comedy business, you feed off laughter and knowing the audience can’t wait to see what you’re going to do next. There’s no better feeling.”

He’s known that feeling since before arriving in Los Angeles in the early ‘70s, relocating from San Francisco, where he performed with the Committee and other improv groups. More than 30 years ago, he founded the L.A. Connection Comedy Theatre, which this year moved to a new home in Burbank.

The theater company has seen a long line of talent pass through, including Will Ferrell, Matthew Perry and Hank Azaria. Skov remains the leader of a large group of players, and appears onstage every Saturday night at part of the flagship show, “2001: An Improv Odyssey” with a troupe of veteran improvisers. Fred Willard’s Moho Sketch Group has also made L.A. Connection its new home, and will perform about six shows a year.

Beginning on June 15, the theater will celebrate its official “grand opening,” with 18 shows over five days. There will be nights of improv and daytime shows for teens and younger kids, plus the popular “Mad Movies & More,” where new dialogue and sound is overdubbed on old movie clips and TV shows.

The theater opened the first week of February, but Skov waited for all the pieces to come together before announcing an official kickoff, following a June 13 ribbon cutting ceremony at 5 p.m. Skov signed a 10-year lease.

“Like anything, you want to live in it for three or four months to see what you need to adjust to make the building better,” he says. “There could be sounds in the building. Is there a ghost?

“All of my members moved with me, and they’re very excited. They think this is a real upgrade. It is a beautiful theater inside.”

Skov had been a class clown at least since high school, where on the baseball team he would recite a prayer before every game in the voice of the Jerry Lewis character Buddy Love. “We would all laugh and get all relaxed and end up winning our division,” he recalled. “One day the coach came out and wanted to pray with us, and I couldn’t do Buddy Love. We lost the game.”

The escape of sharing a big laugh is the same ever, he insists, still comparing it to “getting the winning run.”

“I sometimes have an ache or a pain in my body. Then you’ll go to the show, and you don’t feel anything but the pure joy and rush of being out there and entertaining people,” he adds. “Then you get in your car to go home and you go, ‘Oh, there’s that ache again. I thought I got rid of that.’”

He came to Los Angeles to further his improv comedy career, beginning with outdoor performances in Venice Beach. In those early days, there were only three companies in town: the Groundlings, Off the Wall and his own L.A. Connection. Now there are dozens.

“I was always doing crazy things to draw attention — in a positive way. And to get my performance experience, from nightclubs to street theater,” Skov says. “I was from San Francisco, where I grew up with people like Robin Williams who were outrageous and crazy. You have to take those risks if you want to be successful.”

After 36 years on Ventura Boulevard, Skov moved his comedy theater from Studio City when it became clear the building he was renting would soon be sold. He found the company’s new home in the “up and coming” neighborhood of Magnolia Park.

Much of his old audience has followed, he says. “If you build it they will come,” Skov says, quoting from the movie “Field of Dreams.” “I really wanted to build a beautiful, lasting theater that will be a local treasure.”

Over the years, Skov has been involved in other shows and projects, auditioned for “Saturday Night Live” in 1980 (with three call-backs), and enjoyed success with his own “Mad Movies,” which ran for several years on “Nick at Nite” and MTV. The quality of laughter is the same everywhere, as he tells younger performers with ambitions for careers on sitcoms and movies.

“It’s great to have those aspirations, but the most important thing is to enjoy what you’re doing now and do that at the best of your ability,” Skov says. “If you can do this improv work as well as you can do, people will begin to see it. They will recognize your talent and good things will happen.”

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What: L.A. Connection Comedy Theatre “Grand Opening”

Where: 3435 W. Magnolia Blvd., Burbank.

When: June 15 through 19

More info: (818) 710-1320, laconnectioncomedy.com

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Steve Appleford, steve.appleford@latimes.com

Twitter: @SteveAppleford

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