OK, So We’re Not No. 1

Backstage at the Acme Comedy Theatre, the company’s writer-performers are preparing for the evening’s sketch comedy show--applying makeup, hunting for props and running lines. The air crackles with laughter.

Then, out of the din, one actress overhears something a bit too familiar.

“Are you stealing my Hot Dog on a Stick joke?” she calls out, her tone friendly yet fraught with warning.

In other words: Hands off, or it’ll be a punch line, indeed.

A good-natured rivalry exists at the La Brea Avenue comedy venue, where performers work hard to impress each other and the audience. They are driven, in part, by being No. 2 in a town long dominated by the Groundlings--the comedy troupe that has become a virtual farm team for “Saturday Night Live” and “Mad TV.”

“We’re in their shadow,” acknowledges M.D. Sweeney, Acme’s founder and artistic director. “It has been frustrating, certainly. We have more to prove. Audiences come to us with no expectations; they’re a little tentative. We have to earn every laugh.”

With its just-opened Friday-Saturday show, “Acme Senseless,” the troupe’s eight-member A-team is trying to earn those laughs with such sketches as two guides welcoming visitors to the new Getty Center by cheerfully asking them to turn right around and go home because the museum is full. And there’s a press conference with the McCaughey septuplets’ frazzled mom, who is so sleep-deprived that she can’t even remember their names, resorting to such descriptions as “one of the girl ones” and “the little bald one who’s always drooling.”

On Sunday nights, Acme’s 11-member B-team continues its “I Know What You Did Last Sunday Show.”

Acme has been on the scene for eight years, having begun life as the Two Roads Players and briefly going by the Tujunga Group (reflections of its then-home in the San Fernando Valley) before taking its current name and eventually moving to hip, happening La Brea. The company’s best-known alums are Adam Carolla, co-host of the MTV and syndicated radio program “Loveline,” and Lisa Kushell and Alex Borstein of Fox’s “Mad TV.” A number of current and former members are also building resumes as writers, particularly for animated programs.

The Groundlings, by comparison, have been around for nearly 25 years, grabbing the national spotlight by launching such household names as Julia Sweeney, Jon Lovitz, Paul Reubens, Lisa Kudrow and the late Phil Hartman.

The Acme’s Sweeney would love to see one of his members picked up for “SNL.” Still better, he’d like a series production deal like the one the Groundlings just landed with the FX cable network.

But in the meantime, he cheers each Groundlings success. “I always root very strongly for these things,” Sweeney says, “because if they do well, I am sure somebody from another network is going to say, ‘Hey, maybe there’s another Groundlings out there that hasn’t been snatched up.’ We’re the second choice.”

Acme is still in the process of finding its audience, however, and is suffering some growing pains.

Attendance goes through good and bad cycles. “We have pretty small audiences these days,” Sweeney, 40, says forthrightly but with heaviness in his voice.

“We’re breaking even, barely,” he adds. “And over the last couple of months, not. We’re just keeping our heads above water.”

A key to improvement, Sweeney says, is to spread the word--in part, through better marketing--about just what Acme is.

Its shows consist entirely of scripted sketches, as opposed to those at the Groundlings or the L.A. Connection, where sketches mix with scenes improvised from audience suggestions. Venues for stand-up comedy--such as the Improv or the Comedy Store--are different animals entirely.

As for the humor, “Anything is fair game,” Sweeney says. Sketches often play off current events, and Acme has earned a reputation for character work. Each show features an array of endearingly goofy types: hard-luck lounge singers, loud drunks, rebellious club kids and clueless people of all stripes. “Acme Senseless,” for instance, revisits Cinderella’s marriage ball, where her sexually frustrated stepsisters--frightful creatures with gaping teeth, ratty hair and god-awful dresses--call out lewd invitations to every man who happens past (a sighting of “Prince Adequate” gets them particularly excited).

Acme members write their own sketches, individually or in teams, and select others to fill out any remaining parts. The sketches are developed in workshops, the less successful ones culled away until, out of an average sampling of 80 sketches, about 20 remain.

Workshops begin eight to 10 weeks into each show’s run, and new material is substituted into the lineup piece by piece. Each show runs about 4 1/2 months, though by the end, it begins to look a lot like the upcoming show.

“There’s a real sense of wanting the other person to succeed onstage; there’s a real spirit of generosity,” says Carolyn Hennesy, who has been with Acme for nearly four years. “We get excited when we see something good coming from each other,” agrees Stefane Zamorano, who has also been with Acme for about four years, “instead of that competitive feeling: ‘Why didn’t I think of that?’ ”

Sweeney has directed all of the A-company shows and many of the others, honing the sketches and serving as the final arbiter of what stays and what goes.

Several of Acme’s current members trained with the Groundlings and worked as far through the ranks as its second-tier Sunday company. Sweeney, too, has roots in that group.

As an aspiring film director, he moved here from Ohio in 1980. Soon, he began dabbling in improv as a member of the L.A. Connection, where he met his mate, Sherri Stoner, now a screenwriter (co-author of the feature films “Casper” and the upcoming “My Favorite Martian”).

When Stoner moved on to study and perform with the Groundlings, Sweeney took to hanging around there too. Though he never studied or performed with the Groundlings, he was voted onto its governing board and served for about a year in the late ‘80s. Once he began to think seriously about the idea of launching his own sketch comedy troupe, however, he bowed out.

“I got to see the ins and the outs of the operation, and got to know all those people,” he recalls. “I really respected what they were doing, and thought it was of as high a quality as I’ve seen anywhere. I saw the opportunity there and felt that maybe I could tap into something like that.”

Pulling together a group of friends, mostly from the Connection, he set up shop at the Two Roads Theatre in Studio City in the spring of 1990, then established a home in a converted storefront on Lankershim Boulevard in North Hollywood. After going by a couple of aliases, the troupe finally became Acme, a name long associated with comedy as the supply house for all of cartoon villain Wile E. Coyote’s ill-fated devices.

In early ‘95, the group moved into its present home, a custom-designed 99-seat theater on La Brea Avenue.

Meanwhile, Acme--like the Groundlings--had opened a school to teach improvisational and sketch comedy skills. As the company grew on Lankershim, Sweeney realized that a school--with its tuition income--could be a profit center that would help underwrite the larger operation. Cynthia Szigeti, who had run the Groundlings’ school for about six years in the late ‘80s, signed on to run it. It now has about 120 students.

Since opening in 1994, the school has become a training ground for Acme. Students can audition for performance slots, and open auditions for nonstudents are held once a year. Everyone starts in the B company and tries to graduate to A.

Collins New, an aspiring actress, happened to catch an Acme show and became so enthused that she signed up for classes. “I just thought their sketches were really clever,” she says. “I’ve always been focused on drama, but since I saw the show here, I’ve totally dived into comedy.”

Sweeney doesn’t expect every audience member to be won over so easily, but he’s determined to build viewership, one person at a time.

“It’s always been tough,” he says. But “I’m not crying here,” he adds. “We have to pay our dues; we have to earn it.”

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“ACME SENSELESS,” Acme Comedy Theatre, 135 N. La Brea Ave. Dates: Fridays and Saturdays, 8 p.m. Ends Dec. 19. Price: $14. Phone: (213) 525-0202. Also, “I Know What You Did Last Sunday Show.” Sundays, 7:30 p.m. Ends Nov. 1. $12.