The Long Read: Beloved Bristol comedy club The Room Above announces closure

The Long Read: Beloved Bristol comedy club The Room Above announces closure

Posted on: 12 Sep 2024

Located at The White Bear, The Room Above have been serving Bristol with laughs for eight years, but this week the team behind the venue have announced its imminent closure.

 

The Room Above’s final shows will take place on Friday 13 (with MC Greg Winfield, James Tricky, Burt Williamson, and Ollie Horn) and Saturday 14 September (with MC Harry Allmark, Kathryn Higgins, Amy Webber, Jonny Pelham). Do not fret, the team have plenty of future plans – read on for some history, highs and lows, and details of what’s next!

 

For information regarding these plans and re-branding, visit The Bristol Comedy Club website.

The Room Above Theatre was established in 2016 by a group of uni theatre students who turned The White Bear into a performance venue. In 2019, Harry Allmark and a couple of friends put on their first independent comedy events and the following year Harry officially took over as the venue’s Artistic Director.

 

This was not the best time to start an arts venue with Covid hitting and Harry was forced to move back home. As the pandemic eased, he returned to Bristol eager to continue, however, most contacts, friends and performers had left and Harry found himself sleeping on the floor of the theatre, working minimum wage jobs, without a programme.

 

Finally, over two years since the first performance, The Room Above was up and running with a monthly comedy show from Alex Kitson and an internal sketch troupe – which became ‘Got Legs’. The hard times returned the next year due to pub ownership issues as well as the demanding workload for such a small operation.

The club has since developed from one or two shows a month to seven nights a week dedicated comedy space. It became a trusted tour stop-off and won Chortle’s ‘Best Pro Night’, selling out 80% of shows. It was at this time, though, that capacity was cut in half due to fire regulations, giving just a week's notice to move summer shows.

 

Finding different venues at the last minute was hard and the summer period was a struggle, the killer blow came when they were informed that from September, they could only perform shows on Saturdays to allow student events. So, attentions turn to the future and a dedicated full-time fringe comedy club.

 

Harry has had plenty of ups and downs at the venue. Highlights have been watching the Bristol scene and dear friends develop as performers as well as a downing a pint to Guinness promised to a student in front of him onstage, a lowlight was reading a Google review that read: “Harry Allmark was a boring man, with nothing funny to say”.

The venue’s hard-working Artistic Director and Resident MC is keen to celebrate The Room Above’s incredible team, all the past MCs and the events team, also thanking “the amount of friends I’ve thrown in the deep end who have come to watch, perform or just hang out with me while I’m working and I’ve had to check tickets or doing lights.”

 

It’s important to stress this is not the end of the road and the team is dedicated to bringing the best comedy to Bristol. Their weekend club, ‘Bristol Comedy Cave’, is taking over Basement 45 and they are also producing gigs at The Granary, The Langton, The Robin Hood and Folk House, as well as planning a Bristol Comedy Festival for next year.

 

All this will fall under the umbrella ‘The Bristol Comedy Club’. Speaking about this, Harry says: “We’ll always keep the city laughing and we’re looking forward to entering this new chapter. As sad as it is to see our first big project close, it’s a reminder to how far we’ve come and where we’re going. We look forward to making everyone laugh for years to come.”

All information regarding upcoming shows can be found on The Bristol Comedy Club website.

 

The final two comedy shows at The Room Above will take place this Friday 13 and Saturday 14 September 2024. Visit the venue website here.

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Article by:

Stanley Gray

Stan is a born and bred Bristolian, recently graduated from studying English Literature in Sheffield. His passions are music and literature and he spends the majority of his time in venues all over the city, immersing himself in Bristol’s alternative music scene. A lifelong Bristol City fan, Stan’s Saturdays are spent watching his team both home and away.