Big talent, small garage: Welcome to the Garage for the Performing Arts

The audience filtered up the driveway on a sweltering Saturday, lugging their lawn chairs.

The overhead door was up. It was showtime at the Garage for the Performing Arts.

Every now and then, whenever she feels like it, comedian, writer and actor Mary Jo Pehl invites friends to her home in the north metro to perform or enjoy the show in her one-car garage.

On the tiny stage inside — built by her father and backed by a strip of faux brick from Menard’s — performers can test out new material and new comedians can face a friendly audience. Sometimes Pehl’s RiffTrax and Mystery Science Theater 3000 co-stars drop by. Sometimes it’s the guy with the musical gargling act.

Big talent. Small garage.

“It’s a good place for me to try out new material,” said Pehl, whose shows are invitation-only through her social media. Once the invitation is offered, directions to her home follow. “It’s different when you’re on your feet and onstage, even a little, silly stage in a garage.”

The stage got its start during the COVID-19 pandemic, when Pehl moved in with her woodworker father for a few months during lockdown. One day a shipment of supplies arrived, wrapped in fake brick packing material. It reminded her of the comedy clubs of the 1980s and ‘90s. She asked him to save it for her.

Not long after she moved back into her own place, her father showed up with the ersatz brick wall and his latest woodworking project — the tiny stage.

“I’ve always been kind of a ‘Let’s put a show on somewhere’ kind of person,” Pehl said, who began inviting friends to perform in the garage three years ago.

“Maybe ‘inviting’ is too strong a word. I really leaned on my friends to come and do whatever they want to do, whether it’s reading from a new book that they’ve written, or standup ... We’ve had musicians. It just sort of went from there.”

Shaming those of us whose garages produce nothing but spiders, the audience on Saturday at the Garage for the Performing Arts overflowed onto the driveway, where folks in the back rows leaned forward to listen as performers stepped up to the mic.

“It is the sweetest thing in the world to watch people hustle up my little driveway with their chairs,” Pehl said. “They’re so excited and they are so open for whatever happens. I don’t know what I expected, but it’s been really rewarding.”

The first to step up was Jeff Baenen, who mined his long career as an Associated Press reporter for material for his new adventure in standup —from the time he scored an invite to Tiny Tim’s third wedding, to his interviews with Garrison Keillor and Neil Gaiman before their fall, and with former stripper Diablo Cody before she won her Oscar.

“What makes a good story to read, makes a good story to tell,” Baenen said. Even the stroke he recovered from last year gave him stand-up material.

“It was a really natural progression and I had no fear of being in front of a crowd,” he said. “And this is a really friendly crowd.”

Saturday’s lineup included some of the funniest people in the Twin Cities. Brandi Brown, Ari Hoptman, Sam Landman, channeling an increasingly unhinged Paul Stanley on a KISS reunion tour (“Whazzup, St. Petersburg?”)

Bill Corbett, writer, riffer, comedian and sometime voice of MST3K’s Crow T. Robot, tried out some new material. There was a performance by musician, poet and producer Leslie Ball, who launched her own experimental stage, Balls Cabaret, in 1991.

All acts you’d pay a lot more to see than the Garage for the Performing Arts’ $5 suggested donation. The money gets divided among the performers by Pehl, who knows what it’s like to be asked to work for free. This way, her friends at least get some gas money for the drive home.

“After the show, people mill around and they talk to the performers and they talk to each other,” Pehl said. “They pack up their chairs and they’ll be standing in the driveway for a long time, just connecting.”

And once the crowd disperses, Mary Jo Pehl takes the shortest commute in show business: “I get to walk down the hall, right into my house.”