When Marshall Chiles first began performing stand-up in Atlanta in the mid-’90s, the only thing he found more difficult than nailing a joke was finding a comedy club in the city that would allow him to tell one.
“You had Wednesday nights at the Punchline, which was impossible to get on, and if you were a white comedian, if you went to open mics uptown, they would put you on basically because it would be like feeding meat on to the lions,” he said. “I was so desperate for stage time that I would go to karaoke bars and try to perform material I wrote on the napkins.”
A Georgia native and comic, it was those experiences as a young performer that led Chiles to establish The Laughing Skull Lounge, a comedy club located in Midtown designed to offer comedic talent in Atlanta an opportunity to perform, network and most importantly, make a room full of clubgoers laugh.
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