National Comedy Centre to bring back famous historical comedians - as holograms

Teaming up with Hologram USA, the venue hopes to present a wide roster of expired comedic greats

A hologram of Tupac Shakur performing with Snoop Dogg (Christopher Polk/Getty Images)

For most comedians, being pelted by objects while on stage would be a problem but many of the performers at a new comedy club in upstate New York won’t be offended at such treatment – because they will be a hologram.

The National Comedy Centre, set to open in Jamestown, is aiming to bring back famous comedians from a number of different eras to reprise classic routines, meaning visitors will be able to watch someone they missed, or weren’t yet born to see, seemingly reducing the likelihood of any rotten-fruit treatment or heckling.

More than a club, the centre, which is set to open in summer 2016, will be something closer to a museum of America’s comedy heritage, with multiple exhibits and interactive attractions. But it is the dead-comic showcase, that is likely to draw the crowds.

Teaming up with the California-based Hologram USA, the venue – sited in the city where Lucille Ball was born – hopes to present a wide roster of expired comedic greats. Ghost names on the marquee could include everyone from Joan Rivers, who died last year, to George Carlin, Bob Hope, Rodney Dangerfield and Milton Berle.

According to Malachi Livermore, its programme manager, the technology is so advanced that visitors will barely be able to see that what they are seeing is a confection created by 20 invisible projectors. The stage, scenery and even the cocktail tables that they will be sitting at will all contribute to the comedy club illusion.

Unlike some of the stationary holograms that have started to pop up at airports and train stations greeting travellers, these figures will be moving around the stage as they do their routines.

Mr Livermore also foresees having flesh-and-blood comedians joining the holograms on stage, in what will be double acts of the living and the dead. It could get even weirder still.

The late Tupac Shakur at Coachella making virtual appearance (Getty Images)

If a living-and-breathing comedian can’t get to Jamestown, which lies south of Buffalo near Lake Erie, it will be possible to beam them in hologram form into the venue. Welcome to a double-hologram-dead-alive comedy routine. It could be a programmer’s dream. Lucille Ball and Tina Fey on stage at the same time, bringing the house down? Apparently, that could happen.

“We will be able to have a real-life person on stage with a hologram,” Mr Livermore confirmed.

“It’s really hard to tell the difference between the real person and the hologram.” But then Ms Fey could be a hologram too if Jamestown is not in her travel plans.

Hologram USA has some experience pulling this kind of thing off. It beamed Jimmy Kimmel – a living comedian – on to the stage of the Country Music Awards in Nashville last year.

It has also resurrected (sort of) Tupac Shakur for a rap performance with Snoop Dogg at the 2012 Coachella music festival in California. Bringing legends of American comedy back to the stage will be something new for them, however.

“Of all the amazing things we’ve done with hologram technology, this is one of the most exciting,” said Alki David, the chief executive officer at Hologram USA. “And I can’t think of a better way to experience America’s comedy greats than in the live setting in which they thrived when at their peaks.”

The museum – construction of which will, hopefully, start this August – will negotiate with the estates of each of the dead comedians for the rights to use archived footage of their acts and transform it into hologram performances which, typically, will last four to five minutes. Mr Livermore confirmed that rights have been secured for at least one comedy legend but he wasn’t free to say which one yet.

It helps that Jamestown already has plenty of goodwill in the world of comedy. It has two attractions dedicated to Lucille Ball and each summer comedians from all over country converge on Jamestown to perform in its annual Lucille Comedy Festival. Among those billed to appear this year is Jerry Seinfeld. Also expected are Melissa Rivers, the daughter of Joan, and Kelly Carlin, daughter of George Carlin.

Both may be asked to give permission for their deceased parents to make Jamestown comebacks.