Though the Pajama Men have practiced improv for more than a decade, they still get stuck.
"There's always something," said Mark Chavez, one of the Pajama Men. "That's what improv is, though. Whenever something weird happens, something strange or something you didn't expect happens, you just consider that a gift in improv. It could go anywhere."
Before Chavez and Shenoah Allen became the Pajama Men, the comedy duo got its start performing in La Cueva High School's improv company.
"So, we were like two of the six (actors), and we performed for the officers' wives' club at Kirtland Air Force Base," Chavez said. "It was the most unsavory, bad show you would ever want to do for an officers' wives' club. That little improv company never performed again. That's how we met."
The Pajama Men performed a sold-out show Saturday at The Stove, an art and performance space at 114 Morningside Drive N.E.
After high school, the two started performing improv bits in a variety show at the Reptilian Lounge at 1024 Fourth St. S.W.
Get content from The Daily Lobo delivered to your inbox
"We would do a little cliff-hanger at the end (of each show) and be like, 'Tune in next week,'" Chavez said. "Then we wouldn't even address the cliff-hanger we started. After a while, we would actually write a show about what we were doing."
In the past 14 years, the duo has gone from performing shows at the Reptilian Lounge to touring the United States, Canada and the U.K.
They perform with the Second City, a Chicago theater troupe and production company that was once the home of John Candy, Eugene Levy and Martin Short.
"The thing that sells what we do is how we work together," Chavez said. "It's our chemistry. It's our ability to know what each other is thinking and sort of go from that. When you work with somebody for a long time, it's like that. We're like brothers. We've grown up together in this weird way. We each have a similar history."
The Stove owner Thomas Haag said the Pajama Men first performed at his venue in September.
"It was a blast," he said. "We sold out. We had to turn away 40 people at the door."
After that, they decided to come back for a series of performances, Haag said.
"They're really raw," he said. "They do things real improv, spur of the moment."
The Pajama Men closed the show with a skit where they pretended to be a two-headed monster that knows everything and answers questions from the audience. They drape their arms around each other and slowly speak the same words simultaneously.
Kiko Sanchez attended the performance Saturday. He said he had never been to an improv show.
"I thought it was really funny," he said. "I liked everything. The thing at the end was really cool, the two- headed monster. It was something I had never seen before."
In their 14 years practicing improv, the most unexpected event happened at a sold-out show in Vancouver, Chavez said.
Shenoah played a 14-year-old girl who was running back and forth on and off stage crying.
"The thing was that we wear pajamas in our scripted shows, and he wasn't wearing underwear," Chavez said. "So, his penis fell out of the flap of his pants."
Chavez said no one in the audience noticed.
"We probably should have done a whole song and dance about it," he said. "There was a half hour to go on the show, and we probably could have made the rest of the show about it - but we didn't."
The Pajama Men
The Stove
114 Morningside Drive N.E.
Saturdays
8:30 p.m.
Through Feb. 16
