My Best Friend Is Black comedy troupe with Arlieta Hall, Daryn Robinson, Chloe Mikala, Mike Atcherson and Marcus Banks

Chicago is bursting with Black comedic talent, building on a legacy that goes back decades and launched the careers of the legendary Bernie Mac as well as current stars like Lil Rel Howery. And for the past three years, the troupe My Best Friend Is Black has made waves on today’s comedy scene, with monthly variety shows that combine stand-up, improv, sketches, music and audience-interactive game shows on the stage of the city’s premier independent comedy venue, the Lincoln Lodge.

Their December extravaganza will bring a holiday-centered focus to the fun on December 19. Co-founder Marcus Banks says that the group has always loved to draw inspiration from the biggest celebrations of the year. As he gears up for the big night, he explains how the magic first came together.

“Mike Atcherson and I, around the summer of 2021, were at an open mic and decided we just wanted to curate our own unique Black space, where everyone could feel comfortable and be free to be their full selves,” he recalls. “We wanted to have all kinds of Black performers—quirky Black people, queer Black people. Demonstrating that we aren’t a monolith was really our motivation.

“And Mike is action-oriented, so we met up a couple days later and recruited the rest of the group. My original idea was to have an all-Black stand-up showcase on a monthly basis. Mike’s idea was to have it be a variety show, and that’s what it turned into.”

The group came together quickly, as Banks and fellow performers Chloe Mikala and Rho Hudson were already working together on a popular local video program, “Late Night with Nate,” that arose amid lockdown to amass a solid following.

My Best Friend Is Black performs

Seeking a group that would have equal numbers of males and females along with queer representation, he and Atcherson invited Mikala and Hudson to join them, along with initial fifth member Justin Walker—who brought a strong network of connections to the South Side comedy world. Mikala, meanwhile, leans strongly into her lesbian identity for her material, drawing an ever-growing fanbase to the shows from the LGBTQ community.

When Hudson moved on to Nevada, they recruited Arlieta Hall—a member of the Bob Curry Showcase at Second City “who does it all—improv, stand-up, acting, writing” with a “raw energy” honed while growing up in South Holland. The final key ingredient came with Daryn Robinson, a “musical comedian” who is the “complete opposite’ of Hall since she “talks Caucasian” and has audiences roaring with seemingly off-the-cuff mini-medleys, original satiric songs that “always kill.”

The collective’s shows run ninety minutes to two hours, and kick off with stand-up from two or three of the group’s members along with ten-minute sets by three or four other top Black local talents. The original plan was to focus on stand-up with just one variety act, but Robinson quickly added her musical spark. When the group had trouble finding variety acts, they wound up inventing a wild series of games and sketches and added them to the proceedings.

“Mike made a game centered around Black movie quotes, and we’ve had a Power Point-based game at our shows since then. We always have a game because it crushed so well. The crowd loved it and it was the best part of the show that night,” explains Banks. “Now we have a template of stand-up, game in the middle, improv somewhere in there. So our template is centered around those things. We mix and match based on who our guest performers are.

“Daryn’s songs are a big part of the variety, like during tax season, her song’s ending punch line was that she was trying to fool someone into giving her their social security number. Another song was called ‘Magical Negro,’ which centers around the Magical Negro trope in movies. Just silly concepts that she turns into songs and it crushes every time.”

Banks’ favorite sketch came in a February show tied to Valentine’s Day and Black History Month, in which the troupe played the game “Fuck, Marry, Kill” using civil rights leaders like Rosa Parks and Martin Luther King Jr.

“It was Justin’s idea and we made it Tinder-based and made a Tinder profile for each Black History Month figure and had their profile filled with jokes,” Banks says. “Justin would host the game and then have the guest audience member decide if they wanted to swipe right or swipe left. They had MLK, and then he came out from the audience. Then Coretta Scott King came out and was like, ‘Martin, you cheating on me again!’ We had Chloe play that character.

“That’s one of my favorites because you had every element to it. There’s the participation component, it was a really strong punch line, characters, and stuff like that. So I really enjoyed that one.”

My Best Friend Is Black comedy troupe performs

Banks notes that the group’s sketches aren’t often political, with the stand-up sets usually being “evergreen,” but with one regular feature being that jokes tie into the spirit of the season. The June shows tie into Juneteenth, “which brings Black-centered stuff and has some inherent social issues. We typically center our comedy around the period of time. And we’ll take a stab at some problematic celebrities. We don’t force it, we only do it if it’s funny and organic.”

“One time we had a show two days after Emmett Till’s accuser died, and we announced it and then had a dance party for two minutes. We don’t endorse a candidate or tell you who to vote for, though we make it clear we are not for Trump. We just don’t shove a candidate down people’s throats.”

While Banks says that everyone is welcome at their shows, the audience is eighty percent Black and largely composed of Black Millennials, including women and “definitely a lot of queer folks.” He notes that the current five-member lineup of three women and two men “reminds us we have to be steadfast in our inclusion of every Black comedian, not just shows for dudes produced by a bunch of dudes. Our gender balance definitely helps us write and maintain balanced shows too.”

The troupe hopes that the live shows are the start of a broader comedy empire, as they plan to develop fresh content for their internet presence and have a studio, podcasts and its own intellectual property modeled on other breakout Black troupes like 85 South.

“We want ‘My Best Friend is Black’ to be the work that we do for a living, essentially. That process takes intention, and takes prioritization, requires communication and accountability to each other,” says Banks. “We’ve learned to hear everyone out and listen to each other and maintain as much balance in the group as possible so that everybody’s voice is heard.”

My Best Friend Is Black performs from 8-10pm, Thursday, December 19 at the Lincoln Lodge, 2040 North Milwaukee, Chicago. Tickets are $15. Visit mybestfriendisblackshow.com.