Capitalism: The Game Show - A Comedy Competition Where GDP Meets LOL
You’ve heard of Wheel of Fortune, The Price Is Right and Who Wants to Be A Millionaire. All beloved game shows based on one principal: having a lot of money and stuff is great and makes your life better. But none of these televised cash grabs really get at the heart of what makes our society tick. So we at The Midnight Gardeners League, the world’s only comedy secret society that’s entirely open to the public, decided to create a live comedy competition that truly articulates the crushing struggle at the heart of American culture to snatch whatever you can.
It’s “Capitalism: The Game Show!” Along with their normal sets, stand-up comedians will be forced to put their money where their mouths are, facing a series of improv games based on every stage of Western civilization. From bartering with the audience for whatever’s in their pockets like medieval peasants or riffing an explanation for why child labor during the Industrial Revolution was totally cool, this game covers it all!
Presented by The Midnight Gardeners League, the world’s first ever comedic secret society that’s completely open to the public! We craft uniquely-themed, 90 minute shows, combining stand-up, sketch, multimedia, improv & other weird fun to create a comedy experience unlike any other. Anyone who attends a show can be entertained for a night, and a member for life! Some of the previous shows we’ve done include “Wrong Answers Only” – a comedy trivia show you can only win by being incorrect, “Pitch A Movie” – where stand-ups create movie premises on the fly based on their jokes, “Laugh Quest” – an audience driven choose-your-own-adventure style journey through a gonzo comedic fantasy world, “A Night of Fine Dining” – a smorgasbord of food-themed characters and sketches, and “The Soft Rock Hall of Fame” – an evening honoring one of the most influential smooth rockin’ bands to never exist. We’ve been performing together since 2017, and have been regularly selling out shows at the DC Improv Comedy Club since 2019. We’ve also taken our act on the road to the Brooklyn Comedy Collective and Cobra Club in Brooklyn, NY, The Glendale Room in Glendale, CA, Pittsburgh’s Unplanned Comedy Warehouse, Cleveland’s Imposters Theater, the Portland Maine Comedy Festival (2018), DC’s Laugh Index Theater Festival (2019), NYC SketchFest (2019), the Seattle Sketch Fest (2020), Roanoke Comedy Festival (2021), Red Eye Comedy Fest in Morgantown, WV (2022) and Akron, Ohio’s Rubber City Comedy Festival (2022).
We were also finalists for Washington City Paper’s Best Comedians of 2022. You can read all about us in this awesome write-up from District Fray Magazine! Follow us @midnightgardeners on IG and @12amgardeners on Twitter.
