Seventeen Sets in the Lab, Deon Cole Spends November at the Hollywood Improv

Deon Cole is moving into the small room on Melrose for the whole of November. The Hollywood Improv has booked Cole’s show Does This Work? for 17 performances in The Lab, the club’s side room, across 13 nights from Sunday, November 1, to Monday, November 30. Velvet also covered Four Nights on Melrose, Chelsea Handler Settles Into the Hollywood Improv.

The title says plenty about what to expect, which is a comedian with a long résumé testing material in front of a room close enough to hear every laugh land or miss. The Improv lists every date as a special event, and tickets start at $24.19.

Sundays and Mondays carry the run. The Sunday shows start at 9 p.m., with an extra 7 p.m. show on November 8. Mondays bring 9:30 p.m. sets, and on November 2, 16 and 23 Cole doubles up with an earlier show at half past seven. He also takes three midweek nights, a Thursday on November 5 at 9:30 p.m., a Tuesday on November 10 at 9:30 p.m. and a Wednesday on November 11 at 8:30 p.m.

The club’s biography runs long. Cole played Charlie on ABC’s Black-ish and Freeform’s Grown-ish, and the Improv notes that he won the NAACP Image Award for outstanding supporting actor in a comedy series three years running for Black-ish. He played Alfonso in Amblin and Warner Bros.’ The Color Purple, and as a writer for Conan O’Brien he earned three WGA Award nominations for Conan. His most recent Netflix hour, Charleen’s Boy, drew an NAACP nomination.

He arrives fresh off a second season of Average Joe, the action comedy in which he plays Joe Washington. Deadline reported that the eight-episode season was set to premiere on Paramount+ on Wednesday, August 19, and would send Joe and his crew to Cape Town, South Africa. The series moved to Paramount+ after BET+ shut down.

The Improv does not honor third-party tickets, and the name on each ticket must match the ID presented at the door on Melrose Avenue.