The Auburn area has never been known to have much of a comedy scene. Over the last year or so, there is a group of comedians that have been attempting to change that. Clayburn Cox, Anthony Dannar, Rivers Langley and Ryan Oliver are a few of those comedians.

Dannar was involved with Auburn University UPC’s Last Comic Standing and met fellow comedian Martin Morrow.

“I already knew Martin, but that’s where I kind of really got to know him. We were like ‘hey, we should put together a comedy show,’ Dannar said. “We put on a comedy show at The Gnu’s Room and it went pretty well and we’ve been doing it ever since.”

Morrow has since moved on to Chicago, but Dannar has put together comedy shows at the Ale House, Zazu and more since.

Dannar said in the beginning it was tough to find a venue for the comedians.

“When I first started pitching it to places, there were a lot of questions asked and a lot of stipulations,” Dannar said. “We got a lot of no’s, but you’ve got to find places that are excited about it. When the show happens, after it they’re really excited about it. I think when people actually see what we can bring they’re really happy with it.”

After finding the venues, Dannar said the process of putting a show together is still tough, but has proved to be worth the time and effort.

“It’s hard to get a comedy show together. It really is,” Dannar said. “It takes a lot of work and talking to people who slam doors in your faces. But when you actually get a show together it’s worth it.”

The guys have performed at several restaurants, such as Zazu, and such locations have turned out to be the perfect venue.

“The people that come to the place and don’t realize there is a show ... I love that,” Dannar said. “They don’t leave; they stay because it’s a great show. I think that’s a great compliment when people don’t know there is a comedy show, but they stick around.”

Langley added that restaurants are ideal because the venue needs to be a place where the audience knows what it’s getting into when they walk in the door.
“You need people who are at least half way paying attention,” he said.

Dannar will host the next local comedy show, the Tiger FM Comedy Show, at Zazu this Thursday, Dec. 8, at 9 p.m.

Langley has also begun putting together comedy shows at the Big Blue Bagel. The shows, titled "Bellwether Variety Show," also include music and takes place the second Tuesday of each month at 9 p.m. The next show will take place on Tuesday, Dec. 13. For more on the show, visit bellwethervariety.com.

Check out more about some of these local comedians:

Clayburn Cox

Cox, 32, moved to Auburn from Ragland, Ala., to obtain his degree in Graphic Design and now teaches Graphic Design at Auburn High School. Cox tells his students a funny “story of the day” each day.

“The high school kids liked that better than they liked my teaching,” Cox said. “I liked it better too. So, I thought I’d try it onstage.”

Cox’s first show was a performance at AK’s Coffee in Opelika. He has since performed at The Gnu’s Room, Zazu, Arizona State University, Kansas University and more. He recently won the 2011 Clean Comedy Challenge in Ohio.

Cox has a dry, quirky and clean comedy style that some say is similar to comedian Steven Wright.

“I’ve always enjoyed sucking the salt off of sunflower seeds,” Cox has said in his standup. “So I was very upset when someone else in my class got voted most likely to succeed.”

Cox said some of his comedic influences are Jerry Seinfeld and Bill Cosby.

“It’s quirky and incredibly clever I would say,” Cox said of his style of comedy. “We’ll go with genius.”

He said he enjoys the instant gratification of comedy.

“It’s rewarding to hear people laugh, it’s like mission accomplished,” he said. “Basically, it’s really addictive. Like, literally you’ll stay up all night to wait your turn to try to make people laugh. Your palms are sweaty and you get nervous, but it’s like a thrill, it’s like a rush.”

Cox said he has plans to pursue comedy as much as possible while still teaching high school.

“The second I can retire I want to do comedy full time,” he said.

Even on a bad night, Cox said comedy is always fun.

“On a bad night it leaves a bad taste in your mouth,” he said. “But in one way or another you want to do it again.”

To hear some of Cox's comedy, visit clayburncoxcomedy.com.

Anthony Dannar

Dannar, 28, moved to Auburn from Alexandria, Va., to study communications. He said he discovered his love for comedy in high school.

“I guess I’ve always been kind of a goofball,” he said. “In high school we did the morning news and I used to do it, but I’d make funny videos instead of serious videos. I kept doing that over and over again and people actually found out who I was.”

Dannar has been the host of “The Anti-Show Show” on The Tiger 93.9, broadcasted from 10 a.m. until 2 p.m. weekdays, for that last three years. He said he tries to make the show as funny as possible, often poking fun at current events and bands such as Coldplay.

“They’re just so easy to make fun of,” Dannar said of the band. “Plus he named his daughter Apple.”

Dannar has brought his sense of humor to the stage and said he enjoys the instant gratification that he doesn’t get in radio.

“On radio, you tell a joke and you’re like, ‘I have no idea if that was funny or not,’ ” he said. “I do like knowing if a joke is funny or not right off the bat.”

In his standup Dannar talks a lot about pop culture and current events. In a recent show Dannar talked about the controversy over an online video game called “Tea -Party Zombies,” in which the player kills zombies who resemble famous Fox News correspondents.

“It's silly because the people on Fox News aren’t mindless zombies,” Dannar said. “The people who watch Fox News are.”

Some of Dannar’s comedic influences include Louis C.K., Daniel Tosh and Conan O’Brien, whom his is regularly compared to.

Dannar said he enjoys the joke process.

“I like waking up and thinking of something funny and then writing it down and then rewriting it and then trying it out on people,” he said. “Then trying it out on stage, getting a reaction, and then trying it out again. I love that whole process.”

Dannar said he also enjoys the marketing aspect of comedy, which Cox said he’s good at.

“All of us like to do comedy, but only Anthony gets together all the shows all the time,” Cox said. "He’s real good at it and he brings in people.”

Cox said he enjoys getting people together, especially other comedians, which he does on a regular basis on his Internet show, "The Square Round Table." The show is available at spreecast.com.

“It’s like a webcam show,” he said. “We have four guys on a webcam and we talk about current events and make jokes. It’s a lot of fun.”

Dannar has performed throughout Auburn and also in Birmingham, Atlanta and Phenix City.

“I plan to do comedy as long as I can,” he said.

Rivers Langley

Langley, 25, is an Auburn native who graduated from Auburn High School and Auburn University.

Langley said in junior high he was a fan of “The Tom Green Show” and enjoyed the set up of the show. At the age of 13, Langley said he was at a crucial junction in his life.

“All my friends had BMX bikes and I’d just ride my regular old K-Mart bike,” Langley said. “For my birthday I really wanted a BMX bike, but I also really wanted a camcorder.”

His mother said he had to choose.

“I’m as athletic right now as I’ve ever been in my life because I was a fat little kid too,” he said. “So, I was like, ‘You know what, I’m not going to be able to dirt jump bikes. I’m going to get a camcorder and film all my friends wrecking on their bikes.’ ”

Those films later turned into funny stunts and sketches with Langley and his friends.

“I really enjoyed making people laugh,” he said. “I can’t really fight, I’m kinda ugly and I’m fat. So, that’s pretty much all I have. That’s the way to make your life worth living … is to make people laugh.”

Langley attended a comedy show Dannar hosted at the Olde Auburn Ale House earlier this year. He later asked Dannar if he could have five minutes on stage at the next event. He performed at the next show in March.

Langley said he got a few laughs at his first show and was hooked.

“It went alright enough to where I got two or three laughs. Once you get that, the hook goes in,” he said. “If you just bomb your entire show and just get one chuckle, the rest of you life is going to be dedicated to just destroying that one room.”

Langley tells stories onstage and said he is usually the punch line of his own joke.

“A lot of my comedy is just stories that I’ve told a million times to my friends that I can kind of broaden out and give greater meaning,” he said. “I work to bring people into my own crazy head.”

Langley said his comedic influences include Bill Hicks, Patton Oswalt and Louis C.K. He said he’s been watching comedians like Georg Carlin his whole life.

“My dad is from New York City and went to Catholic School his whole life and is now an atheist as a result,” he said. “So, I’ve been raised on George Carlin my entire life. I was hearing the seven dirty words you can’t say on TV when I was 5 or 6.”

Langley said to him stand-up comedy is an extreme rush, in which he is usually intoxicated.

“I don’t normally drink when I’m off stage. I’m pretty much sober all the time, but when I get onstage I just get raging drunk,” he said. “I like to maintain a certain level of control in my life, but if I’m going to be on stage it’s already a surreal experience. You may as well take it all the way up. I don’t drink socially, I drink antisocially.”

Langley has performed throughout Auburn and has also performed in Birmingham, Athens, Atlanta, Mississippi and more. He said he plans to continue pursuing comedy as long as he can.

“I’ve been working in a kitchen since I was 15-years-old,” he said. “I gave up on making money about halfway through my English degree, so I am perfectly content to work s*#t jobs for the rest of my life if it means I get to do this.”

Ryan Oliver

Oliver, 26, was born in Crawfordsville, Indiana, and moved to Birmingham, Ala., in high school, in which he was part of the drama department.

“The first time I stepped out on stage and made up some line that wasn’t even in the script, because I never went by the script and told the teacher that. The first time that I went out and said something that I wanted to say and got a huge laugh for it, you know I’m making 300 plus kids laugh, I was like, ‘OK, this is what I want to do. I want to be on a stage making people laugh,’ ” he said.

Oliver, who said he’s been writing jokes since he was 12 years old, performed his first stand-up show in Tuscaloosa and said, like Langley, he got extremely drunk.

“I don’t know if I got a laugh or not,” he said.

After that night Oliver said he decided he can’t drink before going onstage.

“I can’t be all messed up when I’m up on stage,” he sadi. “Rivers was saying he gets drunk only on stage, it’s kinda the opposite for me. I’m usually just drunk all the time and when I get up onstage I’m like, ‘Alright, sober up,’ ”.

Oliver described his style of comedy as conversational and said he believes some of his best material is just reacting to the crowd.

“I think some of the best stuff that I do is when I’m just going off on people in the crowd,” he said. “I like to do improve a lot and try to be quick. It doesn’t always work out, but when it does it’s really, really rewarding.”

In a recent performance Ryan, a heavy smoker, said he has named his lungs Flavor Flav and Dikembe Mutombo. He also did an impression of Smigel from “The Lord of the Rings,” as a female giving birth.

Ryan said there isn’t anything he doesn’t enjoy about comedy.

“The not enjoying anything, that doesn’t really exist for me. I don’t really think it would exist for anybody that’s really serious because you wouldn’t keep doing it,” he said. “If you have a bad set you could be bummed out about it and it brings you down, but that’s just more reason to get up and try to kill ‘em next time.”

Oliver said his biggest influence in comedic style and delivery is David Cross. Other influences include Richard Prior, Bill Hicks and George Carlin.

Oliver has also performed throughout Auburn and Tuscaloosa, Birmingham and Atlanta.

“It’s a bug. Once you get bit you can’t stop,” Oliver said. “I’m just going to try and get better and better and try to take it to the next level.”