Technology puts stand-up greats on a comedy club stage

It could be the best comedy club in the world, featuring the likes of Bob Hope, George Carlin and Rodney Dangerfield all on one bill…

A new tourist attraction is set to bring some of history’s greatest stand-ups back from the dead – in hologram form.

They will ‘perform’ at a specially-built comedy club inside the National Comedy Center, set to be opened in the States next year.

The project’s chairman Tom Benson described it as ‘a comedy club where folks can go back in time and witness a classic routine in a setting – God knows where it might have been – and experience that as if they were really there.’

A company called Hologram USA is woking on the project, having created virtual versions of Liberace and Buddy Holly for stage shows, and even a holographic Julian Assange, so he could be interviewed on stage in Nantucket from his hideout at the Ecuadorian Embassy in London.

Two years ago, Les Dawson was recreated as a 3D hologram for a posthumous Audience With… show for ITV by the UK company Musion.

Benson told the New York Times that his venue in Jamestown, New York State, would feature about a dozen five-minute routines – but said that his line-up has not been announced as he was still in talks with the estates of the comedians he wanted to feature.

The centre is Lucille Ball’s hometown, and an expansion of the existing Lucille Ball-Desi Arnaz Museum - but Benson said it would have a much broader focus.

Published: 7 May 2015