BATSU! NYC

The show is a live comedy night with dinner in the East Village. It is built on the Japanese batsu game, a style of comedy in which performers take on challenges and the losers pay a penalty. The Japanese word means penalty game. Four comedians compete in each performance, and the punishments include electric shocks, paintballs and a giant chicken that smashes eggs.

Face Off Unlimited, a New York City improv comedy company, produces it. It is an open-ended run rather than a limited engagement, and it has been going since January 2011, apart from a pandemic closure. The four performers change from night to night, so no two evenings play out the same way. Some audience members volunteer to join the challenges.

There is no theater lobby. Guests come in by a door concealed in a mural on East 4th Street and pass the Kogame kitchen on the way to the show room, which is styled after the yokocho, the small side alleys of Tokyo. Early in the evening, dancers and performance artists entertain the room while guests eat and drink. The competition follows.

Sushi and sake are part of the night. Kogame, a restaurant from the Chicago restaurant Kamehachi, runs the menu, and guests order from it themselves. A character called the Sake Shinobi pours random cups of sake for guests who wear a hachimaki, a Japanese headband that signals effort or courage. The headband comes with the premium seating tier and can also be bought separately. The company says the sake is not unlimited. Premium guests also get a hostess in a kimono and an oshibori hand towel on arrival.

Sake bombs are for the early part of the show. Once the game is under way, the company asks guests to drop the sake into the beer quietly.

The idea began in 2010, when the owner of Jebon Sushi & Noodle, a restaurant at 15 St. Marks Place, asked Face Off Unlimited to stage a show in its lower level. The group settled on an in-person Japanese-style game show built on batsu comedy. Noriko Sato was hired on the first day of auditions and helped shape the format. A sold-out invited performance took place on December 6, 2010, and the show opened its doors to the public on January 10, 2011. Whit Baldwin came aboard during the first year, and Brian Walters took over as host later in 2011.

In January 2019 the New York show moved to its current space at Kogame, then called WARA. The pandemic closed it in March 2020, and it reopened in 2022. A sister production opened in Old Town, Chicago, in June 2016, and in 2017 the company signed with Metropolis Management and formed a touring arm.