Ryan Traughber interrupted a Tuesday interview so he could counsel a stand-up comedian who was having a particularly rough day.

The comedian was scheduled to perform at a benefit show to help a friend who had taken ill, said Traughber, the driving force behind the local stand-up comedy promoter Bend Comedy. But the event’s organizers decided to cancel their show four weeks ago and didn’t tell the comedian about it until last week.

“People cancel shows all the time,” Traughber said as he listened to his friend and assured him that everything would be all right despite this setback. “Don’t worry — you did nothing wrong.”

When he hung up the phone, Traughber admitted that when he first saw the comedian’s number flash across his caller ID, he thought his friend was having problems promoting or organizing a show and needed some last-minute help.

But when he realized that wasn’t the case, Traughber said he felt “a little choked up” that his friend called to talk about something that was bothering him.

“If somebody has some sort of emotional issue, they can talk to me about it,” Traughber said, noting this was especially pertinent given the previous night’s discovery of comedian Robin Williams’ apparent suicide. “I kind of like that.”

Building on his four years of success and failure in the world of stand-up comedy, Traughber and one of his friends founded Bend Comedy last year after they organized a successful event that pulled more than 20 Central Oregon comedians out of the woodwork. Their group has since grown into a powerhouse that organizes at least five live comedy events each month and promises to give any would-be comic in town a chance to hone his craft (see “If you go”).

Getting on stage

Traughber uses one word to describe the first time he tried stand-up comedy: horrific.

Traughber said he was working as a media production assistant in Portland when he decided to step up on the stage during an open mic night four years ago. He told a few jokes he had written himself and a few jokes he stole from other comedians — and noticed that not a single person had laughed.

Not at his jokes, not at the jokes someone else had written, not even once.

He totally bombed that night. “You can come off the stage thinking you can change the world or you can come off the stage wanting to kill yourself,” Traughber said as he described the mixture of emotions — both good and bad — that run through a comedian’s head when he gets up to perform. He said many comedians are in therapy for this very reason.

Not letting this setback get to him, Traughber continued pursuing his desire to be a successful stand-up comic and spent his free time studying the craft, writing his own material and testing it two or three different open mic performances each month.

“I’ve been doing this for four years and I just now have 45 minutes (of material),” Traughber said, explaining he’s finally at a point where he could perform a show and be certain at least half the people in the audience will laugh at his jokes.

Traughber has also learned his way around the business side of stand-up comedy, a place where he seems to thrive, but has also miserably failed. He said this part of his comedy career started about two years ago when he moved to Pendleton and ran a radio show that featured interviews with professional comedians who were passing through town after performing at a local casino.

After running into a series of disagreements with the casino’s management, Traughber set out to open his own comedy club because he “realized how crappy the industry can be … (and wanted) to be the person who cares about comedians.”

Traughber said this venture went from being immediate success to a failure over the course of one spring and he had to close the club four months after it opened. He moved back to Bend, where he grew up, and took a job at Central Oregon Community College.

“I can tell you right now how NOT to run a comedy club,” Traughber said, explaining he learned as much about the world of stand-up comedy from this failure as he did through the years he spent honing his act.

Building the scene

When he moved back to town, Traughber got to know a lot of the performers in this area — including Kenny Gosner, a local comedian who helped Traughber form Bend Comedy — and used these connections to put on his own competition show “Last Comic Standing Bend.”

Running over the course of four nights in April and May 2013, Traughber’s competition pulled together 22 comics who performed in front of a five-judge panel. Each of these competitions packed their respective venues and inspired Traughber and Gosner to continue the competition’s momentum by forming Bend Comedy.

After about a year, Traughber said he has a stable of about 20 local comedians — five of whom are capable of doing a solid 20- to 60-minute set — who can take the stage whenever he holds a performance at the Summit Saloon or the Volcanic Theatre Pub.

The group also holds a weekly writing workshop and a comedy boot camp, where people who are interested in telling jokes can work with experienced comedians and learn what they need to put on a five-minute set.

He is also working with a group of COCC students who are interested in comedy and is helping them produce a sit-com based loosely on some of the events they encounter putting together their campus newspaper, The Broadside.

More important, Traughber said, each Thursday night performance at Summit Saloon features an open mic segment where people can take the stage and, just as he did, get a chance to figure out if stand-up comedy is something they want to pursue.

“I’m always encouraging people to try stand-up,” Traughber said, as he laid out what it takes to be a successful comedian. “The first step is wanting to do it, the second step is doing it and the third step is waiting it out. … There are comedians who have been doing this for 20 to 30 years and just got discovered.”

— Reporter: 541-617-7816, mmclean@bendbulletin.com