E-Mail This Article to a Friend Eye for laughs Rick Jenkins minds the store BY TED DROZDOWSKI

Rick Jenkins spent his lunch break from a job at a bookstore setting up tables and chairs at the Comedy Studio on the day the Harvard Square club opened. That night, he raced straight from work to the venue, where his then-partners had finished preparing for the first show, and went directly onto the stage.

"There were about six people in the audience and the light was in my eyes when I started talking to them," he recounts. "I said, ‘Where are you from?’

"A voice said, ‘Buffalo.’

"Oh, I’m from Buffalo. Whereabouts?"

"The voice said, ‘The east side.’

"I said, ‘Me, too.’ I didn’t realize, with the light in my eyes, that I was doing crowd work with my father, who’d driven from Buffalo to see me open up this club on the third floor of a Chinese restaurant."

Nine years after opening night, Jenkins and the diverse cast of comics who play the studio — they range from newcomers to established headliners like Tony V and D.J. Hazard, or visitors like Jimmy Tingle testing new material — entertain plenty of strangers. So far this year, the room has sold out every Friday and Saturday night, and the Comedy Studio enjoys a national reputation as a proving ground for new talent that’s drawn scouts from network television and launched the careers of such rising stars as Eugene Mirman and Brendon Small.

Building even a local reputation for the Studio was a challenge. When Jenkins’s partners quit, he became the sole proprietor and booking agent and publicist and set-up and break-down man. When each weekend’s comedy show is over, he still has to put away the tables and chairs and the space, above the Hong Kong Restaurant in Harvard Square, reverts to a dance club. And he’s never had a budget for advertising. So chalk the Comedy Studio’s success up to Jenkins’s ear for funny.

"The value of just hanging in there shouldn’t be underestimated," he adds. But truly it’s Jenkins’s mix of guru and scout and his generosity with stage time for comics with potential that’s made his space an important laugh center. "I tend to focus on people who are writing clever things. Part of the difficulty in that is putting aside your own prejudices and really seeing what each comedian does well. Good comedians will bring personality to the stage. When people start doing comedy, they tend to mimic their favorite comedians, so I see a lot of Mitch Hedbergs. But the good ones grow out of it and find themselves."

Jenkins caught comedy fever in Buffalo at age 18 and soon after had a job spinning humorists’ records on a public-radio station. He also wrote jokes and submitted them to the likes of Rodney Dangerfield and Joan Rivers. "When I’d get a check in the mail for $25, I was ecstatic. I thought of myself as a writer for other people, in the Woody Allen, Neil Simon, Mel Brooks mold, but the craft was changing. It was more about writing your own stuff. It became more personal."

Eventually he was cajoled onto the stage by a friend. "He pointed out that even if I sucked for five minutes, I’d get in free and have to pay only a dollar for beers. I said, ‘I’ll try it.’ "

After several years of performing in Buffalo, Jenkins left the Hot Wing City for Boston. The day he arrived, he was on stage, and he played a mix of clubs and colleges until the circuit began to dry up in the mid ’90s, when he took that bookstore job to supplement his declining comedy income. "Before that, there had been a kind of golden era, when there was really a lot of stage time available so you could develop your act. Then comedy clubs started disappearing. There were just too many, I think, and not enough good comedians around, so there were a lot of lame shows and people stopped going out. I realized once I started to headline that there was something wrong with the scene. I’m not that good. Most of the people who start out now are light years ahead of where I was after a decade. They understand the language; they’ve been studying other comedians for years.

"When I take a hard look at it, I’m more of a comedy fan than a comedian. That’s part of why it works when I host. I’m happy to be part of this community. With every single show, I look at the line-up and think, ‘This could be the best show we’ve ever had.’ I really have that level of excitement every time. And on Mondays, my only night off, I’m usually at Jimmy Tingle’s or the Comedy Connection watching the open mikes. Being here six nights a week is a big commitment and indicates my lack of a personal life, but I’m in love with comedy clubs and there’s nothing I’d rather be doing."

For reservations at the Comedy Studio, call (617) 661-6507; for line-ups, visit www.thecomedystudio.com