Comedy confessional

A man writes letters to his pregnant wife’s in utero fetus -- and receives detailed epistles in return. A woman juggles bright orange balls, bouncing them off her various body parts while talking about love. Then there’s the testosterone-driven band Speld Badlee singing a gender-bending ditty about “my vagina.”

It’s a typically raucous night at Sit ‘n’ Spin, which overlaps “Dr. Phil” confessional qualities with the outrageous edge of “South Park.” At the biweekly event, people in the comedy biz read first-person confessional monologues, bookended by live music.

Produced by Jill Soloway and Maggie Rowe, in conjunction with Comedy Central at the network’s Comedy Central Stage (at the Hudson Theatre in Hollywood), Sit ‘n’ Spin has been running to packed houses on alternate Thursdays for three years.

“It’s a really comfortable way to find your writer’s voice, and there’s no agenda,” says Soloway, a writer and supervising producer on the HBO series “Six Feet Under.” “When you’re ready, you can get up and share. It’s sort of 12-steppy, with a town hall feeling.”

Yeah -- but a town hall that’s less a John Kerry coffee-and-doughnut powwow than a Larry Flynt gold-wheelchair soiree. Rowe, a 32-year-old writer and TV actress, sums it up this way: “It’s people telling sad, dirty, embarrassing things about themselves.”

Nobody ever said comedy was pretty, but for Chicago-born Soloway, it’s been a Cinderella-like ride: In the early ‘90s, she and her sister, Faith Soloway, produced the hit stage show “The Real Live Brady Bunch,” which landed in Los Angeles in 1992. Shortly thereafter, Soloway moved to Los Angeles to try her hand writing sitcoms.

She eventually scored, penning for “The Steve Harvey Show” in 1996, followed by WB’s “Nikki” in 2000. The money was there, but the voice, she says, wasn’t hers. In 2000, Soloway began producing Box, an evening of women reading their own material at the now-defunct HBO Workspace.

But she still wasn’t ready to expose herself to an audience. So Soloway asked a friend to perform a first-person monologue she’d written about one of Courteney Cox’s private parts.

“I wanted to be safe and let it come out of her mouth,” Soloway, 38, recalls of Becky Thyer’s reading. “It got laughs and gave me so much confidence I wrote another piece, which I did read.” She submitted the Cox piece to a small literary journal; her agent, meanwhile, sent it to Alan Ball, creator of “Six Feet Under.” Soloway was hired to write for the show, she says, based solely on that piece, which was also published in “Best American Erotica 2003.”

Meantime, word spread about the chicks at Box (also briefly called Blow), and men wanted in. Thus it evolved into Sit ‘n’ Spin.

“The name,” Soloway explains, “comes from the idea that you sit on stage and spin a yarn. It’s fun, and you catch people in a risk moment -- actors who’ve never written before, and writers because they’ve never been on stage.”

Gary Mann, executive producer of both Comedy Central programming and the Stage, says that Sit, which is videotaped, is an ongoing discovery process for the network. “It’s a wonderful cross-section of creative people, that even in our greatest week of meetings, we wouldn’t have the opportunity to exchange ideas with. Our goal is to hear what they have to say. Secondly,” adds Mann, “we’re looking for opportunities to take what’s on stage and further develop it.”

There are 12 to 16 different shows a month (including Sit) at the 99-seat Comedy Central Stage. And although a TV show hasn’t yet emerged from the Thursday-night tell-alls, two productions first presented at the venue, “The Hollow Men” and “Crossballs,” are now on the cable channel’s slate.

Mann, though, leaves the hands-on producing of Sit ‘n’ Spin to Soloway and Rowe, who receive 10 submissions weekly for consideration. “The thing we look for,” says Rowe, who hooked up with Soloway by reading at Box and became a co-producer in 2002, “are that they’re super personal -- talking about stuff you would never want to talk to anyone about, but for some reason you do.”

Five writers are chosen based on material of no more than 1,200 words -- about eight minutes when read aloud.

It’s perfect therapy for the emotional exhibitionist. Each week there’s a batch of confessional newbies who might talk about a date of Mephistophelean horror or bizarre-o jobs. For instance, in her piece “Lube Warning,” Ali Davis discussed how often she had to wash her hands after handling returned videocassettes at an adult video store.

There are repeat confessionalists, too, like retired cantor Gary Shapiro of Beverly Hills. Shapiro, in addition to performing with five-man band Speld Badlee, has read a dozen times at Sit. Currently a religious consultant for “Six Feet Under” and “Seventh Heaven,” Shapiro has obviously found his voice. “It’s an awesome form that allows writers and performers to push the envelope of performance art and get their new material heard by our local comedy community.”

And forget about taboos, because there are none. “Part of the attraction,” Soloway says with a note of anarchic glee, “is that anything might happen and anything can happen.”

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Sit ‘n’ Spin

Where: Comedy Central Stage at the Hudson Theatre, 6539 Santa Monica Blvd., Hollywood

When: Tonight and alternate Thursdays,

8 p.m.

Cost: Free; reservations required

Contact: (323) 960-5519