After 5 years, a final curtain call at Jimmy Tingle's

After five years and roughly 200 different shows, Jimmy Tingle's Off Broadway is closing up shop at the end of the month. Jim Morris's "Presidential Follies of 2008" and Tingle's new one-man show, "Jimmy Tingle for President," will run through Oct. 28, after which the venue will close.

Tingle made his final decision last week not to renew his lease. Though finances were a consideration, Tingle says the theater was not going under, and his desire to concentrate on performing and writing had as much to do with it. Running his own theater gave him the advantage of crafting a space to his needs and gave him an intimate, 200-seat black box in which to work.

But Tingle eventually realized there weren't enough hours in a day for him to devote to being both a theater manager and a comedian. He can't even quantify the time he put in.

"It's like asking someone how much time do you put into your family," he says. "It's always there, it's always on your mind. Even when you're out of town, you're thinking about things that need to be done or should be done or getting phone calls or executive decisions that need to be made."

The Off Broadway hosted noteworthy shows, including a political-comedy festival in 2004 that included everyone from Lewis Black and Janeane Garofalo to Mort Sahl, Barry Crimmins's farewell show earlier this year, and an evening with former UN weapons inspector Scott Ritter that ran nearly four hours as Ritter went back and forth with the audience.

Tingle wants to keep producing, performing, and writing and plans to bring his "Jimmy Tingle for President" show to a different venue, but he hasn't had time to work out the details yet.

"I'm not going to be probably working immediately in November, but I don't know," he says. "I'm going to be doing the show on and off for the next year. We'll see what happens."

NICK A. ZAINO III