A new comedy club will open in the basement of the Charles Playhouse this fall. The club, called Lil Chuck, will continue a comedy tradition of nearly 50 years in that space.

“It’s a historic venue, first and foremost,” said Norm Laviolette, who will run the club together with John Tobin. The two operate a series of comedy and improv shows in the city, including Laugh Boston and Improv Asylum. “It’s been a performance venue for probably 50 years, if not longer. It’s literally the first comedy club ever in Boston, so it’s got a lot of connections to what we do.”

The Charles Playhouse was originally built as a church, but its basement became a comedy club in 1978. Soon after, the space played host to “Shear Madness,” an interactive “whodunit” play that ran for nearly 40 years. When the show closed in March of 2020, Tobin and Laviolette got in touch with Broadway in Boston, the company which owns the space.

“The Charles Playhouse is a wonderful asset that they have there,” Tobin said. “The appreciation we have for that, and what’s come before us. We’re going to treat it with extra care, so that when you go into the Lil Chuck, you’re going to have a real special experience.”

Since Lil Chuck is first and foremost a theater space, Tobin and Laviolette are taking a more theatrical approach to comedy. Their first show is slated as “[expletive]-Faced Shakespeare,” in which the lead actor in a traditional Shakespearean play gets increasingly drunk as the night goes on.

“While stand-up comedy is at the core, there’s all kinds of other things,” Tobin said. “You might see a podcast in there.

You might see some sort of theatrical show. You might see a YouTube star, or a drag show. Lil Chuck presents us a real unique opportunity, in that it’s a theater. It was made for comedy performances and for theatrical performances.”

The name of the club, “Lil Chuck,” comes from an old nickname given to the basement room by staff at the Playhouse.

“The people inside the building would often refer to the downstairs theater as the Little Chuck,” Laviolette said. “You have the Charles, which is the big place, so downstairs is the little one. We said, ‘Let’s keep it right in house.’ It’s a cute and funny name, and it’s one that everybody remembers.”

The space can hold 199 people, and previews begin on October 3. The opening night of the first show is one week later, on October 10. In the meantime, Tobin and Laviolette are finishing minor cosmetic renovations to the bar, restrooms, and actor green rooms.

“It’s going to be spectacular,” Tobin said.

“When things are going well, people want to laugh. When things are going bad, people need to laugh. That’s what we do. It is kind of fitting that the Charles Playhouse was originally a church. Comedy shows are very much a communal experience.”