Some playwrights want to be the next Chekhov or Albee. Matt Lyle, 29, just wants to be the guy who writes the plays that make you laugh out loud. He's been doing that for the past few years in his role as resident playwright and founding artistic director of tiny Bootstraps Comedy Theater. With actress-wife Kim as his muse, Lyle experiments with styles and subjects in his writing. Sunny & Eddie Sitting in a Tree, which premiered at the Festival of Independent Theatres in 2006, was a Woody Allen-style farce about neurotics who meet in their therapist's office. Then, inspired by the early films of Charlie Chaplin and Buster Keaton, he pounded out The Boxer, an homage to the precisely choreographed physical comedy bits of the great silents. An audience fave at this year's FIT, the dialogue-free play starred Kim as a Chaplinesque heroine in baggy pants. In 40 minutes of wordless storytelling, The Boxer turned snickers into guffaws into knee-pounding belly laughs and left audiences ga-ga with admiration for Lyle's talent as a writer of a comedy that felt both classic and fresh. A day job at Dallas Children's Theater keeps Lyle's rent paid. And maybe it also keeps the kid in him from growing up and getting serious too soon.
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