The stage is pitch black.

Two male voices with staged British accents call out to each other in a clumsy game of Marco Polo until one voice proposes a twist: Marco Polio. Quickly they tire of that, and the game becomes Polio Polio. After a pause, a voice deadpans, “Nobody wins in Polio Polio.”

And so begins “Stop Not Going,” with seasoned comics Mark Chavez and Shenoah Allen. Their touring collection of quirky sketch comedy just hit the Storefront Theater. The high school friends from Albuquerque, N.M., go by the umbrella name “The Pajama Men,” donning blue striped pajamas as they transition seamlessly from portrayals of a baby-eating mother to a space creature to a whiny teenage girl to mustachioed cowboys. 

The pair is also working with NBC to get their own television show, which Chavez said would feature them as a cast of characters – though more subdued personalities than the ones featured in “Stop Not Going” – in a small town setting.

“There are a lot of hoops to jump through [with NBC],” Chavez said in an interview after the show. “But I’m confident we’ll get something.”

Private parts
Talking to the real Chavez and Allen can be as chaotic and hilarious as trying to keep up with their constant barrage of changing characters on stage.

“Mark just landed in my arms,” Allen joked about their first encounter. “Fell out of the sky and landed in my arms! My mama kicked me out of the house.”

In truth, the two friends began by “spending a lot of our time not being ourselves,” Allen said. “We’re always taking on other characters; we joined an improv company right out of high school and started putting on sketches and it was total nonsense.”

Over the phone from their hotel in Logan Square, Chavez and Allen’s voices blend together, save for the occasional deep tenor Chavez jokingly dips into. When an embarrassing anecdote is shared, the men bat back and forth as to whom it actually happened to – particularly regarding an unfortunate wardrobe malfunction when one of the comic’s private parts slipped out of his signature pajamas on stage.

“We were performing in Vancouver and I was running around,” Allen confessed. Audiences will be relieved to hear he's worn underwear under the pajamas ever since.

Chavez also shared two incidents when one of the men have had to suddenly use the bathroom mid-performance, leaving the other to improvise and cover until his partner’s return.

Getting it right
Improvisation plays a key role in “Stop Not Going,” though Chavez said the structure and organization of each show is the same.

“We want it to be different every night,” he said. “If it’s a great show, a lot of it’s improvised. When the show opened awhile back, it was totally different – different jokes. Things that don’t work fall out [of the routine].”

The characters Chavez and Allen portray are well thought out and perfected in every detail, from facial expressions to posture to the voices. They must be based on people they know, right?

Not always. Not exactly.

“As we live our lives, we come across many different people,” Chavez said, changing his voice to sound like a cheesy soap opera narrator. “We’ll have a character pop out and then we realize, hey, it’s like my stepdad, or something. Once you have a good character with a good voice and a good soul, it takes on a life of its own.”

But the comics can be partial to certain sketches.

“I love [all the characters]. They’re like my children!” Chavez said.

And what’s the story behind the pajamas?

“We wanted something that wouldn’t be very distracting,” Chavez said. “We wanted a neutral garment that we could change from one character to the next.”

With underwear underneath, of course.

“Stop Not Going” starring The Pajama Men is at the Storefront Theater, 66 E. Randolph, through August 19. Show times: 7:30 p.m. Wednesdays-Fridays, 7:30 p.m. and 9:30 p.m. Saturdays, 3 p.m. on Sundays. Tickets are $20, $15 for students and seniors, and can be purchased at the Storefront Theater box office, by phone (312-742-8497) or online ( www.dcatheater.org ).