DeRosa (center, with brewer Ben Schnurle, left, and hospitality lead Michael Baker) began offering improv classes and performances at the former Townies Brewery in February. Now they’re serving Schnurle’s brews and “upscale carnival food” like smashburgers, Belgian frites, and corn dogs. | Photo by J. Adrian Wylie
For the name of his new brewpub and improv comedy venue, Tony DeRosa laughed off ChatGPT’s suggestion—Brewhaha—in favor of hear.say brewing + theater.
It plays on a suggestion useful in improv and beyond: “Listen before you speak.” He was also intrigued by the notion of turning around a negative connotation: “Hearsay is legally impermissible evidence, right? You can’t introduce hearsay in court, but then I thought about this stage, and actually a lot of what we do in theater is bringing to life the things you’ve heard, characters that maybe somebody told you about or you saw secondhand.”
Having acquired the westside real estate (originally a glass repair shop) and seven-barrel brewing system of the former Townies Brewery, DeRosa began offering improv classes and performances in February. He’s now ready to open the brewpub, which operates separately from the ticketed shows. Outside the theater room are the taphouse, a front patio with firepit tables and heated seating, a beer garden for yard games and live music, and their food truck kitchen serving what he describes as “upscale carnival food,” including smashburgers, chicken tenders, Belgian frites, and corn dogs.
His head brewer is Ben Schnurle, formerly of Oxford’s One Drop Brewing Company. Schnurle says his craft microbrewery “met its untimely demise” in the wake of a divorce, so he’s glad to resume his “quality through purity” approach to Kölsch styles and West Coast IPAs, among others. All the base malts come from Germany’s Weyermann, in part to avoid hops grown using the herbicide glyphosate, Schnurle says.
DeRosa earned his MBA from U-M and worked for Google and YouTube, but he decided the time was right for a “put all your life savings into this thing and let’s go for it moment.” His wife, Lauren Wozniak, whom he met in Teach For America, is now a Michigan Medicine physician.
Inspired by former area establishments Pointless Brewery & Theatre and Ypsi’s Cultivate Coffee & Tap House, as well as thriving community hubs including York and HOMES Campus, DeRosa is aiming to create both a destination for improv and sketch comedy and a hangout that welcomes “nerdy and creative events” that capture an “intrinsically playful” Ann Arbor ethos.
Related: Pointless Improv
“There are these businesses that just feel very much like part of the fabric of the town,” he says. “It’ll take some time, but I hope that after a year or two people really would look at this place that way.”
hear.say brewing + theater, 2350 W. Liberty. (734) 506–8441. Wed. & Thurs. 3–10 p.m., Fri. 3–11 p.m., Sat. noon–11 p.m., Sun. noon–10 p.m. Closed Mon. & Tues. heardotsay.com
