Rick Jenkins, a comedian and businessman, has owned the Comedy Studio, a comedy club near Harvard University, since 1994. In the days following the terrorist attacks, he wasn't sure how comedians – or audiences – would react.

	I realized that the comedians in the area are my family.

The club wasn't open the night of the attacks, but by the week's end local comedians had gathered in the small club.

When it came to taking the stage, no one knew what to expect. At first, Mr. Jenkins says, comedians ignored the attacks. "For the first few weeks, it was usually acknowledged at the beginning [of a set], and maybe something said at the end. But that was it," he says.

But eventually, Taliban jokes began. "More and more material started coming out about [9/11]. And they really became the bigger laughs," he says. "The more tense people are about something, the more they want to talk about it and the more they want to laugh about it."

And the audiences were grateful.

"We got a lot of people right after 9/11 coming up afterward saying 'Thank you so much, I really needed a laugh,' " Jenkins says.

A lasting effect of Sept. 11 can be seen in the fact that many comedians adjusted their routines. Bits about airplane food were out. As were jokes about cops and doughnuts. And Jenkins wasn't sorry to see them go.

"Humor should be more complex," he said. "It should take different points of view. It shouldn't be a knee-jerk reaction. A lot of comedians naturally go toward finding a target and making fun of that target. 9/11 made it a lot more difficult to do that."

In the end, however, Jenkins says many jokes just took a vacation. "The jokes about Bush and the Republicans took a vacation, but they've come back. We've got corporate fraud, a war on terror, and men are still different from women. I think we'll have no trouble finding things to joke about."

– Michele Babineau, photo by Stuart S. Cox Jr.