For some in the Twin Cities comedy scene, the very idea of a boot camp for comedians was hilarious -- and not in a good way.

Sure, you might persuade aspiring stand-up comics to lay down $400, naysayers said, but you can't teach someone to be funny. Stand Up Boot Camp was after something more, however, and its organizers got 58 hopeful comedians to take the gamble last weekend.

At this three-day boot camp in Minneapolis, the line between psychotherapy and humor was razor-thin.

But what do you expect when Louie Anderson is in charge?

Inside Acme Comedy Co. -- and before a crowd of strangers -- the comedians were asked to share some of their darkest experiences. A former pizza delivery man told his fellow comics about surviving an alcohol addiction that landed him in intensive care. A middle-aged guy talked quietly but with conviction about his fight with diabetes. Onstage, a young woman revealed the source of her humor: a father who parented by angry diatribe.

“I’m 19, unemployed and pregnant. My ex-boyfriend’s not happy about the baby — but the guy who got me pregnant was.”

Those words come from the mouth of a 20-year-old woman named Katie Wood. She’s standing before a room of strangers, revealing dark truths about herself — including the fact that up until she learned of her pregnancy, she had been casually using marijuana and cocaine for the past couple years.

She then evokes gasps by admitting she still takes “a few puffs on about five cigarettes a day. If my baby’s craving it, who am I to deny it?”

You might think that Katie was speaking to a support group before a circle of fellow single moms and drug users. Actually, she’s standing, microphone in hand, on the elaborately decorated, beach-themed stage of the Jon Lovitz Comedy Club at Universal CityWalk, learning how to turn her personal pain into big laughs as part of the Kyle Cease Comedy Boot Camp.

Cease is one of comedy’s fastest-rising stars, having beaten out even mega-selling monolith Dane Cook last year to win the “Comedy Central Standup Showdown,” in which fans voted for their favorite comic. He’s parlayed that into becoming a frequent presence on the network — his special, “Weirder. Blacker. Dimpler,” has become the channel’s most-played standup performance and led to the taping of a second one-hour special this week in his hometown of Seattle.

I have also come here, both as a reporter and as a 13-year part-time professional comic, to hone my skills and see what all the hype was about.

In Katie’s case, Cease isn’t trying to exploit her by prodding her to reveal her innermost self. He’s trying to get her (and everyone else he teaches in his intensive five-day, 60-hour camp) to break down their personal walls and reveal who they really are — in a (hopefully) funny way.