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      Trevor Moore, Co-Founder of ‘Whitest Kids U’Know’ Comedy Show, Dies at 41

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      The comedian, who released a solo album called “Drunk Texts to Myself” and whose films included “The Civil War on Drugs,” was killed in an unexplained accident.Trevor Moore, a comedian and co-founder of the popular sketch comedy show “The Whitest Kids U’Know,” which appeared on the Independent Film Channel, died on Saturday in Los Angeles. He was 41.His death was confirmed by the Los Angeles County medical examiner-coroner, who said that Mr. Moore had died in a yard on a residential block in the Franklin Hills section of the city, the same block where public records showed that he had lived.He was killed in an accident, according to a statement from his wife, Aimee Carlson, that was released by his manager, Kara Welker. The statement did not provide details of the accident, and Ms. Welker said she did not have additional information. The medical examiner’s office said it would conduct an autopsy.Mr. Moore released a solo comedy album, “Drunk Texts to Myself”; hosted a one-hour special on Comedy Central; and co-directed, co-wrote and starred in the films “Miss March” (2009) and “The Civil War on Drugs” (2011).But he is best known for his work on “Whitest Kids U’Know,” which ran for five seasons starting in 2007. Zany and wry, it sought to wring laughs out of thorny issues like police brutality, the war on drugs and student debt.One writer at the website Salon last year said the show “eerily foresaw the Trump era.” Other times, the show veered into the absurd. After going off the air, it developed a following online, and its YouTube channel has more than 100 million total views.Mr. Moore often rooted his comedy in terrain his audiences could recognize — a park with an old friend, a modern-day White House news conference — and injected each scenario with dizzying amounts of lunacy and humor.In one memorable sketch, a White House press secretary reveals more and more details about an unlikely turn of events on a secret United States space station on the moon that has been taken over by bears.“We believe they may be involved in some sort of intergallatic drug cartel, perhaps affiliated with one of the interstellar wizard alliances,” the press secretary deadpans. Stunned reporters try to absorb the shocking news when one finally asks, “You wouldn’t happen to be invading Iran today, would we?” The press secretary pauses, then smiles wryly and says, “You got me.”In 2019, Mr. Moore brought his idiosyncratic sensibilities to the talk show format, and began hosting “The Trevor Moore Show” on Comedy Central. Its early episodes had titles like “Achieving World Peace with Flat Earth Theory” and “Why is Everyone So Horny All the Time?”“See, the worst part about dying,” Mr. Moore said on the show in June, “is that you don’t get to hear all the nice things said about you after you’re gone.”Born on April 4, 1980, in Montclair, N.J., Mr. Moore was raised in Charlottesville, Va., by his parents, Mickey and Becki Moore, popular Christian rock singers, according to Vanity Fair and the website IMDb.At 16, Mr. Moore began creating weekly cartoons for local newspapers in Virginia, and by 19 he had written and produced a weekly sketch comedy program, “The Trevor Moore Show,” for local television stations, according to IMDb.Mr. Moore graduated with a degree in film from the School of Visual Arts in New York City. In 2010, he married Ms. Carlson. In addition to his wife and parents, Mr. Moore is survived by a 3-year-old son, August. He is also survived by a sister, Lila Haile.News of Mr. Moore’s death drew an outpouring of praise for the comedian from collaborators and admirers.On Instagram, the comedian James Adomian of IFC’s “Comedy Bang! Bang!” said Mr. Moore “was a magnetic friend to all, who thought everything was unstoppably hilarious no matter how scary or hopeless — this sardonic gallows humor was a beacon and a guide to me and many others in dark times.”Referring to two sketch comedy shows with strong cult followings, David Gallaher, who has written for Marvel and DC Comics, said on Twitter that Mr. Moore “blended the BEST of The State and Kids In The Hall to create something beautiful, subversive, and contemporary.”Neil Vigdor More

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      Chicago Improv Was Dead. Can New Leaders Revive It?

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      The past year left the city’s two most prominent institutions reeling. Now, outsiders are helping to guide the re-emergence of these celebrated comedy centers.CHICAGO — Fourteen months after iO Theater closed its doors because of the pandemic, a move that seemed temporary at the time, the storied improv center looked as though it had been frozen in time, the calendar stuck on March 2020.In front of one stage, chairs were arranged around small round tables covered with a layer of dust. A grocery list in a back room reminded employees to buy more olives and baked potatoes. In the hall, handwritten signs directed audience members where to line up for shows.“This hallway used to be so crowded that I’m sure it was a fire-code disaster,” Charna Halpern, the theater’s co-founder, said as she surveyed the barren corridor recently.In June 2020, Halpern decided that the hallway would stay empty. The theater’s income had plummeted to zero amid the shutdown, bills were piling up and nearly 40 years after she helped start iO, Halpern announced that she was ready to close it permanently.The theater wasn’t the only one in an existential crisis. That same month, performers of color there and at Second City — the two most prominent improv institutions in the city, where the modern version of the art form was born — spoke publicly about their experiences with racism, inequity and a persistent lack of diversity at the theaters.The space at iO Theater is left as it was in March 2020, when it shut down because of the pandemic.Lawrence Agyei for The New York TimesThen, less than a week apart, both iO and Second City were put up for sale, heightening anxiety among performers who were already worried about improv’s post-pandemic future. Could improv be saved in the city where aspiring comedians flock to learn and perform, as stars like Tina Fey, Stephen Colbert and Keegan-Michael Key had?The short answer is yes. Less than a year after the businesses went on the market, buyers who believe in Chicago improv stepped up. Both are industry newcomers: Second City is now owned by a New York-based private equity firm and iO by a pair of local real estate executives.Decades of history and cultural relevance are part of what made these theaters appealing acquisitions, but after calls for transformational change, a new era of leadership is now grappling with how much of the old improv culture they want to preserve and how much they are willing to give up. At iO, criticism of its lack of racial diversity and equity has gone unaddressed during the theater’s year of uncertainty. And although Second City is back with regular shows and a plan to transform itself into an antiracist company, there is some skepticism among performers and students that this effort at reform will be different than previous attempts (a diversity coordinator has been in place since at least 2002, for example, and a revue with a notably diverse cast ran in 2016, though all the performers of color quit before it was over).“We want it to be good; it’s our home,” said Rob Wilson, an improviser who has been in Chicago’s comedy scene for a decade. “You’re going to give them the benefit of the doubt, but you’re also not going to be afraid to leave if it goes south.”Second City’s New BeginningLast fall, when Jon Carr, an improv veteran, was named Second City’s new executive producer — the company’s top creative role — his peers asked him the same question: “Why did you take that job?”The 62-year-old institution had just been the subject of a deluge of complaints from performers of color, who told stories of being demeaned, marginalized, tokenized and cast aside. As a result, the chief executive and executive producer, Andrew Alexander, abruptly resigned that summer.Still, Carr decided to take the offer, making him the second Black executive producer in the company’s history. (The first was Anthony LeBlanc, who had served in the role on an interim basis after Alexander’s resignation.)Carr told the people who had asked about the job that despite the pressure and inevitable stress it would bring, it presented an opportunity to change a company whose leaders had already pledged to “tear it all down and begin again.”“This is the thing that people will be talking about 40, 50 years from now,” he said. “We have the opportunity to shape that history.”Parisa Jalili, Second City’s chief operating officer.Jermaine Jackson Jr. for The New York TimesJon Carr, Second City’s new executive producer, its top creative role.Jermaine Jackson Jr. for The New York TimesSitting in a booth at Second City’s restaurant in Old Town a week after the company reopened in May, Carr and Parisa Jalili, the chief operating officer who had been promoted amid the criticism, ticked off some of the steps the company had taken to meet the calls for change.It documented the complaints and hired a human-resources consulting firm to evaluate them; it re-evaluated the photos in the lobby extolling mainly white performers and labeled offensive sketches and jokes in its expansive archive; it put into writing what the company is looking for in auditions to try to prevent bias in the process.​​“We were able to do it all quickly because we were much smaller and more agile being shut down,” Jalili said.The company also had to ensure that it survived the pandemic. Online improv classes were made permanent, raising revenue by opening up the potential customer base to the entire globe, rather than to only those who could show up to their sites in Chicago, Hollywood and Toronto. Then, in February, Second City was acquired by a private equity group, ZMC.The deal made some performers even more skeptical that Second City could return better than before. What would it mean for the company to be owned by an investment firm with no track record in comedy?Jordan Turkewitz, a managing partner at ZMC, said in an interview that the firm’s role as an investor was not to dictate decisions or get involved in minutiae; it’s to ask questions, offer advice and financially support the company’s growth.iO Theater, ResurrectedSecond City is holding several live shows a week, but for iO, a reopening is much further out.Many employees are desperate to return, said Scott Gendell, a real estate executive who bought iO last month with his longtime friend Larry Weiner. But there is no clear reopening date on the horizon, he said.Right now, the new owners are taking it slow, interviewing operating partners who will help run the theater and control its creative side.“We’re being very delicate and very cautious about reopening because you don’t want to crash and burn,” Gendell said.Gendell is the type of lifelong Chicagoan who can’t stand seeing the city’s trademark businesses shut down (“I’m still ticked off that Marshall Field’s went away,” he said). When he heard that Halpern had put iO up for sale, he and Weiner decided to buy it to preserve what they view as an important cultural institution.But some performers are interested less in an iO preserved in amber from 2020 and more in an iO that embraces radical change when it comes to diversity.The new iO owners are searching for operating partners.Lawrence Agyei for The New York TimesFor now, the theater is dark.Lawrence Agyei for The New York TimesOn June 9, 2020, five improvisers who had taken classes or performed there posted a petition calling on the theater to address entrenched problems of institutional racism. They told The Chicago Tribune of “bungled or inadequate past efforts at diversity, an unwelcoming attitude to performers and students of color, and problematic behavior by staffers.”.css-1xzcza9{list-style-type:disc;padding-inline-start:1em;}.css-3btd0c{font-family:nyt-franklin,helvetica,arial,sans-serif;font-size:1rem;line-height:1.375rem;color:#333;margin-bottom:0.78125rem;}@media (min-width:740px){.css-3btd0c{font-size:1.0625rem;line-height:1.5rem;margin-bottom:0.9375rem;}}.css-3btd0c strong{font-weight:600;}.css-3btd0c em{font-style:italic;}.css-w739ur{margin:0 auto 5px;font-family:nyt-franklin,helvetica,arial,sans-serif;font-weight:700;font-size:1.125rem;line-height:1.3125rem;color:#121212;}#NYT_BELOW_MAIN_CONTENT_REGION .css-w739ur{font-family:nyt-cheltenham,georgia,’times new roman’,times,serif;font-weight:700;font-size:1.375rem;line-height:1.625rem;}@media (min-width:740px){#NYT_BELOW_MAIN_CONTENT_REGION .css-w739ur{font-size:1.6875rem;line-height:1.875rem;}}@media (min-width:740px){.css-w739ur{font-size:1.25rem;line-height:1.4375rem;}}.css-9s9ecg{margin-bottom:15px;}.css-16ed7iq{width:100%;display:-webkit-box;display:-webkit-flex;display:-ms-flexbox;display:flex;-webkit-align-items:center;-webkit-box-align:center;-ms-flex-align:center;align-items:center;-webkit-box-pack:center;-webkit-justify-content:center;-ms-flex-pack:center;justify-content:center;padding:10px 0;background-color:white;}.css-pmm6ed{display:-webkit-box;display:-webkit-flex;display:-ms-flexbox;display:flex;-webkit-align-items:center;-webkit-box-align:center;-ms-flex-align:center;align-items:center;}.css-pmm6ed > :not(:first-child){margin-left:5px;}.css-5gimkt{font-family:nyt-franklin,helvetica,arial,sans-serif;font-size:0.8125rem;font-weight:700;-webkit-letter-spacing:0.03em;-moz-letter-spacing:0.03em;-ms-letter-spacing:0.03em;letter-spacing:0.03em;text-transform:uppercase;color:#333;}.css-5gimkt:after{content:’Collapse’;}.css-rdoyk0{-webkit-transition:all 0.5s ease;transition:all 0.5s ease;-webkit-transform:rotate(180deg);-ms-transform:rotate(180deg);transform:rotate(180deg);}.css-eb027h{max-height:5000px;-webkit-transition:max-height 0.5s ease;transition:max-height 0.5s ease;}.css-6mllg9{-webkit-transition:all 0.5s ease;transition:all 0.5s ease;position:relative;opacity:0;}.css-6mllg9:before{content:”;background-image:linear-gradient(180deg,transparent,#ffffff);background-image:-webkit-linear-gradient(270deg,rgba(255,255,255,0),#ffffff);height:80px;width:100%;position:absolute;bottom:0px;pointer-events:none;}.css-1jiwgt1{display:-webkit-box;display:-webkit-flex;display:-ms-flexbox;display:flex;-webkit-box-pack:justify;-webkit-justify-content:space-between;-ms-flex-pack:justify;justify-content:space-between;margin-bottom:1.25rem;}.css-8o2i8v{display:-webkit-box;display:-webkit-flex;display:-ms-flexbox;display:flex;-webkit-flex-direction:column;-ms-flex-direction:column;flex-direction:column;-webkit-align-self:flex-end;-ms-flex-item-align:end;align-self:flex-end;}.css-8o2i8v p{margin-bottom:0;}.css-12vbvwq{background-color:white;border:1px solid #e2e2e2;width:calc(100% – 40px);max-width:600px;margin:1.5rem auto 1.9rem;padding:15px;box-sizing:border-box;}@media (min-width:740px){.css-12vbvwq{padding:20px;width:100%;}}.css-12vbvwq:focus{outline:1px solid #e2e2e2;}#NYT_BELOW_MAIN_CONTENT_REGION .css-12vbvwq{border:none;padding:10px 0 0;border-top:2px solid #121212;}.css-12vbvwq[data-truncated] .css-rdoyk0{-webkit-transform:rotate(0deg);-ms-transform:rotate(0deg);transform:rotate(0deg);}.css-12vbvwq[data-truncated] .css-eb027h{max-height:300px;overflow:hidden;-webkit-transition:none;transition:none;}.css-12vbvwq[data-truncated] .css-5gimkt:after{content:’See more’;}.css-12vbvwq[data-truncated] .css-6mllg9{opacity:1;}.css-1rh1sk1{margin:0 auto;overflow:hidden;}.css-1rh1sk1 strong{font-weight:700;}.css-1rh1sk1 em{font-style:italic;}.css-1rh1sk1 a{color:#326891;-webkit-text-decoration:underline;text-decoration:underline;text-underline-offset:1px;-webkit-text-decoration-thickness:1px;text-decoration-thickness:1px;-webkit-text-decoration-color:#ccd9e3;text-decoration-color:#ccd9e3;}.css-1rh1sk1 a:visited{color:#333;-webkit-text-decoration-color:#ccc;text-decoration-color:#ccc;}.css-1rh1sk1 a:hover{-webkit-text-decoration:none;text-decoration:none;}The five improvisers pledged not to perform at iO until its management met a series of demands, including hiring a diversity and inclusion coordinator.The next day, Halpern sent a note to the protesters offering a broad and earnest apology for the institution’s “failings.” But just over a week later, Halpern announced that iO was shutting down, frustrating performers who thought the theater was on the verge of substantial change. Halpern said the reason was the financial implications of the pandemic — not the protests.Gendell said he was not ready to outline a plan for addressing these concerns before they brought on an operating partner but said that they were searching for partners in “diverse communities.”“We’re fair-minded people, and I have confidence in my value system,” he said.Performers Choose Their Own PathsIf iO and Second City want to fix the problems that have plagued them for decades, both institutions will need to convince comedians of varied backgrounds that they are places worth returning to.In June 2020, as the stories of discrimination became public, Julia Morales, a Black Puerto Rican comedian who had performed at Second City and iO for years, thought to herself, “These theaters have really disappointed me. Do I want to go back to this?”Her answer was to create something new. She scrounged up less than $2,000 and started Stepping Stone Theater, a nonprofit that she imagined would focus more on supporting performers of color and less on the bottom line. It is one of a few new improv ventures that have sprung up in the city in the past year.So far, Morales has chosen to maintain some ties with Second City. In May, she was onstage improvising in the company’s first post-pandemic program, and next month, her group and Second City are collaborating on a show. Even though the theater had disappointed her, she said, she didn’t think the way forward was to shut it out.Others, like the comedians Shelby Wolstein and Nick Murhling, have left Chicago to find opportunities in Los Angeles or have given up on big comedy institutions altogether. And some who have chosen to stay are unconvinced that there has been substantial change.“I won’t trust it until I see it for myself,” said Kennedy Baldwin, who started last month in a Second City fellowship that offers tuition-free training to a diverse group of actors and improvisers.Second City is now holding several shows a week.Jermaine Jackson Jr. for The New York TimesAmong performers who are intent on seeing the institution change, it is crucial to diversify the audience as well, which tends to skew older and whiter. These performers aren’t thrilled with the new ticket pricing system, which Second City started testing shortly before the pandemic.The system, called dynamic ticket pricing, calculates prices based on the time of the show and number of tickets left. The cheapest tickets cost $25 each, but with growing interest in the return of live theater and lower-than-usual ticket inventory because of the pandemic, they can run much higher. This Saturday, tickets for the 7 p.m. shows are about $90 each.Some performers worry that raising ticket prices will help maintain the status quo.“How can I make this a show that makes people feel included and have an audience that reflects how we look?” asked Terrence Carey, a Second City performer who is Black.A spokeswoman for Second City, Colleen Fahey, said the ticket pricing model is helpful in allowing the company to recoup revenue after a 14-month shutdown. She added that customers still have access to cheaper tickets.At iO, Olivia Jackson, one of the creators of the petition, said she was eager to meet with the new owners to discuss the issues her group raised. After that, she would determine whether to return to iO. If she decided against it, she could always turn to one of the newer, scrappier operations.“There are so many insanely talented people in Chicago who really love improv,” she said. “Chicago improv will be OK.” More

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      Ashley Nicole Black Is Competing Against Herself for an Emmy

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      The comedian was nominated twice in the same Emmy category for her television writing. She’s just getting started.At first, Ashley Nicole Black didn’t get why people kept sending her the meme of Spider-Man pointing at an identical Spider-Man, an image often used to joke about situations in which two incredibly similar people face off.But when someone Photoshopped Ms. Black’s face onto both Spider-Mans, it clicked. The 2021 Emmy Awards nominations had just been announced, and Ms. Black, 36, had been nominated twice in the same category.She was competing against herself.Ms. Black was nominated for Outstanding Writing for a Variety Series for “The Amber Ruffin Show” and “A Black Lady Sketch Show.” Two other people have been nominated twice in this category in the past five years: John Mulaney and Seth Meyers, both in 2019.I CANT WITH YALL 🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣 https://t.co/YE7gBnqjw0— Ashley Nicole Black (@ashleyn1cole) July 14, 2021
      “I feel like that kid still, who’s on the side of the playground, who nobody’s noticed,” Ms. Black said in a recent video interview. But that’s just impostor syndrome talking. Ms. Black has been nominated for an Emmy eight times: twice for writing for a variety special and six times for writing for a variety series. She also won once, in 2017, for her work on “Not the White House Correspondents Dinner” with Samantha Bee.Ms. Black has written for many critically acclaimed series and shows, including “Full Frontal With Samantha Bee,” “Ted Lasso” and “Bless This Mess.” Although “A Black Lady Sketch Show” is Ms. Black’s first time as a series regular, she was a correspondent on “Full Frontal With Samantha Bee” and acted in “Drunk History” and the 2014 film “An American Education.”Robin Thede, the creator of “A Black Lady Sketch Show” on HBO — which was also nominated this year as an Outstanding Variety Sketch Series, and twice for Outstanding Guest Actress in a Comedy Series (Yvette Nicole Brown and Issa Rae) — sees Ms. Black as “a force of nature and of comedy.”“I have been lucky enough to work with her as a writer and performer and know firsthand how ridiculously good she is at both,” Ms. Thede wrote in an email. “She’s truly a powerhouse who will leave an indelible mark on this industry.”Ms. Black described herself as “someone who’s observing what’s going on in the world, and trying to reflect it back to people.” “To me,” she said, “that’s art.”She is from a family of musicians, so singing in an ensemble, she said — whether it was musical theater or show choir — meant learning to breathe with others and sound like one voice. This set her up for the moment she found improv comedy, because she already knew how to collaborate — and how not to steal a scene. “I was, I think, picking up all the pieces I needed to get where I was going,” she said.After graduating from the University of California, Santa Cruz in 2007, she began a Ph.D. program in performance studies at Northwestern University. She hated it and was anxious all the time, she said, so her parents bought her an improv class at the Second City comedy club in nearby Chicago to blow off steam.When she took a comedy writing class there, a teacher pulled her aside to let her know she was a writer.“People had been telling me, ‘You should try this. You should try this,’ and I had been uncomfortably trying it,” Ms. Black said. “But ‘you’re a writer’? I was like, ‘yes.’ I completely shifted my view of myself to be a writer first. And that was when everything started to fall into place.”Chicago, Ms. Black said, is the best place in the world to learn comedy writing. There’s an “emotionality” she found in Chicago that she values in many of her collaborators, including Ms. Bee and Ms. Ruffin.“What attracted me to Sam and Amber is that they’re admitting to you that they live in the world,” she said. “And they might be upset about it, and they might be angry about it, and they might cry about it on camera, because they’re not removed from it. They’re a part of it.”This is the “good stuff” of comedy, in Ms. Black’s eyes: The stuff that happens when characters have feelings, and when they’re flawed. People who have been to therapy and have their lives together aren’t nearly as fun to embody, she said. A good example of a character who embodies that tension: Ashley’s perfectionistic alter ego on “A Black Lady Sketch Show.”In the show, Ms. Black plays a woman (also named Ashley) who is a bossy know-it-all. She is trying for total control, and in the process, irritating her friends. “I am not like that and take great pains not to be,” Ms. Black said, “but it’s so much fun to play.”“All day, you have anxiety. You’re trying to make sure everyone around you is comfortable,” she said of real life. “You’re thinking about what you say and what you do and how it affects people. And then, when you get to play those characters who aren’t that way, it’s so freeing.”Ms. Black said she tends to be quiet and a little shy, and that she used to worry that not being “on” all the time might disappoint people. “But I’ve sort of released feeling bad about that,” she said, “because I just try to be present and have honest experiences.”During the pandemic, those experiences included spending time with her family in Los Angeles, being a hardworking dog mom to Gordi the Sato and watching every Marvel movie ever made. “I just wanted to watch good guys win some things,” she said.Right now she’s evaluating what she wants to do next and what percentage of her time she wants to spend on each thing. Ms. Ruffin wrote in an email about Ms. Black, “she’s gone from ‘a writer’ to ‘theeeee writer.’” But Ms. Black is still hoping for a 70-30 or 60-40 writing to acting split, she said.For now, “It really made me so happy that people — oh my gosh, I’m getting emotional — care what I’m doing,” she said. “So I’m just really grateful that anybody noticed that I was working so hard.” More

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      The One Where It’s a Live Musical Parody of Your Favorite TV Show

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      “We made these musicals to get people who don’t go to musicals to go to musicals,” said a creator of the Off Broadway “Friends” and “The Office” parodies. “They’re a gateway drug.”The titles of the songs in “Friends! The Musical Parody,” now playing at the Theater Center on West 50th Street, will be familiar to anyone with even a passing acquaintance with the sitcom about six coffee shop lingerers in New York. Joey sings an ode to the art of seduction entitled “How You Doin’?” Chandler and Monica’s amorous duet is “Could I Be Any More in Love With You?” There’s a song about adapting to challenging circumstances called “Pivot,” and, naturally, the post-interval number is “We Were on a Break.”“Friends” isn’t the only television show that has wound up on the musical stage recently. This month, audiences can go see screwy, unauthorized takes on the workplace sitcom “The Office” (“The Office! A Musical Parody”) and Netflix’s sci-fi horror series “Stranger Things” (“Stranger Sings! The Parody Musical”).The shows resemble elongated “Saturday Night Live” sketches with Off Broadway production values. (The monstrous Demogorgon in “Stranger Sings” is partly made out of pool noodles, duct tape and press-on nails.) It’s “Forbidden Broadway” for those more familiar with Ross and Rachel, or Jim and Pam, than Rodgers and Hammerstein.The creators of the “Friends” and “The Office” parodies, Bob McSmith and Tobly McSmith (both 41, and not related), have been making what they loosely call parody musicals for nearly 20 years. “We made these musicals to get people who don’t go to musicals to go to musicals,” Tobly McSmith said. “They’re a gateway drug.”The pair, who met as housemates in Park Slope, bonded over a shared appreciation — equal parts amusement and bemusement — of the high school sitcom “Saved by the Bell.” “It was just on in the morning,” Tobly said. “We’d watch it, we’d smoke pot, we’d go to work.”In that state of herbal-assisted merriment, they hit upon the idea of a “Saved by the Bell” musical. Despite their rudimentary musical skills, and the fact that neither had any experience in the theater, they wrote a bunch of songs and sketches, posted a call for actors on Craigslist, and started to put on the show for free in 2005 at Apocalypse Lounge in the East Village. The place was packed every night. “It was a beautiful mess,” Tobly said. “The audience loved it.”From left, Laura Mehl, Danny Adams and Emma Brock in “The Office! A Musical Parody.”Russ RowlandSince then, they have created spoofs of the TV shows “Beverly Hills, 90210” and “Full House,” as well as a mash-up of “Keeping Up With the Kardashians” and the musical “Cats.” A “Parks and Recreation” parody is on the way, and when the “Friends” show leaves for its national tour — it has already played in Las Vegas; Portland, Maine; and Australia — it will be replaced by the McSmiths’ take on “Love Actually.”Each show finds its own balance between paying tribute and sending up. “We try to evoke the same humor but in different ways,” Tobly said, “and surprise people with things they notice about the show but never really internalized.” The McSmiths are also undeterred by the seeming tautology of presenting comic reinterpretations of comedies. “We call that a hat on a hat on a hat,” Tobly said. “If you can get to five hats — that’s hilarious.”In the case of “Friends! The Musical Parody,” part of the fun is the hectic combination of pointed critique, 10 seasons’ worth of plot, and extratextual jokes about the actors’ salaries and post-“Friends” careers. There’s a whole song dedicated to the near-obligatory observation of the massiveness of Monica and Rachel’s apartment but, also, more spikily, a reference to the blinding whiteness of the cast.Ross’s pet monkey, Marcel, gets a song, too. “The idea that Ross has a pet monkey for a few episodes is the most ridiculous thing,” Bob McSmith said. Ultimately, “Friends! The Musical Parody” is a show by fans for fans. “We call all our shows loving lampoons,” he said. “Parody doesn’t have to be cruel.”“Stranger Sings: The Parody Musical” — opening on Thursday at the Players Theater with book, music and lyrics by Jonathan Hogue — similarly springs from a place of love. “Parody can be a dirty word in the industry,” said Savannah-Lee Mumford, who plays Barb. “What this show does so well is take care to honor the source material rather than poke at its flaws. It enhances it.”Honoring the source material in “Stranger Sings! The Parody Musical”: From left, Adele Simms, Jalen Bunch, Dean Cestari, Patrick Howard and Ariana Perlson.Bruce GlikasThe Netflix series, about suburban adolescents battling paranormal forces, draws from a host of inspirations, including the works of Steven Spielberg and Stephen King, as well as the teen rom-com “Sixteen Candles.” “Stranger Sings” honors that spirit, musically. Eleven, the psychokinetic young girl prone to nosebleeds, has an “I Want” song modeled on “Somewhere That’s Green” from “Little Shop of Horrors.” Steve Harrington, the well-coiffed teenage lunk, has a swaggering hair-metal tune; and Joyce Byers (played by Winona Ryder on the series), the perpetually frazzled single mother of a missing boy, gets a high-camp diva number worthy of Patti LuPone.“That’s part of the fun of parody as a form,” Hogue said. “You get to throw in as many references as you want.”Hogue also incorporated some of the online discourse about the TV show. Most notably, the character of Barb — a fan favorite who abruptly met her demise, inspiring the #JusticeForBarb hashtag on social media — gets the big moment she was denied onscreen, belting out the lyric: “Clearly I’m not central to this plot.”“We heard the internet,” Mumford said. “She definitely got the short end of the stick on the TV series. So this a gift for the fans.”“Stranger Sings” originated as a concert at Feinstein’s/54 Below, where these sorts of screen-to-stage mutations are something of a mainstay: In recent years, it has hosted musical adaptations of “Star Wars,” “Dexter” and “Pokémon,” to name a few. Before “Stranger Sings,” Hogue directed his own “Friends” musical concert for Feinstein’s/54 Below.Clearly, the more improbable the transformation, the better. But are these any more unlikely than musicals adapted from, say, a B-movie about a man-eating plant or an 800-page biography of Alexander Hamilton?This is all legal, by the way, under the laws regarding parody and fair use, as long as the shows are genuine adaptations — not mere facsimiles — and don’t give the impression of being officially sanctioned. The McSmiths have had only one run-in along these lines. “Andrew Lloyd Webber did not find our Kardashians-Cats musical as funny as we did,” Tobly said. “We agreed to change the music tracks to a couple songs, including ‘Meow-mories’ sung by Cat-lyn Jenner, and they left us alone.”Perhaps, after a year’s worth of pandemic binge-watching at home, some audiences will be drawn to theater that recreates television in all its reassuring comfort-food predictability, with familiar characters in familiar settings acting out familiar story lines. There’s something to be said for a live show that manages to recreate the laid-back atmosphere of your living room.“From the outset, we were trying to parody ‘Saved by the Bell,’ but also trying to parody theater,” Tobly said. “We’ve always felt so far away from Broadway. And we like that.” More

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      A New Improv Theater Tries to Be the Anti-U.C.B. Is That a Trap, Too?

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      A diverse board of comics is trying to build an inclusive, accessible institution. But knowing what they don’t want to be may not be enough.When the Upright Citizens Brigade permanently closed its New York operations last year, the news hit Corin Wells like a death in the family. She moved to the city because of U.C.B., invested time and money, evolving from a student to a teacher and in the uncertain early months of the pandemic, the theater represented an anchor to the past and hope for the future. “When I got the email, I cried,” she said in a video call. “I didn’t have anything to go back to.”Then a sense of betrayal sank in, one shared by many improvisers, particularly since U.C.B. had held onto its theater in Los Angeles, where its founders are mostly based. “We were the bastard child,” Wells said. “Decisions were being made for us that did not serve us, almost like taxation without representation.”In recent years, U.C.B. had moved its popular Del Close Festival from New York to the West Coast, closed its East Village theater and exited its longtime space in Chelsea. But for Michael Hartney, the last artistic director of U.C.B. New York, the final straw came when the institution took out a Paycheck Protection Program loan worth hundreds of thousands of dollars before closing his theater. He felt “very gamed,” sparking an epiphany and a call to Wells to propose starting their own improv theater. She immediately agreed. They brought other U.C.B. veterans to form a board that met remotely every week last summer.“We wanted to reinvent what the improv theater looked like,” Wells said.The challenge: How do you hold onto the good parts of the Upright Citizens Brigade but avoid the flaws that made it so susceptible to collapse?Squirrel Comedy Theater is trying to reinvent how an improv institution is run.Gus Powell for The New York TimesOf all the art forms hurt during the pandemic, none was disrupted as much as improv comedy. Legacy institutions like Second City and iO in Chicago were sold after economic turmoil and a racial reckoning. In New York, the vanishing of U.C.B., a longtime juggernaut, left a vacuum that many are now competing to fill. It’s a moment of remarkable flux, turmoil and opportunity. Relative newcomers to New York like Asylum NYC (currently in U.C.B.’s old 26th Street home) and the Brooklyn Comedy Collective (which recently moved into a new space in Williamsburg), are both offering classes and putting on shows. And staples like the Pit and Magnet (which both scaled down in the pandemic) have started to reopen, producing shows and offering classes, virtually and in person.And what began with Hartney’s phone call is now the Squirrel Comedy Theater, the name a wry reference to the term for people who practice Scientology outside of the official organization. Even though the Squirrel was born in part from disenchantment, it still distinguishes itself by its faith in the aesthetic of the Upright Citizens Brigade. “The U.C.B. taught us a method of creating comedy that works,” Hartney said. “Those other theaters are amazing and valuable, but they don’t teach that. We feel like it has to keep going.”The Squirrel started as a residency in June at the Caveat, a theater on the Lower East Side. Hartney and his board, which includes the improvisers Lou Gonzalez, Patrick Keene, Maritza Montañez and Alex Song-Xia, are looking at real-estate options.The Squirrel has started a residency at the Caveat theater on the Lower East Side.Gus Powell for The New York TimesThe board members quickly came to a consensus on principles that would put them in contrast with their former home. Squirrel would be nonprofit (which until recently was very unusual for improv theaters), pay onstage talent (U.C.B. did not), and in an effort to remove barriers of entry, open classes to any student, regardless of level. Because it’s nonprofit, the Squirrel’s long-term sustainability may depend not just on ticket sales and class fees, but on its ability to raise money, too.Its mission statement emphasizes a commitment to diversity, inclusion and representation. U.C.B. also claimed to value inclusion, instituting a diversity scholarship, but that often didn’t translate to the stage. In June 2020, it came under considerable criticism for its diversity efforts, leading its founders to announce they were giving power to a “board of diverse individuals.”So how will Squirrel be different?Hartney and Wells say it starts with leadership. In contrast to the U.C.B.’s founders — Amy Poehler, Matt Besser, Ian Roberts and Matt Walsh — this board includes no straight white men or women and are majority Black, Indigenous or people of color. Hartney described himself as “a de facto artistic director,” which he said he was very hesitant about because of the appearance of continuity, but added that because of his experience, others insisted. Whereas programming decisions at U.C.B. were made by himself alone, now the group decides.When asked if they would program a troupe like the Stepfathers, a popular, talent-rich company that ran at U.C.B. for many years with performers like Zach Woods and Chris Gethard, he shakes his head: “I’m not excited about an all-white weekend team.”Michael Hartney, in red, is the de facto artistic director, a job he held at U.C.B.Gus Powell for The New York TimesOn Sunday, the Squirrel did premiere a weekly show with a diverse cast, Raaaatscraps, that was hosted by two former members of the Stepfathers, Connor Ratliff and Shannon O’Neill, also veterans of the most famous U.C.B. show, Asssscat. Without mentioning the old theater, O’Neill went onstage and described the show as a “renamed, rebranded” version of Asssscat, and it relied on the same format: A monologue by a surprise guest (Janeane Garofalo this time) inspires a long-form improv.How the Squirrel navigates its relationship to the U.C.B. is going to be an evolving process that Wells said will depend to some degree on trial and error: “What’s going to sell tickets: An old U.C.B. team with a recognizable name or a new group of artists who will bring their friends? “It’s a hard balance,” she said, adding that they need to do both. “Always be testing.”But one guiding principal is a skepticism of permanence, of shows that run indefinitely, even of founders who stay too long. “We designed this to be taken over,” said Hartney, who doesn’t see himself at this job in 10 years. “We want the next people to address the changing needs of this community.”U.C.B. built its reputation in part as an incubator of stars like Kate McKinnon, Ilana Glazer and Donald Glover, and the Squirrel wants to be a competitive environment for ambitious comics as well as a warm, welcoming community. Hartney recognizes that there can be a tension. Of the board members, “I am probably the one most interested in hosting an ‘S.N.L.’ showcase,” he said.Wells is, too. It will surely help the Squirrel get attention from people in comedy that last week, Wells was named one of the new faces at Just For Laughs, the industry festival. It’s an irony not lost on her that building a theater in opposition to U.C.B. can tie you to it. “In a perfect world, we could separate ourselves,” she said, but in every conversation they’ve had, U.C.B. “has always been a part. I think to be able to fix a system that U.C.B. set in place, you kind of had to live in it.” More

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      Jay Pharoah Is Ready to Play Superman

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      The comedian and actor talks about his new romantic comedy, the importance of Charlie and Eddie Murphy and why bombing onstage is a good thing.Jay Pharoah has more than 200 impressions in his staggering repertory — most famously, President Barack Obama, Jay-Z, Will Smith, Eddie Murphy and Denzel Washington.But the person he’s channeling in Netflix’s “Resort to Love,” starring Christina Milian as a singer who ends up performing at the Mauritius wedding of her ex-fiancé — that would be Pharoah — is, rather surprisingly, himself.“I can’t say it wasn’t hard, it was just something that I had lived before,” he said of the role, his first romantic lead. “Maybe not marriage-wise, maybe not engaged, but I’ve had those conversations with my exes. I’ve had somebody say to me, ‘If you were the one for me, it wouldn’t be as hard.’ I’ve had people say, ‘I’m scared.’ They were literally moments in my life that I was pulling from.”But if Pharoah’s amorous life is moving at a deliberate pace (“I’m narrowing it down,” he said. “I don’t date anymore. I go on interviews.”), his professional one is speeding ahead. After freestyling a new voice for the “Family Guy” staff last year, he was asked whether he wanted a writing job on the show, starting with the season premiering this fall.“The folks at ‘Family Guy’ were like, ‘Listen, we know you go on tour, we know you do movies, so we will work with your schedule. We value you,’” he said. “And that makes me feel good, makes me feel wanted — unlike high school.”In a call from New York, where he was hitting some comedy clubs before returning to Los Angeles, Pharoah talked about the people, places and things instrumental to that transformation. These are edited excerpts from the conversation.1. His Faith I used to work at Burlington Coat Factory. I remember in 2008, there was a gentleman who came through the line, and he said: “Listen, don’t worry about it. Everything that you want to happen in your career is about to happen. Just don’t give up on your talent. The spirit of God told me to tell you that.” I was like, “What?” I’d never seen this man before. He’d never seen me. But he told me that. And I was like: “OK, I’m not going to give up on my talent. But I am going to quit Burlington.”2. Shaina Farrow, his sister and manager My sister definitely made the ultimate sacrifice taking a chance on me. She could have easily got a job doing something else. In 2009, when we decided to go on the road, she pawned her jewelry so we had gas money to get up to New York.And she’s not somebody who I put in the position just because they were a family member — because my dad was my manager before, and he didn’t have the skills. It’s good to have people in your corner that really care about you, but it’s better to have people who care about you and know what they’re doing.3. Eddie Murphy’s “Delirious” It’s the greatest comedy special ever, next to “Richard Pryor: Live in Concert.” You want to talk about family stories, perfect impressions, callbacks, racial observation, racial humor — it’s the buffet of comedy. Nobody’s special has been better than that, and that came out in 1983. And until this day I can watch that stand-up and laugh the same way every time, even if I know that the punchline is coming.4. Charlie Murphy Charlie Murphy [Eddie’s older brother] is somebody who took a chance on me. Being young in the comedy game and killing onstage is intimidating for anybody who’s older. He saw me when I was 19 years old. He was like: “Yo man, that was hilarious. I want to take you on the road with me, man. You want to go?”He told me about the game. He told me to never lie. He’d say, “As long as you tell them the truth, they will walk with you.” He also said: “No matter what you do, whether it’s your cross, whether it’s a thought, whatever it is, always take God onstage with you.” And number three, and this was a big one, he said: “If you don’t have butterflies or you’re not nervous before you get on that stage, you’re nothing. Because that means you don’t give a [expletive] about your craft anymore.”5. Carolines on Broadway Charlie Murphy took me to Carolines on Broadway, my first comedy club in New York, and it was an amazing weekend. I remember the third show on Saturday night. It was late. I was tired. Uncle Ray [Murphy], rest in peace, was hosting. I do my set. I got a standing ovation and I’m like, whoa. As I’m trying to leave the stage, I trip. Uncle Ray is sitting in the back, and he goes: “That was good work out there. But we got to work on your balance.”6. Bombing onstage You have to bomb to become better. You know, all of the greats have bombed and if you haven’t bombed, you’re not great. You will become comfortable in something and you’re perpetuating it, whereas if you bomb, you have to dig in yourself and find something out. There’s no other options.7. Jay-Z and Chris Martin’s “Beach Chair” I don’t talk about this a lot, but I was depressed in 2007. There was a lot going on. And then good things started happening, and Jay-Z’s “Beach Chair” was the soundtrack for that. That song put me on the Jay-Z wagon. Oh, he’s dope, he’s the G.O.A.T. And that’s the blueprint for my impression. His voice was lucid. It was strong, but it was soothing.8. Battle Rap Battle rap is so similar to stand-up comedy — setup, punchline, delivery, execution, swag, verbiage. Everything counts in battle rap the same way that everything counts on the stage. It’s the same science, but it’s a different form of that science. I like Loaded Lux, Murda Mook, Calicoe, X-Factor, Aye Verb. Of the new school you’ve got your Rum Nitty, JC, Geechi Gotti. You have Ave. You got Nu Jerzey Twork. I love the aggression. I love the wordplay. I love the creativity. And it just makes me happy to watch it.9. Ludacris’s “Back for the First Time” That’s the first rap album that I ever owned. I remember I burned the CD — I bootlegged it, that’s what I did. And it made me want to rap. Ludacris was a good balance of fun and lyrical, kind of like a Busta Rhymes but more contemporary.Coming from a heavy Christian household, there’s certain things your peoples don’t put up with. And my dad didn’t appreciate [Ludacris’s profanity]. So he took the album from me and put it in his room. But I found it, and I just swapped out an unburned disc, and he didn’t even know the difference. He’d leave the house and I would play it as loud as I could. I played it until it had so many scratches, I couldn’t play it anymore.10. Will Smith’s “I Am Legend”Just like Tom Hanks did in “Cast Away,” Will Smith showed that you can captivate an audience for an hour and change with just you. And that was the beauty of it. It was so much emotion. It showed his range. And to me it solidified him as one of the greatest actors of all time.And it showed me, if Will Smith could get ripped like that, I could get ripped like that too. Now I look like Black Bane. I am not slacking a minute. I know that they’re out here looking for Black Superman and if I don’t land that, I’m going to get somebody close. I don’t care if the Falcon’s got a little brother. I don’t care if they come out with a character called the Pigeon. I will play that role. More

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      Tig Notaro’s ‘Drawn’ Explores Strange New Worlds: Animated Ones

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      The stand-up special is built around audio recorded in live performances. Then artists went to work. Sometimes they took her bits far beyond what she expected.One day during the production of her new, animated stand-up special, Tig Notaro was presented with a rough illustrated version of an anecdote about her double mastectomy. In the bit, Notaro ponders what her doctors might have done with her discarded breasts after the surgery she underwent following a 2012 cancer diagnosis. What if, she asks, the remains had been tossed in a Hollywood dumpster? Might they have been left for rodents to play tug of war with? More

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      Robert Downey Sr., Filmmaker and Provocateur, Is Dead at 85

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      His movies, most notably “Putney Swope,” didn’t make a lot of money. But they attracted a lot of attention and influenced a lot of younger directors.Robert Downey Sr., who made provocative movies like “Putney Swope” that avoided mainstream success but were often critical favorites and were always attention getting, died on Wednesday at his home in Manhattan. He was 85.The cause was Parkinson’s disease, his wife, Rosemary Rogers, said.“Putney Swope,” a 1969 comedy about a Black man who is accidentally elected chairman of a Madison Avenue advertising agency, was perhaps Mr. Downey’s best-known film.“To be as precise as is possible about such a movie,” Vincent Canby wrote in a rave review in The New York Times, “it is funny, sophomoric, brilliant, obscene, disjointed, marvelous, unintelligible and relevant.”The film, though probably a financial success by Mr. Downey’s standards, made only about $2.7 million. (By comparison, “Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid” that same year made more than $100 million.) Yet its reputation was such that in 2016 the Library of Congress selected it for the National Film Registry, an exclusive group of movies deemed to have cultural or historical significance.Shelley Plimpton and Ronnie Dyson in a scene from Mr. Downey’s “Putney Swope” (1969).Cinema VAlso much admired in some circles was “Greaser’s Palace” (1972), in which a Christlike figure in a zoot suit arrives in the Wild West by parachute. Younger filmmakers like Paul Thomas Anderson (who gave Mr. Downey a small part in his 1997 hit, “Boogie Nights”) cited it as an influence.None other than Joseph Papp, the theater impresario, in a letter to The New York Times after Mr. Canby’s unenthusiastic review, wrote that “Robert Downey has fearlessly descended into the netherworld and come up with a laughing nightmare.” (Mr. Papp’s assessment may not have been entirely objective; at the time he was producing one of Mr. Downey’s few mainstream efforts, a television version of the David Rabe play “Sticks and Bones,” which had been a hit at Mr. Papp’s Public Theater in 1971.)Between “Putney Swope” and “Greaser’s Palace” there was “Pound” (1970), a political satire in which actors portrayed stray dogs. Among those actors, playing a puppy, was Robert Downey Jr., the future star of the “Iron Man” movies and many others, and Mr. Downey’s son. He was 5 and making his film debut.That movie, the senior Mr. Downey told The Times Union of Albany, N.Y., in 2000, was something of a surprise to the studio.“When I turned it into United Artists,” he said, “after the screening one of the studio heads said to me, ‘I thought this was gonna be animated.’ They thought they were getting some cute little animated film.”Allan Arbus in Mr. Downey’s “Greaser’s Palace” (1972), of which the theater impresario Joseph Papp wrote, “Robert Downey has fearlessly descended into the netherworld and come up with a laughing nightmare.”via PhotofestRobert John Elias Jr. was born on June 24, 1936, in Manhattan and grew up in Rockville Centre, on Long Island. His father was in restaurant management, and his mother, Betty (McLoughlin) Elias, was a model. Later, when enlisting in the Army as a teenager, he adopted the last name of his stepfather, Jim Downey, who worked in advertising.Much of his time in the Army was spent in the stockade, he said later; he wrote a novel while doing his time, but it wasn’t published. He pitched semi-pro baseball for a year, then wrote some plays.Among the people he met on the Off Off Broadway scene was William Waering, who owned a camera and suggested they try making movies. The result, which he began shooting when John F. Kennedy was still president and which was released in 1964, was “Babo 73,” in which Taylor Mead, an actor who would go on to appear in many Andy Warhol films, played the president of the United States. It was classic underground filmmaking.“We just basically went down to the White House and started shooting, with no press passes, permits, anything like that,” Mr. Downey said in an interview included in the book “Film Voices: Interviews From Post Script” (2004). “Kennedy was in Europe, so nobody was too tight with the security, so we were outside the White House mainly, ran around; we actually threw Taylor in with some real generals.”The budget, he said, was $3,000.Mr. Downey’s “Chafed Elbows,” about a day in the life of a misfit, was released in 1966 and was a breakthrough of sorts, earning him grudging respect even from Bosley Crowther, The Times’s staid film critic.“One of these days,” he wrote, “Robert Downey, who wrote, directed and produced the underground movie ‘Chafed Elbows,’ which opened at the downtown Gate Theater last night, is going to clean himself up a good bit, wash the dirty words out of his mouth and do something worth mature attention in the way of kooky, satiric comedy. He has the audacity for it. He also has the wit.”Mr. Downey with his son, the actor Robert Downey Jr., at a Time magazine gala in 2008. The younger Mr. Downey made his acting debut in one of his father’s movies when he was 5.Evan Agostini/AGOEV, via Associated PressThe film enjoyed extended runs at the Gate and the Bleecker Street Cinema. “No More Excuses” followed in 1968, then “Putney Swope,” “Pound” and “Greaser’s Palace.” But by the early 1970s Mr. Downey had developed a cocaine habit.“Ten years of cocaine around the clock,” he told The Associated Press in 1997. His marriage to Elsie Ford, who had been in several of his movies, faltered; they eventually divorced. He credited his second wife, Laura Ernst, with helping to pull him out of addiction. She died in 1994 of amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, or Lou Gehrig’s disease. Mr. Downey drew on that experience for his last feature, “Hugo Pool” (1997).In addition to his wife and son, he is survived by a daughter, Allyson Downey; a brother, Jim; a sister, Nancy Connor; and six grandchildren.Mr. Downey’s movies have earned new appreciation in recent decades. In 2008 Anthology Film Archives in the East Village restored and preserved “Chafed Elbows,” “Babo 73″ and “No More Excuses” with the support of the Film Foundation, a nonprofit organization dedicated to film preservation. At the time, Martin Scorsese, a member of the foundation’s board, called them “an essential part of that moment when a truly independent American cinema was born.”“They’re alive in ways that few movies can claim to be,” Mr. Scorsese told The Times, “because it’s the excitement of possibility and discovery that brought them to life.”Mr. Downey deflected such praise.“They’re uneven,” he said of the films. “But I was uneven.”Alex Traub contributed reporting. More