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    Improv Is Making a Comeback in New York

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    The pandemic dealt a major blow to the once-thriving comedy form, but a new energy can be seen in performances throughout the city.Improv comedy became so influential in the first two decades of this century that you could make an argument it mattered more to popular culture than stand-up.Lines regularly ran down the block outside Upright Citizens Brigade. Students who once would have studied Method acting took classes in “Yes, and.” The author Sam Wasson described it as “America’s most popular art,” and its major theaters were training grounds for stars like Tina Fey, Jordan Peele and Stephen Colbert.Then, all of a sudden, the boom went bust. The pandemic hurt every live art, but arguably none more than improv. Not only did struggles force the sale of three of its biggest institutions (Second City, iO and U.C.B.), but the prestige surrounding the form faded as criticism mounted over business models built on free labor and racist treatment of artists. The title of the new book “Winging it: Improv’s Power and Peril in the Time of Trump” captures its new mixed reputation.From left: Drew Reilly, Jordan Savusa, Ashley Leisten and Ben Rameaka at Second City.Carlos PerezBut with a flurry of improv theaters opening or moving into new homes in this city, one of the major questions hovering over comedy today is: Can improv make a comeback?“Second City” began as a New Yorker’s insult, then became a Chicago institution, so its arrival in Brooklyn is a return home of sorts. Not only is its vast Williamsburg complex fancier than any other improv house in town — the Manhattan Theater Club to everyone else’s La MaMa — but its first revue represents an aesthetic shift and possibly a changing of the guard.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. 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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      in Television

      How This Comedian Came to Embrace Her Deafness

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      How This Comedian Came to Embrace Her Deafnessvia Jessica FloresJessica Flores, a comedian and improv performer, went from hiding her hearing loss to posting YouTube videos about it.I recently spoke with Flores about channelling her lighthearted nature to spread awareness. Here’s what she told me → More

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      in Theater

      Catie Lazarus, Comedian With a Lot of Questions, Dies at 44

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      AdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main storyCatie Lazarus, Comedian With a Lot of Questions, Dies at 44On her live show “Employee of the Month,” she got laughs by interrogating writers, artists, politicians, intellectuals and her fellow comics.The comedian Catie Lazarus in 2015. She began interviewing prominent people about their careers, she said, “because I couldn’t quite figure out how to break in.”Credit…Andrea Mohin/The New York TimesDec. 20, 2020, 2:10 p.m. ETCatie Lazarus, a writer and comedian who probed the minds of celebrities and created her own late-night comedy universe on her longstanding self-produced live New York talk show, “Employee of the Month,” died on Dec. 13 in her apartment in Brooklyn. She was 44. Her father, Simon Lazarus III, said the cause was breast cancer.In 2011, as the nation recovered from the Great Recession, Ms. Lazarus was just another struggling comic trying to make it in New York. She had dropped out of a doctoral program in clinical psychology at Wesleyan University to move to the city, but as she tried establishing herself on the stand-up circuit, she discovered that stable jobs were hard to find. In light of these circumstances, she started hosting “Employee of the Month,” an interview-based talk show about work and labor at the Upright Citizens Brigade Theater.Ms. Lazarus asked notable writers, artists, politicians, intellectuals and comedians how they had achieved their enviable careers. She eventually interrogated subjects like Rachel Maddow, Dick Cavett, Greta Gerwig and David Simon. She inquired about disappointment, too — for example, she asked the journalist Kurt Andersen how he felt about getting pushed out of New York magazine.“I started hosting this show because I couldn’t quite figure out how to break in,” Ms. Lazarus told The New York Times in 2015. “I wanted to hear from people who, for the most part, love what they do and have carved out a niche for themselves. It wasn’t just about how they broke in, but what they continue to find worth struggling for, worth the heartache and the rejection and the economic toil and other types of losses that go along with it.”Her disarmingly intrusive interview style developed a following, and in 2014 Ms. Lazarus started hosting the show monthly at Joe’s Pub at the Public Theater. A live band accompanied her onstage, and nights crackled with the spontaneous energy of late-night television.Ms. Lazarus with her house band at Joe’s Pub at the Public Theater in 2017.Credit…Abel Fermin/ShutterstockMs. Lazarus approached her inquiries from a more philosophical level as well, seemingly trying to answer a bigger question: Why exactly do people do what they do for a living during their relatively brief time on earth? She often steered guests into illuminating revelations and spectacle.Wallace Shawn reminisced about how he had considered becoming a taxi driver. Billy Crudup whispered something to her when she asked him how much he was paid for voicing Mastercard ads (she looked shocked). Gloria Steinem tap-danced onstage. And Ms. Lazarus asked Josh Russ Tupper, a co-owner of Russ & Daughters, to participate in a blind taste test of lox from his competitors Zabar’s and Barney Greengrass.“They said you can tell the difference in the lox,” she challenged him. “Do you feel there’s a difference in how your lox tastes?” (Mr. Tupper largely succeeded in identifying his shop’s salmon.)Lin-Manuel Miranda, who appeared on the show, was also a frequent guest in her audience. “Catie was the ultimate New York comedy connector,” he said in a phone interview. “Once you did the show, you were in the alumni group.” He added: “It’s unbelievable the level of connections that came through there. People before they blew up. After they blew up.”“It was,” Mr. Miranda said, “sort of a crime she didn’t have her own TV show.”Catherine Simone Avnet Lazarus was born on April, 26, 1976, in Washington. Her father was a public policy lawyer who had been associate director of the White House domestic policy staff in the Carter administration. Her mother, Rosalind (Avnet) Lazarus, was a federal government lawyer. A great-great-great-grandfather was Simon Lazarus, founder of the Lazarus & Company department store chain, which later became Macy’s Inc.A nursery report card from the Beauvoir School appeared to portend Ms. Lazarus’s future. “Katie is a great talker and will volunteer to sit in the ‘hot seat’ and speak on any topic whether she knows anything about her subject or not,” it read. “The class expects this now and, in fact, the resulting arguments are more lively due to Katie’s proddings.” (Ms. Lazarus delighted in this document as an adult and quoted from it frequently).She attended the Maret School and Wesleyan University, where she received a B.A. and an M.A. in psychology. She eventually pursued a doctorate in clinical psychology at Wesleyan but dropped out after a semester to try comedy in New York. (Ms. Lazarus said that an encouraging chance encounter with Tina Fey, in which they discussed improv, helped galvanize her decision.)Ms. Lazarus first took the stage at Stand Up NY on the Upper West Side, and she relished the nervous rush of trying to get people to laugh. She began performing on the comedy circuit at clubs like Carolines on Broadway and the Laugh Factory. And she took improv classes at the Upright Citizens Brigade Theater, where she started hosting her show. Early guests included Rachel Dratch, Reggie Watts and the Times journalist David Carr.“I was keenly aware that people went on to achieve these great things,” Ms. Lazarus told The Times. “I just didn’t know the steps that were involved to get there. That is why I started my show, because there is somewhat of a science to success.”In 2015, Ms. Lazarus had a career break herself when Jon Stewart gave her his first interview after leaving “The Daily Show.” She pressed Mr. Stewart about his next projects and who he thought might replace him on the show. While discussing his career, she projected an image of him wearing underwear in a spoof of a Calvin Klein ad from his MTV talk-show days.Around 2017, Ms. Lazarus ended her run at Joe’s Pub and brought her show to other venues, including the Gramercy Theatre in Manhattan and the Bell House in Brooklyn. Slate started airing a podcast of the show in 2018. Ms. Lazarus also took the show on the road, hosting it at Largo in Los Angeles and at the Sundance Film Festival.“All these people over the years, they wanted to be interviewed by her,” her father said. “And she shot for the moon. She really thought she could get anybody. She thought she could get Barack Obama. She didn’t get him, but she wasn’t shy about trying.”In addition to her father, Ms. Lazarus is survived by two brothers, Ned and Benjamin; her mother; and her stepmother, Bonnie Walter.In 2019, Ms. Lazarus took a break from her talk show. She had learned she had breast cancer in 2014 and underwent chemotherapy for years. She also wanted to finish a book of personal essays she was working on. As the pandemic took hold of life in New York, Ms. Lazarus spent her time at her apartment in Prospect Heights, writing in the company of her cocker spaniel, Lady.Ms. Lazarus at Joe’s Pub in 2016. “It was sort of a crime she didn’t have her own TV show,” Lin-Manuel Miranda said.Credit…Abel Fermin/ShutterstockMs. Lazarus always hoped her show might get picked up by a network or streaming service, and she was vocal about the gender disparity among late-night television hosts.“Showbiz has notoriously rewarded those who fail upwards,” she told Out magazine in 2018. “If and when Hollywood is ready for a talk-show host with chops, chutzpah, humor, no cavities and a genuine moral compass, will you tell them where to find me?”In her Times interview, Ms. Lazarus was asked what her own dream job was. She answered definitively.“What I do right now,” she said. “Hosting a talk show. I found mine, but it wasn’t intentional.”AdvertisementContinue reading the main story More