I’ve lived in New York City for a year now (my anniversary was a couple of days ago)! Kind of ridiculous, really. This has not felt like a whole year but too bad, it has been. Now, what have I learned?
For starters, I’m glad I moved specifically to Brooklyn and not Manhattan. I’m not sure I’d like to live in any of the parts of Manhattan I’ve been to though, to be fair, I also haven’t been to many residential parts of the island. Oh, and that’s another thing, Brooklyn is also on an island, it just happens to be Long Island (along with Queens). I guess that shouldn’t be a surprise to anyone who has looked at a map but it was surprising to me. Anyways, the food and comedy in Manhattan is great but it’s smelly and full of rude people. (Brooklyn has rude people, too, but isn’t as full of them.) I also like living next to a huge park.
Ah, but I didn’t move to New York because I thought I’d fall in love with Manhattan. (I was just in Boston for a day and that made me really nostalgic.) I moved here for comedy. I go back and forth, basically on a daily basis, if that is going well. I think if I’m being honest with myself about it, I’m moving in a positive direction.
I had the rise and fall of my first indie improv team, Puny Humans. I have the joy of playing with my other indie team, Unsigned Waiver. I got to be a guest performer a couple of times for ComedySportz New York City as a “representative” from Boston. I got to perform with Big Gulp in a spotlight performance at the Del Close Marathon (as well as perform in my first DCM bit show). I performed in Sktch Shw and the NYC Sketch Festival. I’ve been able to perform at all the top improv venues in the city: Magnet Theater, The PIT, The Annoyance, and the Upright Citizens Brigade Theater. Opportunities to perform improv has been abundant.
I’ve finished the core improv classes at the Upright Citizens Brigade and I’m in the third of three core sketch classes at UCB, too. I’ll be starting improv classes at the Magnet Theater in a couple of weeks (which is the theater with consistently the best touring company I’ve ever seen).
The one thing I’ve disappointed myself with is in performing stand-up. I’ve had only a few booked shows since moving to New York and have mostly been dwelling at the open mic level when I do perform. I’ve become complacent about this because of all the classes, practices, and shows I’ve been involved with in improv and sketch. With those winding down a bit, I’m committing myself to perform more stand-up.
