For three young alumni trying to make it in New York, comedy is serious business.
By Ted Mann
One of the first things you learn in Improvisational Comedy 101 is the phrase Yes, and. For example, a co-performer says, “My, you’re looking mighty yellow.” You say, “Yes, and check out those pink elephants on the lawn.”
Like a clap of the hands or an approving chuckle, it’s affirming, encouraging, forward-moving. Of course, there are other tricks—“tag-outs,” for example, which begin a new scene; or “swinging doors,” which pause the action to launch into a digression; or “endowments,” momentary descriptions of the imaginary set—but none is quite as fundamental to keeping the comedic ball rolling. So when I interviewed three recent Penn graduates—Aaron Karo W’01, Risa Sang-urai C’00, and Matt Johnson C’99—trying to break into the comedy business in New York, my questions were all supposed to begin with that familiar encouragement. Unfortunately, when I actually asked them, they came out differently: “Yes, but why?”
Why would Aaron Karo quit his job on Wall Street to pursue a career in humor writing and stand-up? In a city with a glut of improv-comedy groups, why did Risa Sang-urai choose to join an upstart ensemble, Dark Champions? What drove Matt Johnson, an accomplished sketch and improv comedian, to shrug off the yoke of both mediums, and pursue a hybrid model with his group, The Royal We?
For all three, the choice to pursue comedy was less a voluntary decision than a compulsion. An itch. The urge to make people laugh was first awakened, for each of them, at Penn. Johnson and Risa went the more traditional route, joining performing arts groups, while Karo got his start online, writing observational rants that he e-mailed to his friends.
From these embryonic experiences, they found that performing for an audience (even a virtual one) was immensely satisfying, and something they couldn’t give up, even if it meant taking conventional jobs to pay the bills. So far, only Karo has transitioned to doing comedy full-time (primarily because his e-mails were collected in a book, Ruminations on College Life, published last August). Risa and Johnson continue to hold down day jobs to support their humor habit.
On a frigid weekend in mid-January, all three performed to packed crowds in Manhattan: Karo told jokes at the New York Comedy Club; Risa’s Dark Champions gave their first show at the prestigious UCB theater; and Johnson’s The Royal We was part of a three-act bill at the Irish Rep Theatre. Afterwards, I spoke with each of them about their contrasting approaches to comedy.
Aaron Karo:
“A Diversified Entertainer”
About an hour into my interview with Aaron Karo, he offers to share his secret. “I literally have a thousand jokes—a database of comedy,” he says. “It’s online, so I can access it from anywhere.” Online? “Oh yeah, I can show it to you if you want.”
He leads me into his bedroom, where five-odd years of humor are stored neatly on a laptop, in the form of an Excel spreadsheet. On the walls hang a full-page, framed article from The New York Post reviewing his first stand-up gig and an 8×10 photo of Karo dressed in cap and gown giving the Wharton Commencement address.
“About a year ago, when I said I want to concentrate on writing, I had all this stuff in a notebook,” he says, scrolling through the text. Then, a friend wondered, “God forbid there’s a fire, or you lose the notebook. I said, ‘Crap, that’s my whole career.’ … So I created this whole complex spreadsheet, where I put all the jokes in, categorized by topic and the date I came up with them.”
A few items catch my eye—“Do Britas do anything?” “My roommate can tell the difference between 1% and 2% milk.”—mostly of the Seinfeld, observational-humor genre. “Whenever I do anything —stand-up, speaking—I literally can go here,” he says. “If I want to make a joke about mom, I just search for ‘mom’ in the family section, and I have all these jokes about her.”
At the New York Comedy Club, the “mom” entries come in handy. She’s seated close to the stage, understandably aghast at Karo’s raunchy stand-up set. He’s just finished a routine about the hookers in Rio de Janeiro, and he says, “OK, Mom, you can uncover your ears now, the sex part of the show is over. I was just kidding about the hookers, by the way.”
Karo is headlining back-to-back, sold-out shows in the dingy, cramped space. Though it’s only his second stand-up outing, he’s introduced like a starter for the New York Knicks: lights go out, techno music blasts, the announcer booms his resume, and a spotlight follows him to the stage. Five accomplished comedians have already performed, and they linger in the back, watching this display of pageantry. It’s easy to feel sympathy for them. Though Karo’s only a beginner, these veterans have essentially become his warm-up act.
Karo’s ascension to comedy-star status happened almost by accident. During his freshman year, he embraced the finer, extracurricular aspects of Penn: imbibing large amounts of alcohol, enjoying fraternity hospitality, and learning how to do laundry. A mild insomniac, he would lie awake nights, often hung over, and reflect on his new collegiate lifestyle. One Sunday he dashed off a stream-of-consciousness e-mail, and sent it to 20 high-school friends. Karo dubbed his observations “Ruminations on College Life.”
Karo’s friends began forwarding his letters to their new college buddies. People posted the e-mails in dorm bathrooms. Karo continued churning out regular editions for the next four years. And, by the time he graduated in 2001, the newsletter had over 11,000 subscribers.
Karo concluded his last college-era installment with a short note, asking if any of his readers could help him turn “Ruminations” into a television pilot or movie. He was deluged with replies, including a note from “the sister of Spielberg’s cousin’s dog-sitter.” Another came from a man named A.B. Fischer C’97, a fellow Penn grad and literary manager. Fischer’s idea was to turn Karo’s writing into a book.
Simon & Schuster published Ruminations on College Life in paperback, with an initial printing of 15,000 copies. It quickly went into a second printing, and, even more important, it was backlisted—meaning it won’t immediately go out of print. Empowered by the book’s success, Karo left his job on Wall Street to pursue comedy full time. The primary goal, he says, is to develop a television sitcom, loosely based on his new “Ruminations” column about life as a twentysomething in New York (www.aaronkaro.com). Between stand-up gigs and book signings, Karo’s been flying back and forth to California to pitch the idea to production companies.
On one recent visit, to Happy Madison Productions, he ran into a longtime idol, Adam Sandler. As usual, Karo was prepared. “I have my one-minute elevator pitch, in case I ever meet anyone like that.” After sharing his Cinderella story, and then giving the Hollywood-mandated “blank-meets-blank” show idea (“Sex and the City meets Seinfeld, in their early twenties”), Karo says that Sandler was impressed. “That was so awesome.”
While he continues to troll for a TV pilot, Karo has also launched a speaking tour called, surprisingly enough, Ruminating. For his first paid gig, he was hired to talk to a sorority in California. Preparing an hour-long talk was difficult—until then, Karo’s longest speeches had been for the Wharton Commencement (five minutes) and Stand-up New York (eight minutes)—but, with the help of his trusty database, he was able to cobble something together. Now, with a proven long-form routine in his arsenal, Karo’s been inundated with offers. “I’ve now got 25 colleges and organizations that have inquired in the past four days. This high school wants to have me as their graduation speaker!”
Despite his recent success on stage, Karo doesn’t plan to limit himself to one comedic discipline. “I don’t see myself as a stand-up comedian, per se,” he says. “More a person who also does stand-up—a diversified entertainer.” Still, he plans to continue performing, as it affords him the opportunity to try out new material and, more important, enjoy the rush of a live audience. “Comedy is like sex,” he says. “Beforehand, you’re a little nervous; during, it’s the greatest feeling in the world; directly after, you’re thinking I’m never doing this again—someone get me a hoagie.”
Risa Sang-urai:
“A Different Show Every Time”
We’re meeting at Java ’n’ Jazz, near Union Square in the Village. Risa Sang-urai is about 10 minutes late, but that’s OK, as it gives me time to finally wrangle a table for our interview. I also chat with De La Vega, an Afro-wig-wearing artist, who’s selling T-shirts with confounding messages like “Become Your Dream.” As I scan the bustling coffee-shop crowd, the artist asks me what the girl looks like. Up to this point, the only thing I’ve heard about Risa is that, “pound for pound, she’s the funniest girl you’ll ever meet.”
Moments later, a diminutive Asian woman enters, armed with a gargantuan bag of fast food, and wearing thick eyeglasses and a woolen driver’s cap. As has become my routine, I call out Risa’s name and, unlike the past dozen women, this one actually flashes a smile my way.
Risa warns me, at the start of the interview, that she’s famished. She begins unpacking a Family Size meal from Boston Market, a seemingly endless supply of mashed potatoes and mac ’n’ cheese. “It’s what I crave,” she says. In between bites, during her improbable, incongruous display of consumption, she mentions that this always happens to her after rehearsal.
Dark Champions (www.darkchampions.com) was formed when Risa and six other friends banded together in April 2002. They were all classmates at the Upright Citizens Brigade (UCB), the multi-faceted nexus of New York’s improv comedy scene. Like other troupes, UCB grew out of an established organization—Chicago’s Improv Olympics. UCB found its niche in the 1990s with a unique brand of improv, a form called “the Harold.”
In short, the Harold consists of three sets, each with three skits. The idea is that the themes established in the first set become through-lines for next two. Though every skit is completely spur-of-the-moment, UCB found success because the segments, however disparate, seemed to tie together by show’s end. Comedy Central gave the performers a television show, and by February 1999, UCB had its own theater in New York’s Chelsea neighborhood. Suddenly, the group’s innovative “long-form” improv had become a comedic standard.
In the late 1990s, UCB began teaching a tiered workshop series, with Level Three graduates soon forming their own groups. Dark Champions has already established itself as one of the darlings of the UCB litter. By January of this year, they’d earned a performance slot in their parent group’s theater, an honor that almost all UCB grads aspire to.
As Risa recounts her group’s history, basketball metaphors abound. She compares Dark Champions’ free-form style to a pick-up game; she says she was recruited and drafted onto the team; they call the group’s director “coach.” Her brand of improv comedy is like a sport—competitive, satisfying and, apparently, hunger-inducing. “I feel spent after rehearsals,” she says. “There’s so much thinking on your feet.”
With this prompting, I have a loaded question: “How exactly do you rehearse improvisation?” She grins impishly and explains. The rehearsal is like a workout, with emotional drills, reaction drills—anything to heighten the senses. On stage, there are typically only two or three people performing, but the others need to be constantly aware, looking to join into the action, or else “edit” the scene and start a new one. “Anyone who looks like they’re resting really isn’t,” she says. “If they are, they’re not doing their job.”
One of Risa’s favorite on-stage tactics is bucking typecasts, a habit she picked up while performing in Without a Net at Penn. “For women in improv, there’s this misconception that they’ll play damsels, stereotypes,” she says. “If given the opportunity, I prefer to play any role as a man. It shows my range, and it jolts the scene from where it might have gone.” Sometimes this makes things a little uncomfortable—as was the case when she chose to be a bearded lady having an abortion on stage—but it’s all in the interest of pushing the envelope.
Now, with a sell-out at the UCB theater checked off the “to-do” list, Risa says Dark Champions is hoping to branch out. “It opened doors for shows at other improv venues throughout the city, like the People’s Improv Theater.” In addition, she’d like to be selected for a Harold team, as one of the groups that compete head-to-head on Thursdays in the UCB’s prestigious “Harold Nights.”
Like most aspiring comedians, Risa has a day job. Hers is interning on the Charlie Rose Show. “It’s tough to survive on improv,” she says. Still, her dream is to follow in the footsteps of past UCB members, like Amy Poehler, who went on to write for and perform in TV shows and is now in the cast of Saturday Night Live. “UCB carries prestige in comedy circles, but it’s usually considered a stepping stone to something else.” Whether or not the elusive SNL job ever materializes, “I will always continue to do improv, in some capacity,” says Risa. “It’s a rush to have a different show every time we perform, and it will always be a part of me.”
Matt Johnson:
“Tweak it, Make it Funnier”
As founder of The Royal We (www.theroyalwe.org), Matt Johnson slips easily into the patriarch role. In one skit he plays a father whose son comes out of the closet, admitting his secret life as … an astronaut. Shocked and disappointed at his boy’s astronaut-uality, Johnson blusters, “You’re setting quite an example for your sister.” The son breaks in, “I know about your secret videos, Pop … Apollo 13, The Right Stuff, Space Cowboys.” As the skit ends with a compassionate, teary-eyed family embrace, Johnson delivers the clincher: “We’re all part-astronaut.”
This scene leads off the second half of a one-hour performance, part of the Lounge in Monster’s Pajamas series at a small theater on West 22nd Street. Whereas “Openly Astronaut” and the remaining bits are all sketch comedy, scripted and rehearsed, the first half of The Royal We’s show is entirely improvised.
With an audience prompting— “Ham-macher Schlemmer”—the group invents a series of skits, each one inspiring the next. Airline passengers become obsessed with Sky Mall magazine … sexy plane terrorists seduce airport employees … ugly terrorists worry about their job security because they’re not sexy … clothier Lane Bryant and MAC cosmetics launch product lines designed for ugly terrorists … and the FBI struggles to combat the newly confident ugly terrorists. The scenes miraculously tie together, congealing into a kind of long-form riff on terrorist profiling. Though they’re not all as hysterical as the rehearsed bits, some of the improvised ideas are comedic gold—perfect material to refine into sketches.
“Improv is like writing that first draft of anything,” Johnson tells me later. “You’re just getting all your thoughts out on the paper. Sometimes it can be very exciting, but then when you go back and read it, it’s like, ugh, that was not so great.”
We’re inside his stylish Brooklyn apartment. Explaining his own code of comedy, Johnson massages his beard, thoughtfully, and gets up to make tea. He paces back and forth, emoting with his hands—almost performing to a one-man audience. “So, say there were these moments of brilliance. Why not do a second draft? Do the same thing again, get it up on its feet, knock it around?”
A craving for this sort of editing process, he tells me, is what drove him to found The Royal We, his four-person improv/sketch comedy group. Ever since his undergraduate years in Mask & Wig, Johnson says he was searching for a way to merge the two mediums. A class with the New York branch of Second City—the renowned sketch-comedy powerhouse that spawned legends like Bill Murray, Mike Myers, and Martin Short—gave Johnson the answer he was looking for.
“Second City’s whole thing is about using the process of improvisation to create sketch comedy.” At the improv stage, he says, “we just roll along, connecting dots, and letting the audience tell us with laughter which dots they were connecting. … After you’ve improvised something that’s great, you go back and play with it a bit, tweak it, make it funnier. Then you present it as a sketch.”
Johnson founded The Royal We last year with a “self-selected” team of classmates from Second City and UCB. (Risa and Johnson’s paths have crossed in the tight-knit world of New York improv groups, but they did not take classes together at UCB.) Though not yet a money-making operation—Johnson is an executive assistant at Deloitte & Touche —the group is regularly playing to packed houses at performing-arts houses like the Irish Rep Theater, Above Kleptomania, and Flipside. While improv still dominates the majority of The Royal We’s performances, the group’s goal is to stockpile enough ideas to launch an all-sketch revue this spring.
“No one else is doing what we’re doing,” says Johnson. “No one else is pushing this mode of improvising and creating sketch comedy … I feel that a lot of the sketch comedy I see is really devoid of the character work and relationships that are so important to our stuff.”
Aside from the obvious genre distinctions—stand-up, long-form improv, sketch/improv—all three comedians have starkly different views on how to be funny. While Karo is businesslike, methodically planning and rehearsing his routines, Risa thrives on being spontaneous and irreverent. In terms of content, Johnson strives for political and social satire in his work; but Karo refuses to engage in current affairs, and instead follows the “write what you know” maxim.
These strongly defined voices are what make each of the performers engaging. Whether it’s Karo’s ruminating Wharton/frat boy observations or Johnson’s paternal socio-political riffs, or Risa’s ad-libbed athletic games, they each speak with the conviction and optimism of people who adore the words yes, and …
Ted Mann C’00 is a writer living in Philadelphia. Most recently, he worked for The Atlantic Monthly and the Philadelphia City Paper.