With yet another comedy institution shutting down their main stage in the Peoples Improv Theater (the PIT), I’ve decided to leave the city that I’ve been yes-and-ing for the last 19 months to be sad and trapped inside in a sunnier place. While I have really been making a name for myself on the scene, it’s time I take my talents to a place I can more easily pretend to be happy.
It’s such a shame because I just took a scene work class that I was pretty sure would get me on SNL. For weeks, I had been building the type of confidence you can only get here by being born male and white and meh. But I need to remember that I’m not losing New York; New York is losing me to a place where I don’t have to stay inside all the time, but I still do anyway.
Honestly, this is the best decision. Why spend so much rent on a sad, little apartment when I can feel sad and little ANYWHERE I want to! I’d rather catch some sun, so I know for a fact that the existential void in the pit of my soul isn’t seasonal depression, but permanent depression.
The closing of the PIT was simply the straw that broke the camel’s will to live. I can’t aspire to be on a house team I dislike if there is no house I swear I love. Besides, my indie team, Fart Shark, does weekly shows on Zoom now, which are a fun reminder that at one point I had the ability to feel joy.
So now I live in California, which is also weirdly going through a pandemic. For a while, I tried living with my parents, but they’re bad scene partners: whenever I tried tagging them in, they always played the same character saying stuff like “are you ok, Dale?” and “maybe a walk would be good. When was the last time you left the house?” None of those words are yes, and!
So, goodnight and good luck New York. I hope to see you again. Until then, I’ll be scrolling through Instagram to ignore the sadness at the core of my being in Bakersfield, which I thought was Los Angeles.