Ardie Fuqua is worried that he's been too funny. “I didn’t get too many laughs, did I?” he asks, sliding into a seat next to me in the back row.
He has just finished a 25-minute set at Caroline’s on Broadway, the argyle-patterned comedy club steps from Times Square, where he is opening Tracy Morgan’s lineup of Thanksgiving Weekend shows. The sound of applause is still ringing throughout the 300-seat club, and Ardie is visibly out of breath, his forehead drenched in sweat from the heat of the spotlights.
It’s easy to understand why overshadowing Tracy would not be on Ardie’s to do list. This is one of their [...]
There's a local comedy dispute a-brewin' in Toronto and New York. Third Beat Magazine has observed that a new comedy club called Comedy Bar NYC, which Ali Farahnakian and the People's Improv Theater (or the P.I.T.) are opening at the end of the month, bears a striking resemblance to a popular Toronto club called Comedy Bar that also has a similar logo and vibe and is frequented by New York comedians when they're in town. As Third Beat notes, there's nothing illegal happening and the original Comedy Bar can't do much about it, but it's certainly ruffling the feathers of the folks at the original club and is sure [...]
Over at the Times, comedy critic Jason Zinoman takes a look this week at the flourishing storytelling scene in NYC, talking about stories and shows by Ophira Eisenberg, Dave Hill, Kevin Allison and others. It's worth a read if you're interested in this oft-overlooked form of comedy.
UCB's 14th annual Del Close Marathon will be held in New York from June 29 to July 1. Cancel your plans, submit shows, begin sculpting a life-size wax bust of Del Close. Do what you gotta do.
It was inevitable that a city so saturated with comedians would stumble onto a storyline so unexpected from their jaded ironies and hipster quips. New York is in the middle of its own romcom and, true to form, the object of its affection is the very thing it always swore it hated: Los Angeles. But if New York is all about the bookish grad-schooly dry wit of, say, Jon Stewart and LA quintessence is the vain bubblegum blather of a Kardashian, then what kind of drama unfolds when the two lock eyes? Turns out: none.
This is not drama. Drama has mystery and tension, and what’s going on with [...]
