photo by Keith Huang

Something that usually brings me a sense of peace and happiness in my life (besides an enjoyable exercise regime) is my comedy stuff.

When I first started acting, I liked to perform all kinds of material not just comedic things. As I’ve gotten older though, whether it’s due to opportunity or desire, I’ve shied away from the more serious stuff and spent pretty much all my post-college performance efforts on comedy. Honestly, it’s a blast. I know today that I will look back on it when I’m old and gray and remember it very fondly. To say it simply, putting on comedy shows with my friends is one of the best things about my life.

My improv group, The Baldwins, is made up of 8 fantastic people. We’ve just begun our third year together as a House Team at the Peoples Improv Theater, performing every Wednesday night at 9pm.

For anyone who doesn’t know much about the different gradients of comedy performance, improv comedy involves performers making up a show on the spot. Improv can take many different forms, but what The Baldwins do is something called long-form improv. We get a suggestion from the audience, usually just a word or a phrase, and we then make up a twenty minute theater piece inspired by that word or phrase. There are no scripts, no pre-written lines or ideas, we just make it up as we go and hope for the best!

My Baldwins teammates are funny, brilliant, kind people. And over the years, they’ve become my cherished friends and colleagues. There’s something very rewarding about essentially playing pretend with seven other grown-ups in front of a room full of strangers. I would imagine it’s not for everyone, but for those of us who couldn’t keep our mouths shut during school when we were kids, it’s a great release. And the make-it-up-as-we-go part is exhilarating to say the least. It’s like tight-rope walking without the death wish.

I didn’t exactly expect to end up being an improviser even though I always admired the kids who were on the improv team at my high school. I preferred to stick to scripted material back then, and felt way too nervous to try to do what they were doing. Beyond that, improv games were sometimes part of my acting-class warm-ups in high school and I took the occasional (required) improv class in college, but I didn’t become truly interested in the whole improv enchilada until I’d graduated from NYU.

After discovering The PIT through my friend (now boyfriend!) Kevin, and after spending a lot of time becoming part of the community at the theater, I eventually caught the bug and took all the improv class levels The PIT offered. Then I auditioned for a House Team. And here we are.

Baldwins 2009

Besides providing an opportunity for people to practice the craft of improv every week, The PIT also fosters a great community of comedians, artists, actors and writers, all of whom are very interesting, supportive and open-minded people.  Some of my closest friends are people I’ve met through The PIT.

Aside from the weekly improv practices and shows, I also spend my comedic energy with my sketch comedy group, Harvard Sailing Team.

There are 9 members of Harvard Sailing Team: Chris, Billy, Clayton, Adam, Rebecca, Sara, Katie, Faryn and me.

photo by Alex Delgado

Most of us met in acting school at NYU. After we graduated, Chris and Billy, who’d grown up together on Long Island, got together to do some comedy writing. Long story short, after some workshops, meetings, shows and different iterations of what would eventually become the Harvard Sailing Team as it is today, the 9 of us have now been making a name for ourselves in the New York comedy community for almost 5 years.

HST shooting Sesame Street, photo by someone using Billy Scafuri's camera

These people are, for all intents and purposes, my New York family. We love each other, we like each other, we don’t always like each other, we communicate really well sometimes and not so well other times, we’ve traveled around the country together, we’ve been there for each other’s birthdays, graduations, milestones, losses, break-ups, new pets, dying pets (Floyd!), and everything in between.

The members of Harvard Sailing Team can probably make me laugh harder than anyone else in my life.

photo by Billy Scafuri

We also take our work as a sketch comedy group very seriously, which is probably one of our strengths.

photo by Billy Scafuri

photo by Billy Scafuri

Harvard Sailing Team currently performs every Saturday night at 9:30pm at The PIT.

I’m well aware that there might come a time in my life when this particular group, as it functions today, won’t be around, when I won’t see my best friends every Tuesday night for rehearsal and every Saturday night for a show, when I won’t have to call in sick to work to shoot a sketch video or leave early to make it to a performance on time. I’m also well aware that getting to perform to packed houses twice a week, getting to do improv and sketch comedy on a New York City stage twice a week, is an amazing gift.

My goal for the upcoming days and weeks is to remind myself of that as often as possible and to cherish it all while it’s still around.