The Stage — Live Improv Comedy & Singing Performances

I came to live performance the way most people come to therapy — reluctantly, and only after everything else stopped working. I was twenty-three, freshly moved to New York, and deeply convinced that I was a writer, not a performer. Writers, I told myself, got to stay home. Writers didn't have to make eye contact with strangers and then immediately pretend to be a sentient filing cabinet.

Then a friend dragged me to an improv class at the Magnet. The teacher said something I've never forgotten: "The scene is not about being funny. It's about being present." I didn't believe her. I laughed anyway. And then I kept coming back, week after week, because something about standing in a room full of people who had all agreed to be ridiculous together felt — unexpectedly — like the most honest thing I'd ever done.

Singing came later, and sideways. A friend needed a warm body for a choir rehearsal. I went once. I went again. Somewhere between the second and third season I realized I wasn't just filling a seat — I was filling something in myself. The stage, it turns out, is not where I perform. It's where I stop pretending I'm not.