My house smells like slow-cooked pot roast and marijuana.
Around this time five years ago, in 2015, I gave up my studio apartment to travel in a musty 12-passenger van with the Second City National Touring Company as the newest member of BlueCo. I was listening to five adults make a bit out of every sentence, drinking my weight in Jameson from a flask I once used as a prop, and figuring out what my road to comedy success could look like. With BlueCo boasting alumni like Amy Poehler, Jordan Klepper, Tina Fey, and Stephen Colbert, I couldn’t help but tune out the bits, stare out into the middle-of-nowhere fields of America, and fantasize about where this part of the journey could take me. Would I eventually write my own show that would get picked up by a major network and last for years? Would I write a show that would tank and get cancelled before the first season was over? Would putting up with earning $110 a week, scraping together my out-of-town per diem to finance my life in Chicago, and rewriting the end of this Angela Shelton monologue to update the now-outdated-yet-still-applicable references get me to my dream? Would the person I wanted to be when I grew up, the person I’d been fantasizing about since I was my daughter’s age, suddenly appear now that I am at the Second City?
Monday Night Munchies: A 420 Comedy Show Mon 4/20, 8 PM, @North Bar, 1637 W. North, tickets.chicagoreader.com, $10.
I met Rueben Echols while performing my second play at eta, and he recruited me to work at Black Ensemble Theater. I performed in kids theater during the day and on the mainstage at night. At the kids show, we were given the freedom to “make the character your own.” It came naturally. I had been making things my own since my days at Gary Christian Center, a nondenominational church that really became my first audience. You need somebody to do announcements? Perfect time to joke in front of an entire congregation. Drama club? Sign me up, please. Praise dance? Youth choir? My church experience was really a Christian version of Fame. It’s where I started paying my performing and rehearsal dues. At Black Ensemble Theater, I got a chance to do it all again—sing in beautiful ensembles, dance intricate choreography, and perform shows for a live crowd.
The more tumultuous my Second City life became, the more I craved to just simply play on stage with people I trusted. I’ve been fortunate, then, that I’ve gotten to play with my friends in 3Peat, a group formed a few years ago by Black improvisers who were tired of being the only Black person in an improv group. They held down Monday nights at iO and would often ask me to join. I valued my Monday nights, and the last thing I wanted to do was leave my kid and the south side to go to another improv theater. But the players at 3Peat were becoming a much-needed community outside of the white improv world.
Mon 4/20, 8 PM, @North Bar, 1637 W. North, tickets.chicagoreader.com, $10.
