Death by a Thousand Cuts at the Upright Citizen’s Brigade Theatre
Trigger Warnings: sexual assault, racism, improv comedy
I thought long and hard about whether to share this at all. Especially when writing publically about sexual assault can get you sued by the person who has done the assaulting. Yet, I write this because holding in all of these immensely negative feelings; sadness, frustration, anger, and pain; feels much worse than the danger of sharing them.
I write while sick with the flu, body aching. I got sick in part by staying out late to honor the closing of The Beast, UCB’s East Village location, a space I hold dear to my heart. The night prior was also a late one performing with The Code Switch, an all people of color improv team that explores differences in communication at the Caveat Theatre. It did not help that in trying to save money I waited for 40 minutes in the polar vortex for two different trains on the hour-long ride. Doing comedy on a budget can take a toll on your health.
I am asking myself why am I failing at comedy? Because it is hard. It is hard because it takes a lot of time, effort, and talent. And it is harder still when you have to overcome obstacles to entry. Case in point we live in a society that is stratified by race and class. Put eloquently in the words of the great Stuart Hall, “race is the milieu through which class is lived.” That means people of color are less likely to have the extra $500 laying around to finance comedy classes at institutions like UCB. This we know, as does the theatre, that is why people like Eric Tanouye and Keisha Zollar among others have done really great work on the scholarship program in New York City.
But there are other non-financial barriers to entry. Time is also dependent on money, the less of your time spent on financing your means of subsistence the more you have to devote to your craft and your career. In addition to this, comedy is not an individual activity. The exception maybe is stand-up, but I would still argue that even that does not happen in a vacuum. In the context of UCB there are gatekeepers who determine whether or not you are funny enough to be affiliated with the theatre. I feel really lucky to have made it on a house team as a writer. To some degree, my success there feels like it has come from the fact that I was able to submit my packet blind. Writers are the only folks at the theatre who are able to do this for obvious reasons.
Then there is the death by a thousand cuts. Even when you ‘succeed,’ there are interactions that seem to cut you down. The deepest cutting of which is having to audition for a person who sexually assaulted you.
A few years back my all-women-of-color improv team Affirmative Action had a show at which Airwolf a UCB house team was also playing. A member of the team touched my ass in passing in a subtle way he could pass off as an accident. That is what I tried to convince myself of when it happened, ‘just an accident.’ Even though I bristled at the touch and immediately knew it was on purpose, a slow and controlled movement in a wide-enough hallway would not lead to accidentally bumping someone let alone caressing their butt. I did not want to believe or have to deal with someone touching me without my consent. Let alone have to take on a teacher and a house team member at the Upright Citizens Brigade Theatre. Now I hate that I see his stupid face in passing at the Training Center, judging me at auditions, and literally physically bumping into me at the closing of The Beast, a place I cherish. It’s like having a personal less-accomplished Brett Kavanaugh to remind you that patriarchy prospers and assaulting people is fine.
For those who would urge, ‘you should report it,’ please know that I did. But the staff member who was handling it in 2016 had no formal process at the time. UCB was literally creating their policy as they went along. They found that there was not ‘sufficient proof’ and that too much time had passed. But I swear, shortly after the incident occurred I heard from a cis white man on a Harold team who coached a friend that this ass-toucher was known to be a creep to women, another of UCB’s not-so-secret predatory members. Unfortunately for me, there will never be enough time passed that will make me feel comfortable around this individual.
Attending the closing of The Beast was like an aggregation of new and “Best Of” microaggressions. Besides literally running into the aforementioned botty-fondler teacher, I also ran into a white friend who had previously told me that the reason I had been admitted into The Academy (the newest and most advanced level of the UCB course scheme) was because I was a woman of color and that the theatre needed more of us. While that is true that the theatre definitely needs diversity, I was actually told I was admitted because I had a great audition and got a callback the year they created The Academy. At the moment she uttered her assessment I did not have the strength to explain why it was offensive. I still haven’t found it.
Then there was the next white friend who spent an uncomfortable amount of time praising another person on my sketch team. My teammate is indeed very talented and worthy of the highest praise. It just feels awkward when the person levying that praise does not ask a single question about your experience such as how your sketches went.
All of these things individually hurt, some, of course, more than others. Taken as a totality of shittiness, they create an overwhelming impetus to quit comedy or at least UCB. These are just the ones that happened in a short span. These are not even the men who have tricked me into date settings under the pretense of comedy collaboration, or the offers of collaboration that evaporate once I disclose that I am not interested in a romantic relationship. The aggregation of these pains can only be understood through an intersectional feminist lens. Because of the size, shape, and color of the body I was born into, some men feel entitled to touch me. Some people feel it has given me advantages. Other people just don’t register me. I get to be an object, advantaged, or invisible to any given person at any given time. It’s like having a shitty superpower I can’t control.
Still, some folks familiar with the theatre may be wondering, “Are you just bitter because you didn’t get a Lloyd callback?” 100%. Absolutely I am. But it is in the context of putting up with all of the other acts of aggression and microaggression that is infuriating. It is the aforementioned cuts coupled with members of the UCB Theatre like Michael Delaney posting publicly minimizing that comedy is hard and harder still for certain groups of people. His post exemplifies a particular tone-deaf response to well-documented facts about the overlapping and multifaceted ways oppression operates. It is the fury of knowing that I am actually good at comedy and actually a decent improvisor, but feeling set up to fail and have my PTSD triggered in an audition setting where someone who fucking sexually assaulted me gets to decide if I am funny. That is way too much to deal with. Especially when being in a room with that person makes the bottom of my stomach fall out.
It makes me wonder if Michael Delaney has ever had to audition for someone who touched intimate parts of his body without his consent? Has Michael Delaney ever had to pull aside a friend and do the hand-holding and emotional labor of confronting racism and white fragility? Has he ever just had to awkwardly navigate feeling invisible? It takes work to do these things, precious time and energy that could be devoted to literally anything else: eating donuts, working off said donuts, or I dunno, getting better at comedy. And all these things occur at a theatre whose rules of conduct clearly feature the directive “Don’t be a jerk.” Sadly, perhaps all the ways one can be a jerk bear elaborating?
It’s too much. It is too much to have your success accredited to the very things that are barriers to it. It is too much to feel like no matter how hard or much you shine, you will always be invisible to many people. It is too much to feel like someone who hurt you gets away with it and gets to keep hurting you. And maybe I would still not have done well had I been in a room without someone who sexually assaulted me, but I will never know since It was either attend my audition or not be considered at all.
I am sharing this with the hope of achieving some personal catharsis. That, in getting this out, in naming these feelings, the pain of aggressions macro and micro, of inequality personal and institutional, I can let it go and be unburdened from this overwhelming sadness. I also hope that in speaking up about my experience other assault survivors will feel empowered to speak out and perhaps our beloved ‘community’ will eventually be healed from these abuses of power. But hey, maybe I have just been “mollycoddled” (thanks Michael Delaney) and need to stop whining. ❧
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Share your stories of micro/macroaggressions: #1000cuts
