One in Vermillion: A Comedian’s Tale
Some people call comedy improv a “gateway drug” that can lead to a life plagued by comedy, writing, acting, and the arts as a whole. “If you can make it doing improv, well, you can hopefully make it doing something else, but who really knows,” Patrick Vermillion said as he stood outside the PIT Loft on 23rd St. after a comedy improv show he performed with his group, New Greta.
New Greta — which is made up of Vermillion and six other comedic improvisers — officially formed as an improv team in 2015, though by that point they had already been performing together for years while attending Sarah Lawrence College in Bronxville, New York. Maxwell Hegley, another member of New Greta, said that Vermillion has always been the leader of the group, adding that he and the other members sometimes refer to Vermillion as “Father Greta.”
Vermillion, now 24 years old, is a rather large man, both in stature and in presence. He’s tall and burly, and has a full, brown beard and thick-framed glasses on his face. Even without his “Father Greta” title, Vermillion comes off rather dad-like.
Vermillion’s comedic ability is wide-ranging, as his humor spans the genres of improv, satire, slapstick, deadpan, and even absurdity. Since Donald Trump’s shocking electoral victory in November, Vermillion has largely leaned towards political humor. His most recent project was a one-act comedic play called Flouridians: A Play By Alex Jones, which, despite the misleading name, was actually written by Vermillion himself. The play’s description reads:
“In a world where everything Alex Jones believes is 100% true, one formerly-liberal man is the only one who can stop the DNC illuminati lizard people from taking over the world.”
Not all of Vermillion’s recent work has a political edge to it, though. In April, Vermillion and Hegley spent an afternoon watching all seven (7!) Fast & Furious films while broadcasting their marathon on Facebook Live. For hours on end, Vermillion and Hegley could be seen online, sitting on a couch, fixated with the Vin Diesel-led franchise; the camera was humorously facing them the entire time, not the screen, so viewers could only hear the films playing in the background.
This simple-yet-absurd type of humor is Vermillion’s signature skill. He’s the type of comedian who can stand on stage, or at a bar, or probably just about anywhere, doing anything, and have everyone around him laughing hysterically. This must have something to do with his ingenuity, his genuineness, and his subtlety as a comedian. Having had experience as both a dramatic actor and a comedic writer, Vermillion is able to merge these skills perfectly in his comedy, resulting in his many clever, convincing characters and seriously funny jokes.
But life isn’t all laughs for Vermillion, who, like countless other young, aspiring artists, has struggled to get by simply on his comedic and dramatic abilities. Since graduating college in 2015, Vermillion has had an almost comedically different side-job: working as a software developer.
Vermillion was hired by Herrick, Feinstein LLP, a law firm in New York City, as a junior software developer, and he worked there for almost two years until recently being laid off. “Yeah, so if you know anyone who’s looking to hire a comedian or a software developer, I’m their guy,” Vermillion says with a muffled chuckle.
But the future for Vermillion lies in comedy, not software development, he explained, still standing outside of the PIT Loft, greeting a few people who attended the show. For Vermillion, comedy has opened up new doors, changed his perspective, and even gotten him in with the ladies. Vermillion met his girlfriend, Ashley, at an indie comedy show last year. “One of the cool things about doing comedy in New York, is while none of us doing it really make any money, we do have a sort of community we’ve formed,” Vermillion said.
That community of comedians spans from Manhattan to Brooklyn and beyond, and Vermillion has booked several gigs because of the connections he’s made here. Last year, New Greta won the Indie Cage Match Tournament at the Del Close Marathon, a massive, annual improv festival started by Upright Citizens Brigade.
Vermillion isn’t exactly sure what he’ll be doing in five years, or even in one, but if he can have it his way, he’ll still be in New York, doing comedy as much as he can and in whatever capacity he can.
