Black painted floors, a disco ball and house music set the scene for the Monday night sketch show at the underground theater of the PIT, one of NYC’s most prominent Improv venues. The players were a team called ‘Uncle Space Ranch’ , a group of people comprised of mostly Jewish Generation Y members, now corporate sell outs working for the machine. I use the term sell-outs loosely because while it does have a derogatory ring, it does accurately impose the impression that these players were clearly of a certain type. Although their somewhat creative venture (a sketch comedy group) seemed really small and extra-extra-curricular, they still seemed to have a ton of ambitions for the project. They asked the crowd to like and follow them on all forms of social media and repeated their team name several times before and after the show. I use the term Jewish not because there were Jewish jokes involved but because I spotted some ‘Chai’ necklaces among the players and could just feel the Birthright experience oozing out of them. The latter characteristic is abstract but relevant to the overall impression of the performers. Even though they were all still in work clothes (sans ties) they brought on stage with them a variety of party shop bought props and a few dress changes. This gave me the impression that the show was at least planned and actually ardently awaited for. In hindsight, I feel that if they didn’t have props, they could have been a more entertaining team as they frequently relied on the props for jokes and plot.  They didn’t actually have to rely on the props as they were funny actors themselves, however I suppose since they already put in the effort to buy them they wanted to use them to the fullest extent. The overall vibe the actors gave off was casual but meaningful- as though they were rather blasé about performing since they had better projects to worry about but in all actuality they really did want to shine onstage.

The first sketch presented to the audience was based on a humorous play on the cookie brand ‘Famous Amos’, which they played on as ‘Famous Anus’. The man playing Amos described the bodily way his cookies were made while the remaining cast members, playing children, continued to eat actual Famous Amos cookies. The box was then passed around to the audience, who was more or less disheartened about eating the cookies. Amos goes on to drink a bottle of corn syrup in order ro demonstrate his cookie making abilities, at which point the cast members cough out their cookies. This is a type of joke the 30 somethings in the audience enjoyed as they were all well aware of the stigma that corn syrup and other bad food ingredients have to the yuppie Whole Foods Trader Joes going crowd, which they attend to religiously. This type of self-deprecating humor was fairly amusing and refreshing to see as 30 somethings take themselves too seriously in this sense and seeing some of their most profound beliefs nullified made it entertaining. The jokes that followed expanded on this concept. The probably-NYU educated team joked about how excited they were to have an NYU intern in the office, as since he came from NYU Tisch he must have experienced the best education in the world and have learned all the right acting methods (“Give us a monologue.” “Can’t. We only learn monologues after 2 years of study”) at his school. That one got a lot of grumbled laughter from the crowd which was probably also NYU educated and thus very much could relate. Then they had a few generic sketches like a good cop bad cop lawyer, a public access fall decorating show starring Michael Shannon, and an inept doctor all of which strongly smelled of Saturday Night Live copycatting.  Their most poignant skit, the one perhaps most set up as social commentary, was their skit at a bar, where a corporate sell out is no longer welcomed by his friends since he turned 30. He, while sipping on an organic beer, explains to his borderline 20 something friends (depicted drinking discounted beer and wearing backward baseball caps) how it’s not so bad being 30, as he now has the credit score to finance a condo with his fiancé, go on day trips to Long Island using the company’s Zipcar, and order Seamless at work. As soon as another cast member comes in, holding a glass of red wine, and asks if he could turn on a CD, the 30 something calls the 40 something a ‘douchebag’ and regains his status with his friends. All in summary, these jokes somewhat cleverly played on the audience’s perception of their lives and gave them something very relatable and very in tune with current culture. Their work was not professional but clearly well-rehearsed and done by team members with obvious experience in comedy and improv. While I found some of their jokes and especially their props to be crude and overdone, I felt that they had done a good job expressing their lives and their interests through the act of comedy and use of an open safe space such as the PIT’s underground stage.

Despite my ill prospects for the show, the venue was full of people- every chair was filled on the ground was filled, even the bar. Many latecomers were even standing in the back for the entire duration of the forty-five minute show. While the atmosphere was friendly and laid back- the cast members stuck around to speak to some people in the crowd- there was a clear mutual comradeship among the people there, evidently themselves performers. This gave me the sense that although the performances at the PIT can be casual, the players themselves are serious about their craft and their passion for creating and performing good work for an audience. For those interested in making entertainment contacts or finding a creative tribe, the PIT is a place that encourages interaction and experimentation even if the resources provided are feeble- closer to Black Box theater- than bigger comedy stages elsewhere. Going to see ‘Uncle Space Ranch’ gave me a good example of just hundreds of NYC sketch and improv teams that perform every day of the week to well-connected 30 something crowds and interested parents, friends and onlookers.