Eric Jaffe Aces āC-ā at Theatre Row!
AFOās Artistic Director, Michael Wolk, talks to Eric Jaffe about his comedic solo piece, C-. Show opens at Theatre Row TONIGHT! There are still tickets available for Thursday and Saturday, Dec. 7th and 9th!Ā
Michael Wolk: I applaud āC-ā for daring to present the underbelly ā and beer belly ā of Americansā aspiration for higher education.
Eric Jaffe: Like a lot of things in this country, the conversation (about college) is really conducted by upper-class wealthier people. The working-class viewpoint is not really represented strongly in almost any area in the media. Weāre paying a price now, in terms of who our President is. Thereās a way in which the whole conversation about higher education has been held only among people who had a very positive experience. If you didnāt have that experience, youāre not part of the conversationā¦youāre not influencing academic policy. And itās been a learning experience for me, seeing how the ideas that I express in it land with the audiences.
MW: What has it been like self-producing this short run off-Broadway in midtown?
EJ: Itās crazy, what Iāve had to go through to get a 55-seat space that is a place that is presentable for my show is just ridiculous. What can I say? Itās insaneā¦ If youāre willing to invest a lot of money up front then you can get the word out, but if you donāt get good word-of- mouth like wildfire, then youāre gonna lose money. But Iām looking forward to doing this showāI really enjoy performing it nowāand I understand that if I want to continue with this, this is just one step in that process. And Iām learning a lot.Ā Down the road, Iād like to do the show once a month ā and then I can promote it appropriately.
MW: Not to blow your day job cover, but you are kind of a techie. How did you get into solo performance?
EJ: I grew up as a big fan of stand-up comedy. My friends and I would go to comedy all the time. That was our default thing. We werenāt huge drinkersāour slogan was āAlways a good time at a comedy club.ā And I sort of always wanted to be a comedianā¦I started to pursue it around 1999 or so. And I had a little bit of success in terms of getting laughsāas opposed to say earning moneyābut what I found was that the format was kind of restrictive. I saw Jails,
Hospitals, and Hip-Hop by Danny Hoch, and I thought, āOh, thatās what I want to do,ā because you can be comedic, but you have this space to talk about something thatās more serious. And Iāve never looked back.
