Eric Jaffe Aces âC-â at Theatre Row!
AFOâs 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!Â
Michael Wolk: I applaud âC-â for daring to present the underbelly â and beer belly â of Americansâ 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. Weâre paying a price now, in terms of who our President is. Thereâs a way in which the whole conversation about higher education has been held only among people who had a very positive experience. If you didnât have that experience, youâre not part of the conversationâŠyouâre not influencing academic policy. And itâs 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: Itâs crazy, what Iâve 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? Itâs insane⊠If youâre willing to invest a lot of money up front then you can get the word out, but if you donât get good word-of- mouth like wildfire, then youâre gonna lose money. But Iâm looking forward to doing this showâI really enjoy performing it nowâand I understand that if I want to continue with this, this is just one step in that process. And Iâm learning a lot. Down the road, Iâd like to do the show once a month â 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 werenât huge drinkersâour slogan was âAlways a good time at a comedy club.â And I sort of always wanted to be a comedianâŠI started to pursue it around 1999 or so. And I had a little bit of success in terms of getting laughsâas opposed to say earning moneyâbut what I found was that the format was kind of restrictive. I saw Jails, Hospitals, and Hip-Hop by Danny Hoch, and I thought, âOh, thatâs what I want to do,â because you can be comedic, but you have this space to talk about something thatâs more serious. And Iâve never looked back.
