A Eulogy for the Annoyance Theatre in New York

The Annoyance Theatre closed its New York space last night. That sucks ass.

My name is Mary Houlihan. I’m what the industry calls an up-and-coming emerging female comedienne, and I have called the Annoyance Theatre my home for the past two years. Well, I call my apartment my home, because it has all my my shower supplies. But I’ve been performing at Annoyance every week for the past two years, and I gotta say, it rocked ass.

I did a monthly show there called Cartoon Monsoon with my friends Joe Rumrill, Tim Platt and Steve DeSiena. Each month we put on a whole new show, taking turns writing the script each time. We cast our friends to play extra characters and we met at a pizza place or a bar to read through the scripts. We usually read the script once or twice before just hanging out and eventually saying, “Well whatever, just remember the general gist and if we forget our lines we’ll go to Riff City.” People always complimented us afterwards on our dense joke-filled show, but the truth is, baby, we were in Riff City.

Cartoon Monsoon was on the first Friday of every month for two years, and we always ended up spending the rest of the night at the theater and seeing the other shows and getting shit-blasted on Sixpoints. Sometimes, if I had been going too hard, I would get shit-blasted on Sprite instead.

There was often a variety show on after Cartoon Monsoon called The Juice, hosted by Carmen Christopher. It’s a stand-up/sketch/improv/”???” showcase, and is always attended by The Juice’s #1 fan, Brian Marks, an EMT who lives near Nyack I think, who always sits in the front row and wears a hat that says “THE JUICE’S #1 FAN.”

Sometimes instead of The Juice, our show was followed by Louder Than Jazz, hosted by Matt Barats. It’s named as such because, at that time in the night, the theater was filled with the upstairs din of trained musicians rudely playing jazz music loud enough that we couldn’t properly hear ingenious bits like “Mom Of Farting Boys,” or “Fat Deadpool.” At Louder Than Jazz, a performer plays a YouTube video they found, then performs a bit or characters based on the video. I think it’s the best idea for a show ever, but please don’t tell Matt Barats that I said that. In fact, if he asks, please say I said something like “yeah, that show’s funny, I guess,” while rolling a cigarette out of loose tobacco while leaning against a sick-ass ‘84 Chevy Blazer I painted matte black and tricked out with giant monster truck wheels.

Friday nights always ended with Singles Motel, an improv jam hosted by Wes Haney. Unlike other improv jams, however, it rocked ass. Singles Motel participants included new improvisors, good improvisors, bad improvisors, stand-up comedians who rocked ass at going to Riff City but had never done “improv” per se, funny friends—everybody. It ruled because there were lots of really funny people with different skill sets and different philosophies on groundedness vs. zaniness, and I wanna see those people meet in the middle to figure out what’s funny together, instead of seeing a buncha people who paid $2,000 to train at the same improv school perform their curriculum for you. I have seen some of the dumbest scenes in my life at Singles Motel, and I mean that in the highest form of compliment. So high, in fact, that all others should feel deeply insulted.

On Saturdays I performed in a weekly improv show with Sam Taggart called Mary & Sam Do Improv, followed by another improv show called Michael Jordan Steakhouse. After MJS I got to watch Lake Homo High, a comedy play that parodied teen dramas, wherein everyone in the school, including the teachers, was gay. I got to be in it twice, once as Lady Gaga and another time as “CIA Lady.”

I’m very lucky that the Annoyance popped up at this opportune moment where my friends and I were all doing fun, interesting, well-attended and—dare I say—buzzin’ shows at bars and music venues, as opposed to the established theaters where you have to buy six $400 improv or sketch classes to even have them look at you. Being new in town, the Annoyance gave show slots to a lot of people who had created shows and followings on their own, without having to pay the theatre money or take classes. It was very mutually beneficial.

Though the theatre has now closed, all these shows are so fucking funny and worthwhile that they’ll have absolutely no problem finding homes again—at music venues, bars, galleries, wherever. But I think it’s a pretty huge loss to lose that home base, that clubhouse feeling you’d get when you’d show up to the Annoyance on a Friday or Saturday and get to see four of the funniest fucking shows in a row, guzzling beer or Sprite with your best friends the whole time.

Mary Houlihan is a comedian based in New York.