‘Night of Queer Comedy’ is back at Sea Tea Comedy just in time for Hartford Pride Festival
The Hartford Pride Festival is back, and the festivities aren’t just happening on Trumbull Street on Saturday.
That overwhelming downtown celebration is just one of many LGBTQ+ events happening that day — and throughout the month — as September is as much of a Pride month in Connecticut as June is in many other states.
Saturday night, Sea Tea Improv was inspired to revive its “Be Yourself Show: A Night of Queer Comedy” at 7 p.m. at its theater on Asylum Street.
The improv performance space first held its first “Be Yourself Show” in 2016 but hasn’t done it in the past few years. Organizer Daniel Davidson, a longtime Sea Tea company member whose current title is associate education director, says “it’s kind of a tongue-in-cheek name for the show, since we are a comedy troupe, but this is a real show, a
Pride show.”
Davidson knew of some LGBTQ+ performers who would jump right into the project, then sounded out others.
“I know a couple of people who are out, but there were others who might not be, so it was like, ‘Should we just ask?’ ” he said.
He also reached out to the Sea Tea comedy community at large, which includes a core improv company, touring company and various smaller teams as well as students at the many improv classes Sea Tea runs. Davidson ended up with “a mix of people, some I’ve never performed with and others whom I’ve performed with for years.”
Davidson says that Sea Tea is interested in doing more LGBTQ+ programming. Most are his own projects, like full-length improv shows in the styles of Tennessee Williams and Oscar Wilde, and offshoots of a Sea Tea class he teaches on theatrical improv.
“I wish that there was a more explicit [LGBTQ+] presence” in improv in general, he says, and that some of the shows could happen outside of Pride-oriented months. He has seen queer improv teams at improv companies in other cities, but Sea Tea has never had a regular LGBTQ+ team itself.
Davidson notes that “as welcoming as we are as a company, we live in a heteronormative world,” and that many aspects of comedy are based on preconceptions of society at large.
“The default on the improv stage is the default on life,” he said. “That means when you do a relationship [routine] onstage, the audience’s assumption is that the relationship is same-sex.”
The mere act of a male performer deciding to play a female role in a sketch gets an automatic laugh from some audiences, he says.
The “Be Yourself Show” consists of two sets. The first half, hosted by Allie Rivera, uses the accustomed short-form improv sketch format.
The second half, hosted by Davidson, will be “personal stories. We encourage comingout stories. Other stories are welcome, but where else can you hear coming-out stories?
“Some of my stories, I just wouldn’t do for a mixed crowd. For some crowds, they might seem sexually explicit, but in this show they’re just part of life.”
An amusing “Frequently Asked Questions” section about “The Be Yourself Show” on the Sea Tea website answers the query “If I come to this show, am I “outing” myself?” with the answer “That would be great!” and explains that the “I” in LGBTQI, often thought to stand for “intersex,” in this case might mean “improv.”
”The Be Yourself Show: A Night of Queer Comedy” will be held Saturday at 7 p.m. at Sea Tea Comedy Theater, 15 Asylum St., Hartford. $10. seateaimprov.com.