Surf Reality's House of Urban Savages, also known as Surf Reality, was a 65-seat performance venue on

Manhattan Manhattan ( ) is the most densely populated and geographically smallest of the Boroughs of New York City, five boroughs of New York City. Coextensive with New York County, Manhattan is the County statistics of the United States#Smallest, larg ...

Lower East Side The Lower East Side, sometimes abbreviated as LES, is a historic neighborhood in the southeastern part of Manhattan in New York City. It is located roughly between the Bowery and the East River from Canal to Houston streets. Historically, it w ...

from 1993 to 2003. A laboratory for experimental performance of all kinds, Surf Reality was known for comedy,

performance art Performance art is an artwork or art exhibition created through actions executed by the artist or other participants. It may be witnessed live or through documentation, spontaneously developed or written, and is traditionally presented to a pu ...

, classic

burlesque A burlesque is a literary, dramatic or musical work intended to cause laughter by caricaturing the manner or spirit of serious works, or by ludicrous treatment of their subjects.

, modern music,

vaudeville Vaudeville (; ) is a theatrical genre of variety entertainment which began in France in the middle of the 19th century. A ''vaudeville'' was originally a comedy without psychological or moral intentions, based on a comical situation: a drama ...

and experimental theater. The theater also served as the home for Faceboyz Open Mic. Other acts that passed through Surf include The Upright Citizens Brigade,

Todd Barry Todd Barry (born March 26, 1964) is an American stand-up comedian and actorZinoman, Jason (March 21, 2012)How a Master of Stand-Up Sells the Joke.''New York Times'' best known for his "bone-dry" and extremely sarcastic deadpan delivery. He grew up ...

Dave Chappelle David Khari Webber Chappelle ( ; born August 24, 1973) is an American stand-up comedy, stand-up comedian and actor. He starred in and co-created the satirical comedy sketch series ''Chappelle's Show'' (2003–2006) before quitting in the middle ...

Maggie Estep Margaret Ann "Maggie" Estep (March 20, 1963 – February 12, 2014) was an American writer and poet, best known for coming to prominence during the height of the spoken word and poetry slam performance rage. She published seven books and rel ...

, and

Jonathan Ames Jonathan Ames (; born March 23, 1964) is an American author who has written a number of novels and comic memoirs, and is the creator of two television series, ''Bored to Death'' (HBO) and '' Blunt Talk'' (Starz). In the late '90s and early 2000 ...

. Surf Reality was noted as a venue for "

alternative comedy Alternative comedy is a term coined in the 1980s for a style of comedy that makes a conscious break with the mainstream comedic style of an era. The phrase has had different connotations in different contexts: in the UK, it was used to describe ...

, along with performance art and theater pieces" where "visitors have to be buzzed in through its scrap-metal door and climb up to a loftlike second-floor space" by ''The New York Times''. {{Citation , last=Pareles , first=Jon , author-link=Jon Pareles , title=The New Bohemia: It's East of SoHo And Still Unspoiled , newspaper=The New York Times , publisher=The New York Times Company , date= September 9, 1997 , url = https://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9C07E3DE1F3BF935A1575AC0A961958260&sec=&spon=&pagewanted=3 , accessdate = 2008-08-11

References

External references

Surf Reality website

1996 NY Times article about Surf Reality and Alternative Comedy

2003 Village Voice article about the closing of Surf Reality

Tom Tenney: Surf Reality resident producer and sound artist for 64 Paintings/64 Plays

References

External references

See also