As someone that lives in Central Square, I've walked past the East Meets West Bookstore a million times, sometimes seeing a band or some other interesting activity on the other side of its windows. I finally got my proper introduction through Subdrift, an open mic celebrating South Asian culture. The night included poetry, music, dancing and of course standup comedy (which they were more than gracious enough to let me perform).
In a former life I was musician (if you google me hard enough you'll find some really old songs). When I switched to standup the thing I missed most was the collaboration with all the other great performers in Boston. We get stuck in our silos as we get better and better but don't have a lot of cross communication with all the other talent in the city.
When I decided I wanted to start organizing a night of comedy on my own, I knew East Meets was the perfect place to have it. We're in one of the best cities for standup comedy in the world and there are plenty of clubs and comedy nights that showcase that talent. But I knew the collaborative nature of East Meets West would be the right place to tap into the other talent Boston has to offer, so that we could separate ourselves and provide a unique experience.
For our first show, I mixed in storytelling not only because I'm a huge fan but because it has so much synergy with standup comedy. It was important for me to reach out to members of Boston's very accomplished storytelling scene. Luckily we were able get Brendyn Schneider and Robin Maxfield, who did amazing jobs introducing many of our audience members to this field.
We also featured Arty P., Kenice Mobley and Emily Ruskowski as the standups for the night. All of whom are hilarious and have styles that fit in with taking the audience through a journey.
We've had a great audience response and we're excited to continue Standup++. We're going to be on the second Tuesday of every month. Come check out our next one on Tuesday June 10th at 8pm where we'll be featuring slam poetry. And like us on Facebook to be kept in the loop!
*All pictures taken by Sarah Sparks of http://www.massbytes.com/