By Haines Eason
Working from home. Telehealth. Online shopping. Which pandemic trends will remain, and which will fade? Charlottesville native Kate Lambert, a comedian whose resume includes The Second City and Chicago Improv act The Katydids (which sold the hit “Teachers” to TV Land), is part of something that producer Jill Paiz-Bourque of the livestream site RushTix bets will survive.
“When the pandemic hit, auditions and productions shut down,” Lambert says. “People couldn’t be in the same room anymore, so you had a bunch of creative people by themselves, looking for outlets.” She chose to quarantine with her parents at their home overlooking the Rivanna Reservoir.
“It was so difficult for so many, and I think humor is so critical in a time like this,” says Lambert. “I participated in a virtual sketch show and, since I was quarantining with my family, my brother and sister-in-law helped me film.”
Performers like Lambert went to great lengths to find their audiences, and audiences wound up discovering new acts and coming back for more. Paiz-Bourque signed several new clients, and her strong move into this new realm drew the attention of The New York Times, which recently published “Is Livestreamed Stand-up Here to Stay?” On May 24, Lambert will host RushTix’s “Very Punny,” a 60-minute “pun off” for audiences worldwide—however, it will also have a live audience, something RushTix claims comedy is all about.
So if even a streaming comedy production company acknowledges that a live audience is an important part of the experience, where does the future lie? Opinions differ. For UVA Drama instructor Marianne Kubik, the future is on the stage, in front of people. Kubik notes that challenges faced this year led to creative solutions and opened up more opportunities to integrate technology, and she sees faculty and students experimenting with livestreaming original content in the future, but “there is nothing quite like being in a room shared by storytellers and witnesses to that event,” she says. “I think we’re all yearning for the collective dialogue that comes with sharing the same space.”
During the pandemic, Kubik and her department focused on capturing the details of their performers’ work, choosing to pre-record, edit, and present one-off shows rather that stream the performances.
“If we streamed multiple performances, none of these would have a live audience in the room for the actors to sense and respond to,” Kubik says. “We take that ingredient for granted when considering live performance, and its loss can be challenging to the theater actor. An audience feeds the actor, just as having others bear witness to our own choices and actions feeds us. Theater is not for the actor, it’s for the audience.”
Both RushTix and Kubik might agree on the importance of the audience, but Paiz-Bourque sees her platform as the future, noting Netflix and Spotify “eclipsed” television and radio because the streaming services are always available and have unlimited reach. In the Times story, she claimed “RushTix could eclipse Live Nation because it’s streaming, it’s global, it’s unlimited.”
Lambert has appeared on “Reno 911!,” “The Last Show Left on Earth,” “Today” and “Last Call with Carson Daly,” all of which are built around teamwork and a set. She has an established life in Los Angeles, yet she returns to Charlottesville often. A horse lover, Lambert says her favorite way to clear her head is to escape on long drives through central Virginia farm country.
“My parents recently moved back to Charlottesville,” she says, “and when I come to visit, I always feel like the people you grew up with know you in a way a newer friend can’t. I mean, they knew you when you peed your pants playing hide and seek in preschool and had to wear underwear from the lost and found. That really happened to me. The ’80s. What a time,” she says, laughing.
Place clearly matters to Lambert, and so do the people who make it home. But her art matters, too, and time will tell if she and others find their audience through a glowing screen or the haze of a darkened club. Or maybe both.
