East Village Basement has become a home for living-room theater. 

Whereas a drawing-room play refers to the location of the characters, living-room theater describes the location of where the audience sees the show. For most of the industry, living-room theater exists basically only for early staged readings, or benefit performances for the donor class. But East Village Basement feels like a regular domestic setting, and how the staging of each production uses the space  — and furnishes it — stands as a testament to the mutability of living-room theater. 

Chloe Troast’s Pepper Slit is East Village Basement’s current resident, and her performance-art farce provides the opportunity — true to the 80-minute evening’s Live! In Her Living Room title — to temporarily live in the very small living room of a very chaotic live performer, where no one is out of her comedic reach, literally.

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Debra Winger and Arliss Howard’s unlikely decision to revive The Gin Game in the tiny Housing Works Bookstore provided a similarly-intimate opportunity to be intensely proximal to a brand of acting on the other end of the stylistic spectrum from Pepper Slit. This two-hander granted audiences the privilege to be in a room with the more restrained minimalistic naturalism of Winger and Howard’s famed screen acting.

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Back to Chloe Troast.

SNL remains elite at scouting talent…and absolutely piss-poor at letting them be funny. Perhaps Lorne Michaels’ square-ass institution is inhospitable to truly renegade comedians? But given the series’ nationally-mocked reputation, NBC could consider pivoting to Troast’s ilk of chaotic clowning, which has become popular in major theatrical markets. Leave the milquetoast pop-culture political comedy behind, and usher in an era of uncharacterizably envelope-pushing humor, through the likes of such specialists as Troast, Zach Zucker, Natalie Palamides, etc. etc. etc.

Cole Escola should be the white whale…even though Mary Todd has probably already outkicked SNL’s normie coverage.