PRESS

Time Out New York, August 21st, 2003
Time Out New York, May 2nd, 2002
Backstage, May 18th, 2001

Improv-ing with age
From Time Out New York, August 21, 2003

Much like poetry or sex, improv comedy is a pastime that's practiced far too porly by far too many people. The Swarm is the rare troupe that gets it right. No Whose Line-style short-form games, no amateurishly rambling scenes--just smart comedy and well-drawn characters that leave some spectators (mistakenly) convinced that the show must have been scripted. On Friday [August] 22, [2003,] the Swarm celebrates its third anniversary of its Friday-night residency at the Upright Citizens Brigade Theatre, with alumnus Andy Daly (now on Mad TV) returning to the fold. If you've never seen the Swarm, there's never been a better time to drop by. But be warned: It'll probably spoil you for all other improv shows.

See the original article
Back to the top of the page

Telling tales out of school
Teacher-turned-comic Sean Conroy recalls the wretched world of junior high
by Joe Grossman
from Time Out New York, May 2, 2002

In many ways, Sean Conroy's autobiographical one-man show Taught follows the pattern set by such cinematic classroom favorites as To Sir With Love and Dangerous Minds: A tough but passionate teacher takes a job in a neighborhood torn by racial strife, but after initial hostility and mutual distrust, pupilss and teacher alike learn a life lesson more valuable than anything they'd ever find in a textbook.

Unlike Sidney Poitier or Michelle Pfifer, however, Conroy wasn't that tough. And he wasn't particularly passionate. And the lesson he eventually learned was that he wanted to get the hell out of teaching. "Wehn I was in school, I was always making teachers' lives miserable," says Conroy, 34. "there was definitely some karma hitting me when I became a teacher. I shouldn't have been so mean to Mr. Comprecht all those time."

Conroy was never really drawn to the nobility of the professorial profession. He graduated from college in 1989, with little direction and an uninspiring record (he ranked 653rd in a class of 680). A friend set him up with a temporary substitute-teaching job, which led to a six-year tour of duty in Manhattan's blackboard jungle--first as a junior-high sub in Harlem, and then on the Upper West Side in a class for kids with extreme discipline problems.

Taught details the ups and downs of Conroy's career as a reluctant pedagogue. He struggles with clueless administrators and issatisfaction with his chosen path, but naturally, the students are his most formidable adversary. He renders, in all it senseless glory, the vile churlishness that humans seem to perfect between the ages of 11 and 16. A stolen pen angenders an epic battles of wills, as teacher and student vie for symbolic control over the classroom, and surly preteens rebel against him with the strongest racial epithet they can muster: honky. "I thought people only said that in movies," Conroy says, vaguely puzzled.

The omnipresent racial conflict of a white man teaching in Harlem adds considerable punch to the proceedings, but Taught manages to address even the most sensitive matters with grace and good humor. One overly imaginative student accuses Conroy of using his authority as a means of vengeance against black America after David Dinkis's mayoral victory (substitute teaching, of course, is the sweetest revenge). And in one joyfully surreal moment, Conroy earns some cred with his kids during a bizarre head-to-head rap-off, although even that doesn't quite relieve the tension. "There's always that moment in the movie where the kids realize that the teacher is really a good guy afterall," he says. "That doesn't happen in real life. Life is much sloppier than that."

It's been seven years since Conroy quit his day job to pursue comedy full time, but he still displays traces of the schoolmaster within. Check out his riotous weekly stand-up show, Hump Night, and you may catch him correcting cohost Eddie Pepitone's malapropisms or using stern, teacherly tones to silence a heckler. yet while his years in the junior-high trenches left their indelibile mark, he doubts that he had as much impact on his students as they had on him. "Half the kids I taught probably wouldn't even know my name at this point," he says. "But who knows, maybe there's some kid out there who has a shrine to me in his home."

See the original article
Back to the top of the page

Comedy Best Bets:
10 Standout Stand-Ups Worth Watching
By Amelia David
from Backstage, May 18th, 2001

SEAN CONROY
Festival Favorite

If you attended the Aspen Comedy Festival for the past two seasons, one of the stand-ups grabbing your attention with his likeable, easy going wit would certainly have been comedian and director Sean Conroy, who performed his one-man show, "Taught," at the 2001 U.S. Comedy Arts Festival in Aspen, Col., and his show "Who Do You Think You Are?" in the 2000 Festival. As a finalist in the 2000 Comedy Central Laugh Riots Stand-Up Comeptition, this brainy observational comic won the Online Viewers' Choice Award. he's also performed at Carolines in their Best of New Talent Showcase, and appears regularly at Luna Lounge and Stand-Up NY (that's the club where we first heard about Conroy on a recommendation from club owner Cary Hoffman).

Conroy's work as a comedian and director has also been featured in the Marshall's Women of Comedy Festival in both Los Angeles and New York. A self-described "older, less magical Harry Potter," this comic, who'se been known to like his Starbucks coffee as bitter and expensive as he likes his women, has the kind of asides and smart stories about everyday absurdities you wish you'd come up with. He's improvised with Chicago City Limits in national tours and as a regular in their Off-Broadway show, and currently appears with the long-form improv group The Swarm --house team at the Upright Citizens Brigade Theatre. With stand-up appearances on NBC's "Later Friday," sketch characters on "Late Night with Conan O'Brien," as well as "Taught" being featured in the upcoming June 2001 Toyota Comedy Festival in NYC, we predict you'll be seeing much more of this stellar stand-up.

See the original article
Back to the top of the page