Rachel Lenihan has her cat, Smokey, to thank for a career in comedy.
Growing up, Lenihan already loved art and acting in theater productions at Stissing Mountain High School. But something extra-special clicked when she first attended a comedy workshop sponsored by the New York State Theater Education Association, which brought professional comics in to work with students from across the state.
“Our first comedy lesson was to write about something that made us angry, and my cat had just thrown up on the bed,” says Lenihan. “That was the big drama in my life at the time.”
From there, Lenihan has continued to build her comic credentials with a mix of deadpan musings and wry autobiographical observations. (“Sometimes I’ll be in a room with four of five other white women with long brown hair,” she joked at a recent appearance at the New York Comedy Club – “and I’ll forget which one I am.”)
Now 31, she performs near-nightly stand-up at places like Brooklyn’s Tiny Cupboard and QED in Queens – and will be a featured hometown guest when The Stissing Center hosts an evening of comedy on Feb. 25 at 7 p.m.
It’s just the second time that she’s performed before a home crowd on the Stissing Center stage. But for Lenihan, who was born in Brooklyn but raised in Stanfordville starting in third grade, the chance to perform for former classmates and teachers is a welcome opportunity.
“I’m very nostalgic for this small town,” says Lenihan, who taught swimming at Stissing Lake and remembers fondly high school mentors like former drama teacher Sarah Combs and art instructor George Baker.
“When your graduating class is less than a hundred, you really feel like you’re part of something. Your teachers really care about you,” she says. “There’s a special place in my heart for Pine Plains.”
Lenihan will be joined at The Stissing Center by fellow comics Jim Dailakis, Moody McCarthy and Cynthia Levin. Levin, the producer behind both the Feb. 25 show and the center’s first comedy performance in the summer of 2022, says small towns like Pine Plains present an exciting challenge to comedians who may be accustomed to playing to large halls where the crowd is barely visible.
In smaller venues like The Stissing Center, the audience is an unavoidable part of the act. “You have to meet them where they are,” says Levin, who cut her teeth with Chicago’s renowned Second City improvisational troupe and has performed and taught in Los Angeles, London and New York.
“If they’re in a mellow space, you join them and take it from there,” she says. “It’s really a communication between you and the audience – the bouncing off each other is important.”
Levin’s improv background has left her with a colorful array of characters who regularly appear in her stand-up sets. Among them is Priscilla Cranberry, an unmarried Victorian-era gentlewoman whose primary occupation is finding ways to kill time as she waits – fruitlessly – for an eligible bachelor to appear on the horizon.
Levin recently joined forces with co-writer Kate Roxburg and longtime friend Patrick Trettenero, a producer and creative director who also co-chairs the Pine Plains Community Day committee, to commit her anguished heroine to the screen. “The Relentless Patience of Priscilla Cranberry,” a 30-minute comedy shot entirely in Pine Plains, will have its debut screening at The Stissing Center on Feb. 26 at 3 p.m.
Both Levin and Lenihan acknowledge that comics are increasingly relying on social media to promote themselves and build a fan base. But even as Lenihan crafts her Instagram portfolio and aspires to appear on late-night TV, she says there’s nothing better than performing live in front of an audience – particularly a hometown crowd.
“We’re so divided these days. Everyone is so fixated on their phones,” Lenihan says. “It’s really nice to put all that away and just laugh with a room full of people who are all laughing with you. It’s very therapeutic.”