Comedian, writer and actor Josh Sharp coaxes his audience to believe in magic with his off-Broadway production, ta-da!. Directed by Sam Pinkleton (most known for Oh, Mary!), ta-da! is a lightning-paced performance accompanied by 2,000 slides that covers everything from Turkish bathhouses to a life-threatening accident.
“It is in the lineage of some of those great off Broadway theatrical stand-up kind of things,” said Sharp, referring to non-traditional plays like Drunk Shakespeare or The Play That Goes Wrong. “But it's also inside of this tightrope act where I've made myself memorize a psychotic amount of cues.”
The show, running through August 23 at the Greenwich House Theater in Manhattan, is preceded by pulsating techno music so the audience feels like they’re in a nightclub. The intimate crowd (there are 199 seats) allows for a more experimental, off-Broadway experience that includes lewd jokes, rogue text slides and quippy back-and-forths with the audience.
Sharp got his start in stand-up, performing at venues like the Bellhouse in Gowanus before moving to writing and starring in the 2023 film, Dicks! The Musical. “The Bell House is my favorite place to perform comedy,” he said. “[They] take risks on certain performers."
After living in Williamsburg for 15 years, Sharp says he has built an “alt queer podcast cabal.” He cites fellow New Yorkers Bowen Yang, Julio Torres, and Dicks! The Musical co-creator Aaron Jackson as sources of inspiration. He has known the entertainers since they were “comedy babies” performing in tiny basement venues.
“It really is the best part about being alive,” said Sharp. “Making dumb little projects with your best friends, that’s the whole point.”
He celebrated his Williamsburg “quinceañera” by giving 50 attendees a tour around the Graham Avenue stop on the L train last year, which included stops at the bar Harefield Road and Carmine’s Pizzeria. Currently, he’s developing plans for a ghost tour––which celebrates defunct businesses like The Blue Stove, a bakery, to commemorate 16 years of Brooklyn living.
Developed over two years, ta-da! pushes boundaries, toeing the line between a traditional stand-up set and experimental theater. After the pandemic, Sharp wanted to bring something new to the comedy space. He asked his audience to listen to one piece of information while seeing another. It functioned as a way to make the set more theatrical, while also adding language to jokes that felt otherwise wordless.
“I want you to get something that's more than just me talking into a microphone,” Sharp noted.
Sharp’s act is a comedic sleight of hand. He bounces from breezy stories about massages to tearful reflections on his mother’s death and back again. It’s as raunchy as it is heartfelt.
Together, Sharp and the audience embark on a journey through genre and tone, with a physics lesson wrapped in a sex joke. It’s a long walk from the first slide to the last, but each step is thoughtful, calculated, and most of all, funny.
To purchase tickets to ta-da!, click here.
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