When Alex House was in junior high school, she dreamt of being on Saturday Night Live. Now, in her late twenties, the desire to make people laugh has not left her system as she drives across the country in her Honda from comedy club to comedy club two-thirds of the year.
Studying to be a teacher in college, the Jersey City resident knew that her destiny lay outside the classroom. After a one-year stint as an art teacher, House decided to trade a paintbrush for a microphone and moved to New York City with her husband.
Breaking into the stand-up scene was not as easy as leaving her job, though. By day, she worked in retail stores like FAO Schwartz and Gap for Kids. At night, she tried out her material at bars, open mikes, and comedy clubs throughout the city. But stage time, stand-up comedy’s hottest commodity, was hard to find.
So when she learned that Stand-up NY, a comedy club on the Upper West Side of Manhattan, was giving away stage time in exchange for work. House was ready to make a trade. Starting out as a telemarketer at the club, calling past clients to inform them of upcoming shows, House began working at the club full-time as a receptionist too.
For the next two and a half years she developed her comedic skills under the guidance of Tim Davis, a former booker at Stand-up NY who took an interest in her stage persona.
That persona plays off of her naturally “innocent and na