By: Nat Towsen

A black door in the back corner of the back room of Chinatown bar reveals a narrow staircase ending in a surprisingly expansive and well-decorated music venue, complete with a stage and its own bar. Nicely-dressed audience members wander the dim, chairless room, schmoozing and boozing with co-producer and several guests. As the manic disco team burst onto the stage and begin to dance, they pull the audience past the bottleneck in the front of the room and up close to the stage as if by some magnetic force, though probably by the force of their yelling. They launch into a number called "Electric!" Shouts Amram, "It's the name of the show and also the song!"

"On comedy shows in New York, most of the time, it's standup, standup, standup, something weird," muses Amram, "we like to have just one standup." Without turning into an all out freak show, the producers of ELECTRIC! book several 'something weirds' every month, which is usually character comedy, music comedy, and other less-definable acts.  In addition to Adira's set and a standup set from co-producer Becky Yamamoto, the show typically features 3-4 acts doing at least twelve minutes each. Amram says, "When people get that opportunity, it's usually in a much higher stakes situation. I want our show to be a place where people can try new things."

"I definitely had a very negative association with what a comedy show is, before I started doing comedy. I really thought of it as the '2-drink minimum'..." expounds Amram, "I didn't even know these kind of shows existed. I didn't know there was a world of people doing shows for five dollars in a bar." Only a few years later, Amram has become a proprietor of exactly that: an inexpensive show in a venue chosen for its functionality, not its reputation. And as for the ticket price, Amram explains, "I like to be able to at least give our guests ten or fifteen dollars, to pay people something... Because it's shitty to know that the doorman, the bartender, and the sound man all get paid, and they're there because of you and you're not getting any money."

"The show is still finding itself," Amram admits. Her hosting grapples between her amped-up hyper-glamourous, self-worshiping persona and her everyday moderately-glamorous self-awareness, a rift that needs to be sewn. Audiences currently hover around 40 people ("The dream is to have 100"), which certainly hinders the otherwise high energy. Electric! will not really reach its true potential until the room is packed and dancing so hard the East River flows backwards.

At the May show, Amram and her dancers performed a piece that exemplifies her philosophy of engaging the audience. It is by no means their most polished, expertly-coordinated piece (a YouTube search will reveal plenty of that) but it may well have been the most fun, silly part of the night for the crowd...