History of Surf RealityShared Stories of SurfAbout Robert Prichard

I was born in Regensburg, Germany in 1956. My Dad was an Army Captain and my Mom was a post war bride. They met in a German night club in my Mom’s home town of Landshut. Dad did not speak German and Mom knew little English, but evidently they had very good rapport on the dance floor. Although they still didn’t speak each other’s language when they married; I was born nine months to the day after their wedding. My childhood was spent as an Army brat on bases in Germany, Kansas, Oklahoma and Arkansas.

I attended High School at T.C. Williams in Alexandria, Virginia. There is a somewhat fictional account of how my High School overcame a racist legacy, integrated and then won the State Football Championship. The film is called “Remember The Titans” and I was a sophomore when that story occurred.

I moved to NYC in 1983 to start an acting career. I soon found work at The Pyramid Nightclub on Avenue A as a bouncer and doorman. In those days, The Pyramid had downtown’s best DJs and dance floor and featured an eclectic mix of drag queens, punk rockers, Wall St. yuppies and local homeboys. Madonna, Andy Warhol, Keith Haring and The Beastie Boys used to hang out regularly. On any given night you could see John Sex, Wendy Wild, Ann Magnuson, John Kelly, Dean Johnson or Ethyl Eichelberger perform. I remember the night RuPaul came to town from Atlanta in a bright yellow afro with matching mini dress. RuPaul’s first East Village gig was as a Pyramid Club go-go dancer.

In the spring of 1983 I was cast in the hit cult film “The Toxic Avenger” where I met my (now ex-) wife Jennifer who was also auditioning for that film. We were cast as boyfriend and girlfriend. I played Slug and Jennifer played Wanda, two high school thrill killers who were responsible for the horrific tragedy that created the mutant hero “Toxic Avenger”.

In 1988 I started a side business video taping the downtown performance scene. I was the in-house videographer for the “No Shame” performance series that was produced by Home for Contemporary Theater and Art at The Public Theater. I also shot the “Lunatic Fringe Festival” which featured an up and coming John Leguizamo and Reno at their Walker Street theater/gallery.

In 1990 my old High School friend Matt Mitler approached me with an idea to create improvised feature length videos that we could shoot in one day. We would edit in camera, use a small cast of experienced improv actors and work off of a story line that was a spoof of a recognizable movie genre. We called it “The Movie Of The Month Club”. One day Jennifer asked me what it was like to shoot improv video and I said it was like “surfing reality”, and that is how my fledgling videotaping enterprise became an East Village Production Company called Surf Reality. We produced “Dick And Jane Drop Acid And Die”, “Thrill Kill Video Club”, and “Les Enfants Miserables,” among other titles. We were reviewed in Playboy and Film Threat magazine and for a short while we did a brisk mail order business.

In 1992, “The Movie Of The Month Club” gave birth to a real feature length motion picture shot on super 16 mm film called “Cracking Up“. It was written, directed and starred Matt Mitler. Surf Reality co-produced. “Cracking Up” featured performances by Camryn Mannheim (”The Practice”), Debra Wilson (”MadTV”) and Todd Alcott (screenwriter, “Antz”). We won film festival awards in Berlin and Venice.

Jennifer, our then-two-year-old daughter Skye and I moved into two commercial lofts on the corner of Allen and Stanton streets on Manhattan’s Lower East Side on May 1st, 1993. One loft became our home, and the other became The Surf Reality Theater, a.k.a., Surf Reality’s House Of Urban Savages. We figured “Why chase the scene all over town with my camera, why not have the scene come to us?” We figured right. We marketed the space to artists, not audiences, as a place for them to develop projects. For ten years, Surf was a vanguard venue for the downtown Art Star scene. We featured cutting edge comedy, eclectic vaudeville, classic burlesque, avant garde performance art, experimental theater and modern music.

Surf Reality was home to the world’s best open mike “Faceboyz Open Mike” for over 8 years. We produced three Surf Comedy Festivals and two reoccurring monthly comedy/variety shows: “Serious Pratfalls” and “The Witching Hour.” They both ran for over four years. Surf Reality was a venue for the first three NYC International Fringe Festivals and we were a venue for three “Toyota Comedy Festivals”.

Here is a list of some of the more well-known talent that performed on our stage: The Upright Citizens Brigade, Jeff Ross, Marc Maron, Mike Epps, Ben Stiller, Dave Chapelle, Jim Gaffigan, Heather Woodbury, Todd Alcott, Sonja Sohn, Star and Buc Wild, Judy Gold, Sarah Jones, Kevin Chamberlin, Lizz Winstead, Louis Black, Amy Sohn, Rick Shapiro, Deb Margolin, John S. Hall, King Missile, Maggie Estep, St. Rev. Jen, Deborah Gregory, Beth Littleford, Hazelle Goodman, Todd Barry, Girlbomb, Christian Finnegan, Randy and Jason Sklar, Faceboy, Michael Moschen, Nick Zedd, Sparrow, Mark Mitton, James Godwin and The Elementals, Debra K. Wilson, The World Famous *BOB*, Flambeaux, The Alien Comic, The Neo-Futurists, Dufus,  The Moldy Peaches and Michael “Soybomb” Portnoy.

In 1998, St. Rev. Jen, Faceboy and I founded The Dance Liberation Front in response to then Mayor Rudy Giuliani’s enforcement of the arcane 1927 era “Cabaret Laws”. Rudy’s “Night Life Task Force” had shut down and padlocked three LES bars and restaurants for the heinous crime of allowing their patrons to dance. We formed the DLF to ridicule the mayor and the notion of “dance crimes.” We quickly became notorious for our protest performance events like “The Million Mambo March”, “The Times Square Twist-A-Thon” and “The Hokey Pokey Around City Hall”. We led 600 costumed freaks down Avenue A in a conga line chanting “Dance is not a crime” and “We have not yet begun to wiggle!” We staged a dance party in front of The Richard Rogers Theater where the musical “Footloose” was playing, and as a stunt for Canadian TV, we attempted to defect to Cuba.

Surf Reality closed in April 2003 due to unsustainable rent increases. We ended our run with a 28-hour Faceboyz Open Mike performance marathon that we called “Surf Stock.” Jennifer and I split up in 1999 and we divorced in 2002.

Today I co-produce Faceboyz every Sunday night at Mo Pitkin’s House Of Satisfaction and I produce Surf Burlesque On The Bowery once a month at the Bowery Poetry Club. In my spare time I study Tibetan Buddhism at the NYC Shambhala Meditation Center.