“I believed I had my life all found out,” says Hagen, 32. “In the meantime, I may barely play. I’d shake and botch each efficiency. So it wasn’t going nicely for me.”
Round that point, Hagen — the daughter of an completed saxophonist and the youthful sister of a burgeoning conductor and pianist — was honing an affinity for stand-up comedy, with Mitch Hedberg, Invoice Burr and George Carlin amongst her influences. With free time on her fingers, Hagen determined to hit up an open mic and provides stand-up a shot. The nervousness persevered, she remembers. However in comedy, trembling fingers received’t throw off a set the identical approach they may derail a exactly calibrated classical music efficiency.
“I imply, I used to be horrible at telling jokes,” Hagen says. “However simply the act of it felt much more suited to me than music had.”
After Hagen graduated in 2015 and entered a profession as a contract violist — a pursuit that has included broadcast performances with the likes of Ed Sheeran, Max Richter and Phoebe Bridgers — she grew to become a daily of New York’s open-mic circuit. In 2019, she booked the New Faces showcase on the famend Only for Laughs comedy pageant in Montreal. Having beforehand carried out on “The Tonight Present” as an accompanying musician, Hagen returned as a stand-up with units in March 2020 and October 2022. Alongside the best way, she wrote, directed and starred within the net sequence “Is a Violist,” which she hopes to shoot as a characteristic movie later this yr.
This weekend, D.C. audiences can catch Hagen’s act — now interspersing viola vignettes with comedic quips — on the Comedy Loft of DC. In an interview final month from a tour cease in Richmond, Hagen mentioned her unconventional comedic roots, the similarities between stand-up and classical music, and the way she strings them collectively onstage.
(This interview has been edited for size and readability.)
Q: Let’s discuss your pivot into comedy. As a Juilliard-trained musician, how did you come round to the concept of placing that profession on the again burner to pursue one thing completely totally different?
A: I by no means thought it was loopy. I knew different folks would assume it was loopy, in fact. However I simply had this wild drive to do stand-up, and I used to be so apprehensive about my future as a violist, simply with the harm and the unfavorable emotions I had developed about myself as a musician and the demons that had constructed up through the years. I used to be so able to shed it in a sure approach and begin this new factor that I used to be beginning at a way more wholesome level mentally. And it felt like actually my very own factor now — not simply what my household does.
Q: What did your life appear like when the pendulum was swinging from viola to comedy?
A: There was some extent the place I had my very own chair at a Broadway present for six weeks. It was a brief run of a present referred to as “Rocktopia” [in 2018], and since I had this common nighttime gig, it sort of interfered with stand-up. So I’d end the present, run downstairs, put all my stuff away in my locker after which run all the way down to the Village — or generally I’d simply have my viola with me. It was simply this actually stark distinction of this large viewers in a Broadway theater after which just a little bar with 5 folks. So there was some extent the place it felt very a lot blended collectively.
Q: You’ve talked about your efficiency nervousness as a violist. Has getting onstage usually as a comic helped alleviate that?
A: Sure. A comic performs far more typically than a classical musician does, as a result of comedians are performing a number of occasions an evening generally. A extremely critical classical musician would possibly carry out each night time for a stint, nevertheless it’s simply a lot much less common. So simply by getting extra observe onstage, that definitely helped. Additionally, being a newbie at comedy sort of reinvigorated me and restored my religion within the course of. Whenever you’re a newbie, the enhancements are actually tangible. I had been caught in a rut with music, pondering I used to be pretty much as good as I’d ever be and it actually wasn’t ok. So doing comedy made me take pleasure in working towards [viola] once more extra.
Q: How did it really feel to return to “The Tonight Present” as a comic book after beforehand performing as a musician?
A: Anytime I had performed with an artist there, I’d have a religious second backstage and assume, “Someday, you’re going to inform jokes right here.” So then once I lastly was there, I used to be like, “Sure. You’re right here. You knew this is able to occur.” But additionally it was the day at the start shut down for covid, and Bernie Sanders was there and I used to be assembly him, and it felt like a dream — just like the world was ending, but additionally I used to be getting what I wished. So it was very surreal.
Q: Just lately, you’ve began incorporating the viola into your act. Had it by no means occurred to you to splice these collectively, or have been you actively avoiding mixing them?
A: I used to be positively actively avoiding mixing them. With stand-up, I wished to show to myself that I may do that factor that I actually liked. However folks once they discovered [I played viola] can be like, “Effectively, it’s best to deliver it onstage — that may be superb.” And I used to be similar to, “That’s so hacky. What would I even do?” Then sooner or later, I simply had the concept of, “What if I simply actually put them subsequent to one another?” So I’m enjoying superbly, I’m telling a joke I imagine in, and the humor simply lies within the juxtaposition. I’m not compromising the integrity of both one.
Q: How would you describe the similarities between performing classical music and comedy?
A: There’s positively overlap, although I’d say they’re clearly very totally different in plenty of methods. There’s an improvisatory aspect to stand-up that’s not in classical music — it’s in jazz, and folks typically examine jazz to stand-up. What feels just like music is the viewers laughter. When it’s a very good viewers, I out of the blue really feel like I’m enjoying with the viewers. It’s like they’re one other instrument, and the timing can really feel very musical, virtually like once I’m enjoying in a string quartet and it’s important to really feel the opposite folks’s power so intensely to have the ability to play nicely with them. So it appears like chamber music with the viewers.
The Comedy Loft of DC, 1523 22nd St. NW. dccomedyloft.com.