She Had Tenure. She Walked Away. Now She’s Making People Laugh.

By the time Liz Glazer got tenure, she had done everything right. Six years of work, an appointment at a law school, then a visiting position at a higher-ranked institution. The golden ticket, as she calls it, was hers.

Then she took an improv class.

“I felt like I was having a professional orgasm,” Glazer said of the first time she did stand-up comedy. “Which, if people don’t know, that’s a regular orgasm — I was just 100% sure that it was happening to me.”

Based on that, she left.

Glazer, a former tenured law professor, has since appeared on “The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon,” won the Boston Comedy Festival, and performs regularly at some of New York City’s top clubs. This Friday, she brings her high-energy, self-deprecating style to The Parlor in Narrowsburg for a stand-up comedy night alongside comedian Matt Ruby.

The timing is fitting: Thursday marks her 13th anniversary as a stand-up comedian.

‘Find a Hobby’

The pivot began not with a grand plan, but with a piece of casual advice. Glazer was visiting at a higher-ranked law school — the kind of move that signals you’re angling for a permanent position — when a friend on the faculty pulled her aside.

“Don’t be so thirsty,” the friend told her. Just find a hobby.

Glazer was in Chicago at the time, and Chicago has a storied improv scene. She signed up for a class. Her teacher encouraged her to try stand-up. She did.

Shortly after, the law school she worked at offered tenured faculty members buyouts for budgetary reasons — a move not intended to affect someone as junior as Glazer, who was around 34 at the time, but applied equally across the board. She took it. With two years of salary still coming in, she had what she describes as a roughly three-and-a-half-year buffer to pursue comedy in earnest.

“All through that time, I was getting on stage every night,” she said.

The Material Lives at Home

Glazer’s comedy draws heavily from her family — her mother, her wife (a rabbi), and her two-year-old daughter, who she describes, without irony, as hilarious. The approach is warm rather than withering.

“It’s not like, ‘Oh my God, my life is horrible because these idiots are in it,'” she said. “It’s very much the opposite. It’s like, can you guys believe they said these things? They’re amazing.”

Her mother, a recurring presence in the act, has watched clips of herself being performed and emerged mostly delighted. “When I was saying that, it wasn’t funny,” her mother has told her. “It wasn’t intended to be funny. And you say it and then I’m laughing at what I said. Thankfully, very thankfully, that’s what I live with.”

Building Something New

Glazer’s hour-long special, “Do You Know Who I’m Not,” is currently available free on YouTube. But Friday’s show won’t look much like it.

“Right now I am building my next hour,” she said. “For the most part, it’s new stuff.”

She likened the process of developing new material to embarking on a new knitting project — the early stages of something you can feel taking shape, even before it’s finished. For audiences who make it to Narrowsburg, that means a first look at stories and jokes that may, eventually, end up on a stage somewhere much larger.

Glazer said she loves performing in intimate venues, and that smaller rooms are, in many ways, the ideal environment for comedy.

“It feels like a base where we’re sharing secrets,” she said. “That’s the best situation for comedy.”

 

Event Details: Liz Glazer performs at The Parlor Stand-Up Comedy Night alongside Matt Ruby this Friday. Doors open at 7:30 p.m. The Parlor is located at 90 Main Street in Narrowsburg, NY.

 

Image Credit: Liz Glazer