

BEHIND THE COMEDY OF THE BLACK & THE JEW
Race, sex, politics, cunnilingus, cocksucking, and how to have a happy marriage: these are probably not the first things you think of when you think of comedy, but such is the offbeat approach to being funny taken by Naima Hassan and Steve Epstein, known for years as “The Black and the Jew.” (theblackandthejew.com)
They’ve been perfecting their take on these topics and many others for over 10 years, performing in clubs, small venues, and shows. They also emceed the Blue Angel Cabaret, from its early days on Walker Street, to its transformation into Le Scandal at the Cutting Room. They also had their own show, Shock and Awe a Go-Go, which featured acts representing various fantasies: the Black Man, a handicapped gay comic, and a tranny, to name a few. They’ve also manage to have a happy monogamous marriage for 24 years.
They didn’t start out as a performing duo. As with any couple, two different origin stories emerged: Steve tells me he had no experience performing at all, except announcing Jazz acts at the clubs where he worked as a doorman and manager, while Hassan was doing a one woman show called, “Everything the White Culture Wants to Know About the Black Culture, But They’re too Scared to ask, so They Watch the Cosby Show,” which she did at La Mama, PS 122, venues of that sort.
“We thought, they’re hasn’t been a husband and wife comedy team since Stiller and Meara, as far as we knew, and we figured the world would be so excited by this concept, but we found out quikly, this one idea the world is not that excited by.”
Hassan told me when she met Steve, he was doing stand up (though Steve insists this was rare), and when they started dating, she was at La Mama, and he’d bring friends, and worry “What if she’s no good?” but “Of course, I was very very good.”
So they decided, let’s do something together, but “we weren’t ready for the politics of it. People could handle it if were both both white or black, or Jewish or gay, but having an interracial team of two performers who both had strong points of view, freaked people out. We didn’t fit the standard format of comedy. What do you call what we do? We use stand up, sketch bits, one liners, performance art, improv, and music, and people, if they can’t label it, they don’t want to look at it.
“That was the challenge in the beginning, what do you call what we’re doing, this magical mixture, this jamabalaya. But we stuck with it, and today, the result of our labors is The Black and the Jew Comedy Hour.”
The duo started perfoming together in the mid 1990’s, and Steve clarifies, “She says I was a stand up, but I had really only been at a few open mikes, while her level of perfomance was on a much higher level. When I first saw her at La Mama, the woman before her was unbelievably awful [those familiar with the downtown perfomance scene can easily imagine how awful- ed.] and I thought, ‘I hope Hassan is better than this.’ She did this one woman show for years into our marriage, even as we were deciding to become a team. We did some open mikes, and quickly developed our personas.
Around this time, Velocity Chyald saw us and introduced us to Uta Hana, the producer of the Blue Angel. Originally, we were performers, and Laura Dinabell was the emcee, when she left, we started emceeing, where we developed many of our routines.”
Hassan says that the experience of emceeing the Blue Angel, opened up possibilities of hosting other shows, but “we never stopped doing our two person show.”
When the Blue Angel became Le Scandal, the duo no longer hosted the show, but would be the opening act. Around this time, they developed Shock and Awe a Go-Go, their own take on the burlesque scene, with possibly a harder edge then the retro cutesy vibe that enshrouds the new burlesque scene.
How they became the Black and the Jew is one of those classic tales: “We were originally called Epstein and Hassan,” Steve says, “and we were walking down Carmine Street and some guy who knew us yelled out, ‘You’re the Black and the Jew!’ and from that moment on, the name stuck. We thought it was funny.”
They also have an internet radio show (nytalkradio.net or go to the Blackandthejew.com) which you can hear on your computer five days a week at 6, repeated at 11. though shows are only live on Mon, Wed, and Friday. Older shows are archived on iTunes, and they’ve amassed over 170 hours so far. They got the show when the station’s founder and family came to see their show at Sweet Rhythm (sadly, now defunct, though it still opens for them to perform, at least until its sold), and invited them to appear on another show.
“I did have some radio experience,” Steve tells me. “In college, I was Sports Director of WLIU, I was the voice of the LIU Blackbirds, and they played division 1 college basketball, and instead of going to class, I spent three years on the road with them.” Hassan also did radio in college. “I had as how called Lady Love, I read poetry, played music, I really enoyed it.”
Steve says that though it took about a year to polish their live act, the radio show immediately had a flow and snap. Working as emcees really helped focus them. “When you host a burlesque show, the audience doesn’t want to see you, they want to see the girls, so you better learn to be funny fast, and eventually people started coming to see us, and that’s when we knew we were on the right track,”
Steve thinks radio works best with a multiplicity of voices, “and we found a bunch of people to be our co-hosts who bring something to the table.” People like Big Al (those familiar with Manhattan Public Access might remember Al from his long running show, “Spic ‘n Spanish”), Smoke Katz (childhood friend of Epstein’s), Gorilla Bob (caveat emptor: that’s me), and of course the regular scouging of Sean, the long suffering sound engineer.
“The great thing about internet radio is that we have listeners all over the world. We perform mostly in Manhattan and Brooklyn, and years ago, in Toronto, during the SARS outbreak, but now, anyone with a computer can hear us.”
They’d love to take their show on the road, but they say it’s hard to tell what audiences will like them. “We’re not really downtown, we have middle aged couples visiting from the Midwest who enjoy us,” Steve says, and Hassan add s, “We’re really a mind set. You’re either open to us or you’re not.”
They also did a film, “You Two Should have an HBO Special” because “when we always have people telling us, you should be on HBO, but apparently HBO doesn’t realize this,” Steve says. “But of all the things we do, the live show is our favorite.”