We were lucky to catch up with Allison Goldberg recently and have shared our conversation below.

Hi Allison, thanks for joining us today. Can you share a customer success story with us?

This past fall, I created a monthly comedy/dating game show called Love Isn’t Blind. The impetus was twofold: After living through a global pandemic, I think people are more fatigued than ever of screens and want to be out in the world – whether single or not. Secondarily, I think people are absolutely tired of swiping – yet scared to say hi in real life.

While I can’t claim that I’ve made a bunch of matches on stage, couples are indeed resulting from the audiences at Love Isn’t Blind, and I’m super stoked about it. What’s more, they’re meeting because of the other couples in the audience. I’m proud to have created an environment where couples are excited to wingperson the singles around them, and singles feel emboldened to say hi to each other.

I know of at least one couple that met in the December audience and last month he met her parents!

Allison, love having you share your insights with us. Before we ask you more questions, maybe you can take a moment to introduce yourself to our readers who might have missed our earlier conversations?

As a theater dork at heart, I’m fascinated by how technology has rapidly changed the way we tell and consume stories. Though I still mostly consider myself a live (as opposed to digital) creator – and my tool is comedy – my work reflects how the digital realm affects our everyday lives. One of my earlier projects involved performing text from the internet (reddit threads, craigslist posts, etc.) as comedy sketches and playing with how we present ourselves online. Another project of mine looks at the phenomenon of text break ups – completely heartless, in my opinion, but also rife with hilarious spelling errors, emoji choices and ALL CAPS!!!

My most recent project is a live comedy/dating show where the men can’t speak. It is an antidote to swiping, and yet relies on how our phones have become extensions of ourselves. The men can’t speak, and so we learn about them by searching their phones and calling their moms.

I have my next show in the works, and it’s going to look even further at our relationship with technology, but I’ll leave that there!!

What’s a lesson you had to unlearn and what’s the backstory?

I definitely grew up with the narrative that being a working artist is impossible and that it’s foolish to try. To be fair, I think everyone who told me that (or politely insinuated some version of it) did, in some ways, have my best interests at heart: They truly believed that a stable, “normal” life would be best for me. In their minds, they were helping.

The result, however, of telling aspiring artists this fallacy is often not that they don’t try; instead, they try with a crippling lack of confidence. If it’s really so foolish and rare, then wouldn’t trying be either delusional or egomaniacal? And who wants to be those things? (Okay, some people do, but that’s another story.) As a result, one pulls back rather than pushing forward. And while I think that many angelenos have gone overboard with “manifestation”, I do think that you need to believe something is attainable in order to wholeheartedly pursue it.

I’m still unlearning this. I deal with pretty rough imposter syndrome that I’m working hard to overcome, and I hope that others will read this and start that journey sooner than I did.

Do you think there is something that non-creatives might struggle to understand about your journey as a creative? Maybe you can shed some light?

I think many people don’t understand the overlap that exists between the arts and entrepreneurialism. The working artists that I know have been hustling 24/7 for years, and it’s not just all the fun stuff you see on stage or on screen. It’s writing, devising, marketing, pitching, creating decks, and much more. In fact, I love working out of tech co-working spaces because I feel connected to that work ethic and lifestyle.

Along those lines of how much work goes into everything behind the scenes: We need your support. Buy tickets to our shows – and buy early. Don’t DM us how much you loved our recent clip – comment and share, because that feeds the algorithms. If you saw a unique show at a small theater somewhere and you enjoyed it, review it on Yelp and Google. Send the show link to all your friends and tell them to buy tickets, too.

And while of course you should continue to love all your favorite star performers, I think it would be wonderful if people made more of an effort to discover and follow creatives that aren’t mainstream (yet). There are so many incredible performers who aren’t household names, and they need your support (and dollars) far more than the famous ones.

And finally, I don’t think people realize that low ticket prices are normal yet detrimental. People are used to paying ten, twenty bucks for a comedy show, but as you sit in the audience, think through what it costs to pay the venue and the people behind the scenes running the tech, etc. I know there are a ton of factors at play here and eggs were recently like $12 a carton, but let’s normalize at least slightly higher ticket prices. (And shouldn’t comedy cost more than eggs??)

Contact Info:

• Website: allisongoldberg.com
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/alli_goldi/
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/Goldberg.Allison
• Twitter: @alli_goldi
• Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@alli_goldi
• Yelp: https://www.yelp.com/biz/love-isnt-blind-santa-monica
• Other: I’m most active on tiktok: https://www.tiktok.com/@alli_goldi

Image Credits
Headshot by Lindsay May Cook. Stage photos by Connor Linnerooth.