Connor Bond thinks he’s pretty funny, but he doesn’t do standup. He will, however, teach and perform comedy improv. Sometimes he brings along a student to help with his silly sketch about falling in love at Target, which he performs at Broadway open mics in Beacon and Newburgh.
The Beacon resident is also a serious actor with Shakespearean experience who appeared in the Bannerman Castle Trust production of Dracula in September and on FBI on CBS, where he pulled off a short speaking role as a leering doctor with perhaps a touch of subtle tongue-in-cheek comedic flair.
But his heart is in improv, a make-it-up-on-the-fly approach to acting and comedy that stems from his days as a jazz saxophone player, a skill he allowed to lapse.
“I should break out the horn more,” he says, “but I feel like the improv community is stronger than the jazz scene and sometimes with standup it’s the performer versus the audience.”
After growing up in Oregon, he chose acting over sax, majoring in drama in college with a music minor and earning an MFA in acting from the University of California, Irvine.
After graduation, advanced students at the top acting schools across the country put on showcases for agents, managers and casting directors in Los Angeles and New York. Bond, now 36, got a better reaction out East, so he moved.
During the pandemic, he came to Beacon with a significant other. “We figured, ‘It’s a charming place, let’s just do it,’” he recalls. “It reminds me of Portland with the trees and the river.”
Bond enjoys teaching improv and plans to offer classes, although he says he cannot divulge where just yet: “I have to keep it a mystery.” He is also interested in “training people in corporate settings even if there might not be any interest in the theater because the arts make people come alive, feel better and listen to each other.”
Hustling for acting work is taxing. Beyond relentless rejections — Bond estimates that he lands one role for every 100 auditions — “if you’re not on a recurring series, being an actor means you’re unemployed almost all the time, so you hope you can find a flexible day job.”
Before the pandemic, auditions took place in person. Now actors tape themselves and send videos. “We’re indie filmmakers,” he says. “I’ve learned so much doing self-tapes in my basement.”
After a serendipitous introduction in Beacon last summer to his new Brooklyn-based manager, Bond is continuing to achieve some local and national success, though he made a tough decision just before the opening night of Dracula.
While learning the play and working with his understudy, he faced a choice between filming a commercial or doing the FBI episode because the shoots took place on the same day. That same evening, the play opened, so he had a small window of time to return to Beacon and take the stage, yet he kept his understudy waiting in the wings.
“I picked the exposure from the TV show over the money; that’s the long game here,” he says. “It’s been a wild ride, but I wouldn’t know what else to do. Even in rejection, I feel alive.”
