I consider myself extremely lucky to have witnessed Reno work literally hundreds of times in my living room, better known as Dixon Place, a laboratory theatre located on downtown Manhattan. In all those years, I never left the room; I tried, but I never did. I think it’s because her work is so completely organic that each moment feels spontaneous and unpredictable.

When asked to think about Reno and her work, my first impulse was to make a drawing of her. A drawing that would capture her movement, her gestures, her inimitable voice. Her arms are outstretched, every finger is engaged her head is thrown back; and her lips are a whole separate picture. Just as she’s doing psychic cartwheels and back flips, so is her body on constant motion. Her dog Lucy is in the drawing too, and like Reno, always makes her presence known. And Reno’s laugh- I think I could even draw her laugh. Her hair and her body are flying in all directions – she’s outta control!!

But, of course, she’s not. She actually knows what she is doing, and for a very good reason. She has worked her ass off for nearly fifteen years. When I first met Reno in 1986, she was traveling around town and performing every night of the week, sometimes two or three times a night, from downtown performance spaces to uptown comedy clubs. She started with five-minute bits at the WOW Cafe in 1984 and put her first full-length show together in 1987. She worked all the time and not always successfully. I remember the days when you couldn’t get her off the stage. In fact, I got so mad at her for taking too much time at Dixon Place that I banned her from the space. That didn’t last long; she was relentless.

The first of many people in New York’s downtown scene to permanently change her name and her hair color, Reno has always been at the forefront of the “comedy-performance movement.” Reno makes us laugh at both our own expense and hers until we are all sniffing and wiping our eyes. Perhaps only the late Frank Maya (a brilliant performance poet and song-writer) ever made me laugh that hard, and frank’s comedy was very similar in that autobiographical, vulnerable, totally revealing way.

But people are not just captivated by her humor. Reno has a very smart wit – sharp, hard, she cuts to the quick. Her audience is flattered. She respects their intelligence. But the quality I’m most drawn to is her fearlessness. And I don’t mean lack of stage fright. She’s unafraid to not be funny. And for a comedian, that’s courageous. I think of Reno as a comedian, but in fact, she doesn’t tell jokes. Unlike mainstream stand-up comedy, the form and syntax of her work does not use the patented punch-line formula. Her work has been called “radical comedy”, but that seems mild to me.

Everything Reno does is both personal and political. Not unlike social satirist, Lenny Bruce, her work is her life. Reno doesn’t waste any time on stage, but makes a beeline for government, domestic violence, public policies, sexuality, abortion- and I’m not talking about making easy jokes about politicians and celebrities her. She addresses the important issues of our day and doesn’t care if she’s totally funny or politically correct. At the same time, she can take the most mundane circumstances, like a weekend in the country or sitting in traffic, and go way over the top with her physicality and her outrage.

I remember seeing my father wipe his eyes at a Reno show. When my dad laughs really hard, his whole body shakes and I could see his back vibrating from the kitchen. Afterwards, I was dumbfounded when my mother said, “She’s a darling girl”. In retrospect, maybe Reno was sort of “darling” as she was pulling her hair out, raging about the mayor’s quality-of-life campaign.

Reno has spoken of laughter as being like a doorway, like something extra, something on top of time. Whether it’s personal or political injustice, Reno empowers the audience by uniting us in our feeling of outrage and frustration. Making people laugh has been her salvation. I really get that.