Reese Waters

Reese Waters has been featured at comedy clubs all across the United States, including The Improv and The Comedy Store in Los Angeles, and Caroline’s on Broadway and Gotham Comedy Club in New York. In April 2008, Reese won the annual Caroline’s March Madness Comedy Competition and in October 2008, he won the Emerging Comics Contest at the NY Underground Comedy Festival. Reese’s television appearances include Comics Unleashed, Total Request Live, Good Morning America, BET-J’s My Two Cents, Italy’s Rai International and promos for Comedy Central’s Root of All Evil. Reese began performing Improv Comedy when he matriculated to Columbia University and currently performs weekly at the PIT Theatre. He has recorded numerous commercials on both television and radio and has been a featured guest on Sirius Satellite Radio and National Public Radio. Hailing from Washington D.C., Reese credits his Grandmother with introducing comedy into his life.

His soft smooth delivery is more Sam Cooke than Sam Kinison, but Reese's joke writing reveals his intimate familiarity with past comedic giants. Jerry Seinfeld is a great influence on Waters, for his ability is spin comedic tapestries out of seemingly mundane situations. Waters jumps at the challenges of bringing the audience along with him as he waits for the bus, sits in history class or eats dinner with his family, and articulates how these seemingly ordinary interactions are anything but. More importantly, the audience will see it too. His joke writing is heavily influenced by George Carlin and Chris Rock, both heroes to Waters, for their ability to reveal truths to the audience about other people and often themselves that they never knew, but always understand. Like Rock, Waters views his job as a comedian as not simply to make people laugh, but to bring people together. The powerful counterpoint to his deadly accurate material is his easy and playful delivery, inspired most directly by Lenny Bruce and Dave Chappelle. Reese's familiarity and comfort with his audience is contagious. His many travels as a youth, which included four years at an elite boarding school in Washington DC, have afforded him the ability to see life from many different angles and to relate them just as easily to any audience.

Before officially taking the stage, Reese amused himself in his high school dormitory by driving his classmates and teachers mad with pranks and impromptu verbal jousts. Forever the class clown, Reese began performing when he matriculated to Columbia University, where he joined an improv troupe and began entertaining students on campus.

Throughout his college years, Reese performed anywhere and everywhere he could, from amateur nights and open mikes at underground New York City comedy clubs to unsanctioned sets at cafes and subway stantions throughout the city.

After graduation, Reese decided to relocate to San Francisco, a place with a rich comedic history in its own right, and a fertile environment for young comedians to grow. Reese now felt free to try different techniques onstage, like one-act plays and free improvisation. After 2 years of experimentation in the bay area, Reese returned to New York rejuvenated and refreshed and hit the ground running. He has never looked back.