Evan Zes’s “Rent Control” Shines Through NYC Darkness

By Charlie Lyttle

I found out about Evan Zes because of a Twitter solicitor, whom I now owe an immense gratitude. In August, I interviewed the cast of a play called Mrs. Schrodingers Cat, which ran in the New York City Fringe Festival with Zes’s Rent Control. For a string of some three days, a random Twitter user kept mentioning my handle, urging me to look into a play about some guy’s experience running an Airbnb scheme. I ignored the tweets initially (either because of irritation or absentmindedness), but eventually my curiosity got the best of me. Immediately, I was enthralled by the concept. I became determined to schedule an interview with someone I originally dismissed as an afterthought.

Before we met, I didn’t seriously consider the quality of Zes’s character. I only cared about whether or not his art was entertaining. I expected to meet someone greasy, someone shady enough to get caught for a petty crime that so many New Yorkers commit.

Instead, I met a man willing to go to any extreme to pursue his passion.

In 2000, Zes moved to New York City to become, as he so eloquently puts it, “a fuckin’ actor.” The play begins on Zes’s first day in the City as he arrives at the Actor’s Equity Lounge on 46th and 7th Avenue, which he explains “is a place where union actors can go to find short-term sublets, to attend open cattle calls, and to take a shit (the last two things sound pretty much the same).” Here he discovers a one bedroom sublet in an apartment where he’ll live for the following 15 years.

Over the course of the play, Zes portrays some 26 distinct characters, changing accents on a second’s notice without disrupting the fluidity of his narrative. Sonia, the poorly-aged failed actress who originally sublets the apartment to Evan, croaks like a goblin with a strep throat (“You’ll never make it!” she screeches during a scene in which a hopeful young Evan dictates an email to a casting director). Zes also flanks the play with colorful side characters like Chang the three-fingered dry cleaner(“You thank me when you win Oscar!”), and Afrim the loose-lipped Albanian barber (“What’s up brooooo…”).

When Sonia abruptly leaves New York following an ironic accident and a subsequent nervous breakdown (“If you’re quiet, you can hear my womb drying up!”), Evan discovers the apartment doesn’t belong to her but to a woman named Jen Wolfe who “became a lesbian and moved to New Zealand to open a clam shack.” He later learns Sonia neglected to pay Jen Wolfe the rent and was spending his sublet money. Wolfe, who left New York in the mid-80s, told Evan he could continue living in the apartment at an astounding rent-controlled rate of just over $900 a month, if he sent a monthly check to New Zealand. Eternally grateful to Wolfe, Evan routinely prays to a projection of her portrait throughout the remainder of the play.

Initially, Evan uses the apartment to finance his developing acting career, subletting his room when he gets an out-of-town role, then using the rental money to hold him over between jobs.

“The combination of being an artist and working out of town goes very well with subletting your apartment,” Zes said. “Every job you have feels like it’s the last job you’re ever going to have, so you have this mentality of, ‘I need to save money to get through the times when I’m going to be unemployed.’

“You’re looking at me now. I’m not a leading man,” Zes said during our interview, scanning his body. “I’m short, bald and ugly, but when I started renting the place I was like a character actor trapped in a young guy’s body.”

“I realized at a certain point that one of the most important things in pursuing this career is ‘staying power.’ And especially for a character actor. The older you get, the more parts become available to you, so I found this way to stay in the game.”

But when Airbnb is introduced, Evan sees a window to further exploit the system. He gradually converts his apartment into a miniature hotel, hosting multiple guests at once. At one point, he even stays at an ex-girlfriend’s empty apartment to maximize his profits. What was once a strictly utilitarian way to finance his career, became his means to a six-figure profit.

“Look I got greedy,” Evan admits blankly. “I was like a drug addict renting this place out. But it all stemmed from the mentality of ‘every job I have feels like my last.’ So I wasn’t trying to get rich; I was trying to save enough to stay in the business long enough to come into my [character-actor] type.”

At once brash and unapologetic, swaying to Pink Floyd’s “Money” in his signature navy Adidas tracksuit, he shifts to frantic paranoia and becomes consumed by feeling of guilt during the final 20 minutes of the 75-minute production. But during this time, the audience also meets a more self-aware Evan, who realizes he now values his scheme above his acting, a decision that threatens his home and his career. His honest evaluation of his mistakes adds depth and balance to an outrageous comedy. His personal reflection gives him purpose: the ability to relate his story to fellow New Yorkers struggling in an absurdly corrupt and expensive housing market.

“As it was happening I said, ‘This is terrible. I want to die.’ But I also said, ‘Pay attention, one day when you land on your feet, you’re going look back, and you’re going to have an amazing story to tell,’” said Zes.

“My original intent was to write down the best story I could. And some nights when I’m telling it, I look out at the audience and I feel like I’m leading a support group. I see a bunch of heads nodding, and when the crisis kicks in…I hear people gasping and grabbing each other and nodding and sometimes people are crying at the end. I really hope that it’s putting people…in the situation and [making them think], ‘what would I do?’”

During our conversation, Zes mentioned “scam artists” who deceive him and reveal themselves during the course of the play, at which point I asked: “Are you one of the scam artists?”

“No, I don’t believe I was,” he answered. “I believe I was just a guy who lucked into an opportunity and wanted to do what he loves. And you got to ask yourself, ‘What does it cost to do what you love?’ Who gets to really do what you love, for a living?”

He then countered my question with a question of his own.

“You’re doing what you love [right now], right? … What would you do?”

“Anything I could,” I answered sheepishly, admitting I would do the same, remembering how I foolishly I cast Zes as the villain in his own story before we even met.

Rent Control plays only two more times at the Huron Club at the SoHo Playhouse on Saturday, October 8 at 7pm and Monday, October 10 at 8pm. But because of the way the show has permeated the conscience of many a New Yorker, I seriously doubt Evan Zes will leave the spotlight for long.