Meet Tyler

“Accidental”, is how Tyler describes his Harlem story. “As… a desperate artist looking for housing, I found an apartment up on 114th street and then because the people on my block and in my building were so wonderful…it became a part of my identity.”

He has lived in the East Harlem community since 2009. He explains, “...When I first moved to New York, back in like 2000, I was in a more transient space in my life so I wasn’t really invested in the neighborhoods that I was living in. But… as an older person living in a neighborhood [and having] kids… [I’m] much more invested in the people who [live and work] here. So, my experience in East Harlem is [that] it’s pretty tight and everybody… take[s] care of each other.”

Living in the building, Artspace, creates a unique experience for him. “…My wife and I… run a small theater company… and I’m an actor [and] most of the people who moved into this building are all artists… I would say that a lot of my community stems from the [building]… ‘cause we all basically moved [here] at the same time… it’s super cool.”

“I think I have had successes and failures in what I’ve tried to do here as an artist. But for better or worse that’s… what my identity has evolved into.”

His theater company, The Shakespeare Forum, based in the theater space in his building’s basement, hosts free classes every Tuesday night. He recalls the first show they had there, “...We’d have kids that were playing basketball that would… run in. We were doing Titus Andronicus, which is a Shakespeare play, and they would just run in… see 10 minutes of it until they got bored, then they’d run out… run back in, and then their moms would call them and their phone would ring in the theater and they’d be running out… [It] is my lovely experience of the neighborhood... That the art in this neighborhood is for everybody…”

“I think I have had successes and failures in what I’ve tried to do here as an artist. But for better or worse that’s… what my identity has evolved into. I feel like when my friends [and] family think of me, they think of me in East Harlem… Like 20 years ago… I was sitting around with my family and friends and they were like ‘If you had to pick one word to describe you… what would [it] be…?’ And while I don’t think that the single word yet is… East Harlem, it is a large part…”