Title:GEMA Alumni Spotlight – Mike Lavoie (C’03) and Carlee Briglia (C’10)

The Georgetown Duo Behind Broadway Smash Oh, Mary!

and Other Theatre Hits

By Sarah Mucha (F ’17)

The origin story of Mike and Carlee Productions starts the way a lot of good Georgetown stories do: with a professor’s intro and conversation over Thai.

In 2011, Professor John Glavin connected fellow Hoyas Mike Lavoie (C’03) and Carlee Briglia (C’10) over email, sensing they’d likely get along. At the time, Briglia was a recent Georgetown graduate newly moved to New York; Lavoie was already working in comedy and theater production. They met at a Thai restaurant on Smith Street in Brooklyn and, somewhere amid some shared shumai, the foundation for a future partnership took shape.

Shortly afterward, Briglia joined the team behind Hoya Mike Birbiglia’s Off Broadway show My Girlfriend’s Boyfriend as an intern. “She very quickly proved that she was great at everything,” Lavoie recalled in a recent conversation.

Since then, the pair have become one of theater and comedy’s most influential producing teams through Mike and Carlee Productions. They’re behind some of the most acclaimed productions of the last decade, including projects with fellow Hoyas John Mulaney, Nick Kroll, and Jacqueline Novak, along with the Tony-winning Broadway sensation Oh, Mary!.

For both, Georgetown was central to their path. Lavoie discovered improv on campus and found himself performing alongside future comedy stars including Birbiglia, Kroll, Mulaney, and Novak, all relationships that would later shape his producing career.

Briglia credits professors including Glavin with helping spark her interest in storytelling and the creative process. Classes in film, documentary work, and American Studies helped cement what she described as a passion for “the creating and the making of things.”

These days, Mike and Carlee Productions has become something of a stamp of approval for bold, slightly off-beat, critically acclaimed comedy. This spring, Mike and Carlee Productions is bringing back Can I Be Frank?, the Obie Award-winning solo show written and performed by Morgan Bassichis and directed by Sam Pinkleton, for a six-week run at Soho Playhouse. This summer, they’ll also produce Cat Cohen’s new show Broad Strokes at the Lucille Lortel Theatre. Tickets for both productions – along with Oh, Mary! on Broadway and in London’s West End – are available at Mike and Carlee Productions.

To read other Alumni Spotlights, click here.