Erick Acuña Loves This Weird World of Comedy

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Welcome to another episode of the Comedic Pursuits podcast. I’m your host, Seth Payne. Before we get into today’s episode, I just want to say thank you for listening.

This has been such a fun project. We’ve had a ton of talented, funny people on already, and we’ve got so many more episodes recorded. This train’s just going to keep on chugging along. I hope you guys are enjoying the ride.

For today’s episode, I sat down with Erick Acuña. You may have seen him around town. He’s at every show ever. He’s also on eight or nine teams. He’s obsessed with comedy and is really funny.

Highlights from my interview with Erick Acuña

Erick is from Lima, Peru and was first introduced to comedy there. We’ll talk about his training in Peru and the US and how he dealt with English a second language during his improv classes.

He’s started a bunch of fun teams and programs, including directing WIT special project Heavy Rotation. He’s been a performer with Improv Actually and WIT Harold team Captain PhD. When we recorded this episode, he was working on a one man sketch show, Acuña Acuna. He’s since performed it at Dojo Comedy and in New York.

Without further ado, let’s dive right into the Erica Acuña interview. Some of the answers and responses have been edited for clarity. But you can hear Erick’s full take on improv by listening to the podcast episode.

How did you get into comedy and performance?

In high school, I loved theater, but I think my first introduction to comedy was watching American sitcoms. That’s also how I started learning English. Seinfeld was one of my all-time favorite shows.

Humor and comedy is different in Latin America than in the States. In Peru in particular, especially in the 1990s, comedy was very rude and very raw. Just insulting someone was considered funny. So watching the subtlety of Seinfeld and certain jokes was so different from anything that I’d watched before. Back in the ’90s in Peru, we were also in the middle of an armed conflict. There weren’t that many comedy shows, so pretty much anything that I watched was from the States.

But watching American comedy shows was just a hobby for me. I wanted to be a musician. I play guitar and drums, and I had a punk rock band when I was in school. Back then, thought, there wasn’t really a possibility to be a musician or a comedian or an actor or do creative stuff. You needed a legit job and a legit career, so I went to law school.

At first I hated it. I had this internship, and I had to wear a suit. I couldn’t imagine wearing a suit and going to court for the rest of my life. I just needed an outlet. A friend of mine told me they’d started taking classes at an improv comedy theater that had just opened in the city. I’d never heard of improv at that point, but my friend persuaded me to take classes at this theater called Que Tal. The founder was an Argentinian actor and comedian. He’d moved to Peru because he realized that there wasn’t any improv scene at all there, so he founded a theater and did clown and improv.

I started taking classes and enrolled in the program at the theater in 2009. I was still in law school, and I would take improv classes every Friday night from 7pm to 10pm. I immediately fell in love with it. I loved the community that was just starting there, and it was so great to be part of it. I got to the point where I thought I didn’t even want to be a lawyer, I just wanted to do improv forever.

It was also the only improv theater or comedy place in the entire city, so all the shows were sold out. I think Whose Line Is It Anyway? was popular in Peru, as well, so people thought it was very interesting. The situation in Peru wasn’t great, so it seeing shows was another way to forget about all that stuff, kind of like what’s happening right now in the US. Ten years ago, the theater attracted people who didn’t want to think about politics and just wanted to have a good time. Plus, it was cheap—cheaper than going to the movies—and you could drink.

I’d also started an indie group called The Firefighters (Los Bomberos in Spanish). Our brand was something like, “We’re gonna burn the stage.” It was really fun to play with that group. I made fantastic friends, and some of them are still doing comedy or acting. It was a great moment to be part of all that.

Right when I was starting to think improv was what I wanted to do, I got very interested in human rights and international law at school. It was the only area of law that I actually liked. I’ve always loved volunteering and been very passionate about social justice. Plus, I love traveling and getting to know different cultures, experiences, and backgrounds. I thought it was so cool—and I didn’t have to wear a suit, so it was perfect.

I applied to do my master’s degree in human rights law in the States. I felt like if I wanted to continue working as a human rights lawyer, I needed to do a masters somewhere else, and I really wanted to travel. I went to Notre Dame University in South Bend, Indiana. I lived there for a year, and it was really fun, but I was so sad that I’d left the improv community in Peru. It was at the point where you could see that it was going to explode, and I left right then.

Did you try to do comedy when you first moved to the US?

When I was in South Bend, I wanted to do comedy. I’d taken some stand-up workshops in Peru, but there was no improv team at Notre Dame—or at least, I couldn’t find any college team. The only things I saw were open mic nights. I had this stand-up routine in Spanish and translated it into English, and I bombed so hard.

The bar was packed with students. I was the only brown person there, the only Peruvian there. I was very nervous, trying to translate my Spanish monologue routine. I didn’t get any laughs. It was brutal. It was the only time I did it. It was not great, so I decided to put comedy on pause.

After that, I got a fellowship to work in Egypt for six months, which was really awesome. I didn’t do comedy there, either. I tried to get into the scene there, but it was hard. I was only there for a short time, so I decided to concentrate on work and traveling around the Middle East.

How did you get into the comedy scene in DC?

I moved to DC at the end of 2012. I got an eight month fellowship at the same place I work now, an international organization that works in human rights in Latin America. My goal was to be here for eight months, and then I wanted to move to Europe and keep traveling. But there were two things that kept me in DC: I got hired after my fellowship, and I enrolled in classes at WIT in 2013.

When I saw the classes at Washington Improv Theater, I realized they would be in English, and I didn’t know if I could do it. I sent an email to the former educational director to say that I’d been doing improv for a couple years in Spanish and to ask what level I should take. She recommended that I go to a showcase and see how I felt about the levels, so I went by myself with a notebook to see if I could understand what was happening.

There were some things I didn’t get, mostly pop culture references and slang I didn’t understand. I decided I had to take the class, though. I knew I was going to be living in DC for at least a couple years, and I missed comedy so much. I needed it, and I needed a community. I’d had such an amazing experience in Peru, so I wanted to see what DC had to offer.

I enrolled in classes at WIT, and I was so scared and nervous the first day. I’d been doing improv for a couple years, but now I was dealing with a language difference. It was great, though, and I met some people through that class who I still perform with.

Melanie Harker was my teacher for that class. She was great, and she gave me a lot of confidence when words came up that I didn’t understand. I would stop sometimes in the middle of exercises or a scene because I didn’t know what a word meant. I would feel bad about it, but she was fantastic and made me feel like that was okay. She would tell me not to feel ashamed of or worried about it because English wasn’t my first language.

My classmates, who then became my friends, would also try to adjust. If they could say a word in a more simple way, they would say it instead of using slang. Or if they knew I wasn’t aware of a lot of pop culture references, they wouldn’t be over the top with them. I felt very supported.

I finished the program and had a blast. I made fantastic friends. I learned so much. I started getting more involved in the community, and formed Couch Money, my first indie team, with some classmates at the end of level three or four.

What did you do after finishing the WIT program?

After we finished the program, Couch Money decided we needed to do improv every week. We wanted to go hardcore, rehearse, find a coach, play big. It was eight improv nerds, so we just wanted to keep doing more and more improv. It was awesome to be on this indie team trying to do shows and perform anywhere that we could.

That was in 2015, so there weren’t that many bar possibilities. Dojo wasn’t around yet, so it was pretty much just The Highwood, WIT, and a few bars. WIT would invite one indie team per week to perform during Harold Night, and when they invited Couch Money, we thought we were going to die. It was one of the best moments of my entire life. We all felt like, “Oh my god, we made it to Harold Night.” We were super nervous, but it was really fun.

I wanted to keep doing more improv, so I took advanced classes. I was obsessed with improv, and I wanted to keep doing it every day. I went to Harold Night every Tuesday, and I’d see as many shows as I could on weekends.

Find you someone who looks at you the way Erick Acuña looks at improv

I tried out for Harold right after finishing the WIT program because it was what the next step was supposed to be. I think I auditioned for Harold five or six times, maybe seven. Looking back, it was one of the best things that could have ever happened to me. At first, of course, I felt like I sucked and wasn’t good at improv. I started comparing myself to other people. I would see people who’d just finished the program immediately making a team. It was definitely a learning process—it’s still a learning process—of not comparing myself to other people because each person has their own path.

I also had to learn what to do with rejection. I was 28 or 29 at the time, and maybe by the third time I got rejected, I just realized I wanted to get better, not to prove to the theater that I could improve, but to prove to myself that I could do it.

I decided to take classes at UCB. I started reading books, like the UCB manual. I started watching shows on YouTube. I went to New York to see some live shows, and I’d never seen anything like it. It completely blew me away. So I enrolled at UCB and finished the whole core program.

I used my vacation time and took Mondays off to take the bus at 6am or 7am. I’d go to my class at noon, take my class, then take the train back or see shows at night. I did that for about four months, and it changed my life.

The way UCB teaches improv just made a lot of sense with my personality, my style, and what I love about improv and comedy. I’m very organized, so having a way to approach scenes with game, identify an unusual thing, frame that unusual thing, then heighten that unusual thing totally made sense in my head. I felt like I understood what good scenes could be.

Around that time, Ceci DeRobertis invited me to join Sábado Picante. She also recommended me as a TA to Jonathan Murphy, WIT’s educational director, so I also started TA-ing at WIT. Then I was doing comedy five nights a week. I was going to New York on Mondays. I went to Harold Night on Tuesdays. Couch Money was on Wednesdays. Thursdays I TA-ed at WIT. And Fridays and Saturdays I had shows.

So when I did my last audition for Harold, before I finally made it, I was at the point where I almost didn’t even care about it. I felt so relaxed. I was doing so many other things, and I realized Harold wasn’t the end of the world. A lot of people just want to be on a Harold team and not do anything else, which I respect, but I wanted to do other stuff. I left that audition feeling great. I felt like I’d given my all.

What’s your experience in the Harold program been like?

I made it onto Fran, and it was insane. We went nuts. I did some of my favorite shows with Fran. We were all very good friends, and it was one of those teams where we immediately had a connection. Everyone was so nice, and we had great coaches. I felt like the team had a lot of potential to be incredible, but people moved to New York, had kids, et cetera.

Captain PhD was formed with half of Fran, and we’ve been together for a little over a year. I’ve been very lucky with my two teams, and Captain PhD is the best group of people I can think of. Everyone is so cool, and I’m still excited to go to rehearsal even after being on the team for a year. I’m excited to see everyone.

Erick Acuña Captain PhD — Erick Acuña is always happy to see his Captain PhD teammates

We hang out a lot, and we do festivals and other shows outside of Harold Night. Two days is not enough for us. I’ve seen so much these past few years with other Harold teams and other people’s experiences, and seeing that definitely makes me value what I have more because it’s not easy. You never know what’s going to happen with your team. Sometimes the chemistry doesn’t work, improv styles are different, and people leave. But we’ve been pretty solid for almost a year.

How was the experience of directing and producing Heavy Rotation?

Heavy Rotation, which Alan Prunier and I came up with, has been one of the best things that has ever happened. It was so freaking fun to do the project and see an idea actually come to life. The people involved took it to another level, which was so cool. I’m super happy about that project.

We saw so many great people—awesome people, people I’d seen before, people I hadn’t seen—during auditions. There were people with Dojo backgrounds, people with WIT backgrounds. We cast people of color, which was something I was intentionally trying to do. Mary Ann Badavi was the assistant director, so it was great to have two people of color directing the project.

What other projects or indie teams have you worked on?

Right after I joined Fran, I was cast on Improv Actually. When I joined, I couldn’t believe I was in the room with such amazing people. I also love that there was so much diversity. There were so many people of color. I think on Fran, I might have been the only person of color.

That’s also been interesting, and it’s so important to talk about. Even when I went through classes, there were a lot of white folks and white teams. Improv Actually was one of the first things I did where I realized there were a lot of us.

I’ve also been working on and getting involved with diversity efforts and getting more diverse students and players involved in the improv scene. Ginnie Seger and I hosted the Diversity Jam, which was a really cool initiative.

I joined Press Play, which is one of my all-time favorite teams. When I got a call from Matt Mansfield telling me I’d made the team, it was probably the second happiest moment of my life. I think I was even happier than when I made a Harold team.

I think I’m on eight or nine indie teams. There’s Poetic Resistance and Invisible Knapsack. Ginnie Seger, Elaine Colwell, and I came up with Bring Back the ’90s, which is a monthly show with a rotating cast at Unified Scene Theater. I perform with One Wet Dog at Dojo.

This year, I’m working on a one-man show. It’s a 30-minute sketch and stand-up show.

What’s been your biggest aha moment in comedy?

I was taking UCB 401 with Zack Willis, and I was understanding game but struggling a lot with philosophy. He said sometimes “yes, because” is more powerful than “yes, and.” It helped me realized you should always give a reason why you’re doing something or why you feel that way. You should never feel like you’re stating the obvious. You should always say your “why” out loud.

What’s been your biggest failure in comedy, and how did you deal with it?

I think the amount of times I auditioned for Harold felt, at that moment, like a big failure. I felt like I’d failed as a comedian. But after I didn’t make a team and started classes at UCB, that became a pivotal moment. Now I realize if I’d been cast after my first audition, I wouldn’t have taken classes at UCB, and I’m so happy I did that. I learned a lot about myself just by going there and proving to myself that I can take classes there, that I can learn and go see shows.

I also feel like I realized, through the experience of not making a Harold team, that the biggest joy you can have is performing with people you like, people you love, and just being silly. That feeling of performing with people you like, performing anywhere and having a blast, even if it’s two people or a hundred people in the audience, having the same energy and realizing at the end of the day, you do this because you love this weird world of comedy, is one of the best feelings.

I love comedy, and I love improv. When there’s something funny, I’m going to laugh. If there’s something weird, I’m going to laugh. That’s why I see shows. I’m not there to judge. I’m just there to have a blast and support people.

Where can people find you online?

I have a website where you can see my calendar for shows. Captain PhD performs at Harold Night on Tuesdays. Bring Back the ’90s is at Unified Scene. I’m on One Wet Dog and some other weird stuff at Dojo Comedy. I’ll be around with my indie teams or supporting shows at bars.

Thanks for tuning in!

Check out the many shows Erick is involved in on around town, and come back next week for our interview with Dojo Comedy owner Murphy McHugh.