Episode 342 - Gianmarco Soresi

Breaking Bread with Tom Papa

Comedian Gianmarco Soresi joins Tom Papa for a heartfelt conversation about his journey from musical theater to stand-up comedy, reflecting

Key takeaways

• Soresi's transition from musical theater to stand-up was driven by rejection and necessity, turning personal failures into comedy material.

Main topics

• Transition from musical theater to stand-up comedy
• The influence of acting training on comedic writing

Notable quotes

I was desperate because I was an actor. I went to college for musical theater. And I wrote this play for the New York French Festival because no one was casting me.

Between every scene, I would talk to the audience and all the positive feedback was for that part.

Conclusion

Gianmarco Soresi's story illustrates how personal setbacks in theater can fuel a powerful

Transcript preview

Speaker 1 (0:01) I can tell you're wrestling or fending off the criticism of a crowd work comic or real comic, right? It's all the same shit. But I watched your Comedy Works hour. Oh, thank you. And I didn't say if I liked it. Speaker 2 (0:20) Even if you watched it, that's enough. A view is Speaker 1 (0:23) a view in the algorithm. It was really good. It's really good. And you really, that's the thing. It's like, you are a really good joke writer and you're really good at crowd work. And it's like, you should use every weapon that you have. Speaker 2 (0:35) It's breaking bread. Speaker 1 (0:36) Thanks for being here. Speaker 2 (0:37) Honored to be here. Speaker 1 (0:38) You almost didn't make it. I know. Well, Speaker 2 (0:40) thank Speaker 1 (0:40) God. Thank God. Speaker 2 (0:42) In LA, you've... Fuck up in LA. It's a disaster. Yeah, because Speaker 1 (0:47) you're in another state. In Speaker 2 (0:48) New York, you could like, you run. I'll run. Hold for five. I'll get there. LA, Speaker 1 (0:53) you Speaker 2 (0:53) look at the map, you go, it's Speaker 1 (0:54) over. Speaker 2 (0:55) I'll never, I burnt that bridge. Speaker 1 (0:58) Yeah, I'm gonna have to spend $75 on an Uber. Speaker 2 (1:00) Yeah. Speaker 1 (1:01) And slide over. Good to see you. Good to see you too. Yeah. We've never hung out before. Speaker 2 (1:08) No, we did your SiriusXM show. We've seen each other at the Cellar once or twice. Yeah. But you know. Speaker 1 (1:14) But yeah, you're very funny. Thank you for being here. I'm honored. Yeah, it's a good thing. Where do you live in New York? I live Speaker 2 (1:23) in Dumbo. You do? And I've been in New York like 12 years. Speaker 1 (1:27) And I'm going to ask you to repeat this because I just asked you, but when did you start stand-up? I started as Speaker 2 (1:31) an actor, so I can do it. Well, thanks for asking. I did take one class at Caroline's Comedy Club with Linda Smith. All Speaker 1 (1:39) right. Speaker 2 (1:40) Like in college. So like I did that, you know, 2011 and then nothing. Speaker 1 (1:46) Right. Speaker 2 (1:47) And then it's 2016, 17, 16, 17 is when I really started. Speaker 1 (1:51) Right. I wrote a play. Speaker 2 (1:53) That's so Speaker 1 (1:53) fast. You've had a lot of success in 10 years. Speaker 2 (1:56) It worked. Yeah. I was desperate because I was an actor. I went to college for musical theater. And I wrote this play for the New York French Festival because no one was casting me. Speaker 1 (2:08) Right. Speaker 2 (2:08) And between every scene, I would talk to the audience and all the positive feedback was for that part. Speaker 1 (2:15) Right. And I would Speaker 2 (2:16) say, what about the scene? And they'd go, the part where you talk to us was so great. And so I just like, I got into a really shitty comedy club, LOL, in Times Square, which no longer exists. Right. But I got that rare like, I became the check spot guy. And I was doing four shows a night. I was single. So I was pretty much there four shows, Saturday, six shows, holidays, eight shows. Great. Which you can't do in New York. Yeah. Ever anymore. In one Speaker 1 (2:46) place. I couldn't Speaker 2 (2:47) do it now. Yeah. And they had three spaces. And I dove in really hard. Speaker 1 (2:54) Right. And did you have in your mind? that you wanted to do comedy before you started acting in school and stuff? Like, was it Speaker 2 (3:01) a thing in your head? I Speaker 1 (3:03) think I Speaker 2 (3:03) liked it, but I didn't really, my mom like introduced me to like George Carlin when I was young and I was a big Seinfeld watcher with my dad. Yeah. So I loved comedy, but. I was so much like, I'm going to be a great musical theater performer. And then when I couldn't sing, I was like, I'm going to be such a great actor. Right. And then I said, okay, something without talent. Did Speaker 1 (3:25) you ever audition for a musical that you shouldn't have? Speaker 2 (3:27) I... Speaker 2 (3:29) I just had like a couple odd, I only, by the time I got to the end of college, I was like, my singing has not improved. Right. And I practiced every day. So it was a Speaker 1 (3:39) brutal Speaker 2 (3:39) awakening. And then, you know, you audition once or twice, you crack in the room. Yeah. And you're like, get out of here. Speaker 1 (3:45) Did you, were you in musicals in school? Yeah, I was in all the musicals. You could slide into those. Speaker 2 (3:49) Yeah, because I was in a conservatory. So it's like you were going to do it. But when you're a senior and your part in Rent is Maureen's dad. And your song is a duo. It's called Voicemail No. 4. You're like, okay, this is bad. This is bad. I Speaker 1 (4:06) auditioned once in college for Little Shop of Horrors. Oh, my God. Who did you audition for? The dentist or Speaker 2 (4:13) Seymour? For Seymour. For Seymour. Speaker 1 (4:15) Yeah, my girlfriend was the lead. Audrey? Audrey. Wow. She had a really good voice. And I was like, well, I don't really sing. But I was acting in school. So I was like, I'll give it a try. And I went through and I did the audition. And I mean, brutal. And they made me the plant. That's still a Speaker 2 (4:36) great role. Speaker 1 (4:37) It wasn't the voice of the plant. It was the Speaker 2 (4:40) puppeteer. Oh my God. Speaker 1 (4:41) So I had to get inside the thing. And I would just sweat my ass off and move the thing around as some other man. With a great voice. That's romantic. You got to eat your girlfriend at the end. Yeah, and she climbed in. We Speaker 2 (4:53) did it in my high school. And there's the part where he feeds the dentist's body parts to the plant. And as the closing night prank, the bucket of body parts, it was all dildos. So I fed six dentist dicks to the plant. In Speaker 1 (5:07) the Speaker 2 (5:07) middle of high school. It was amazing. Speaker 2 (5:10) What acting? It's Speaker 1 (5:12) funny. Speaker 2 (5:12) How deep were you? Did you start as an actor? First of Speaker 1 (5:14) all, let me just note how much you lit up as soon as we started talking about musical theater. It's still a love. It's still a love. It's great. There's nothing better than theater. It's the best. Yeah. I went to Rider by Princeton. It was like a small school. And I went there because they didn't have football. Because I was an athlete my whole life. And I was done. I didn't want to do it. And my father was like, you should play Division III and keep going. And I was like, Speaker 2 (5:41) and Speaker 1 (5:42) I wanted to be a comic and an actor. So I went to a writer. Why would you do Division Speaker 2 (5:47) III football? You get the CTE without the money to cover it. Speaker 1 (5:50) Right, exactly. I was so done. And I went to a writer because they got kicked out of the league for doing something shady. And there was no football. And I went there and just went into the theater. That's so cool. Yeah, and that's where I just spent my life. All the rest of Speaker 2 (6:04) it. Speaker 1 (6:04) And you're Speaker 2 (6:04) doing intense acting classes, like Stanislavski, Leisner? Yeah. Speaker 1 (6:09) It was a pretty good program. That's amazing. Yeah. I was communications, but I just lived in the theater. And I was just like, oh, this is going Speaker 2 (6:16) to be it. Speaker 1 (6:16) Any good plays? I did Dracula. I got to be Dracula. Amazing. That was cool. All My Sons. Wow. House of Blue Leaves. Amazing. Yeah. Equus. Equus? Were you the guy? I was the, no, I was the therapist. That one was rough because I actually did that after I graduated. They asked me to come back and play it. And he smoked a lot. Yeah. And I'd never smoked. So it was just 21 year old Tommy. Speaker 1 (6:52) Not inhaling, trying to be this Richard Burton. I don't know if there's any tape on it, but it would have been rough. Did they do the nudes? Did he get naked for that one part? Yeah, I think like bodysuit naked. Speaker 2 (7:07) Bodysuit naked? Speaker 1 (7:07) Yeah, I think like flesh-toned. He wasn't naked. Because I saw Speaker 2 (7:11) Daniel Radcliffe in London. I was in high school. Oh, wow. No bodysuit. That was cock out. Speaker 1 (7:16) Cock out. Yeah. How was it? Speaker 2 (7:20) It was good. Speaker 1 (7:21) Yeah. Speaker 2 (7:21) Yeah. If it was crazy, it would have ruined the show. If you were like, it's bigger than the horses, that would really, you'd be fucking up. Speaker 1 (7:31) Yeah. So, yeah, I love that. I did stand up once when I had a security job, and I would sit in my car and watch a housing development at night. There was nothing happening. And it was in the winter, and I would just run like a cable into my little... TV or my little boombox. And I started doing standup into that in the dark and alone. Speaker 2 (7:52) Alone. I would Speaker 1 (7:53) just do bits and then I would come back and play for my roommates and they mocked me. Speaker 2 (7:57) Do you feel like the acting, like I write out, I'm a big writer of all my standup and it has a lot of background in like, I think it's informed by the fact that I was reading scripts and I did lines and I still, you know, I don't, I don't. view it like I would if I was studying for a play, but I think a lot of me writing it out is because I like to see it in front of me. Yeah. Like a play. Speaker 1 (8:19) Yeah. That's yeah. I never thought of it. I think you're probably right. There is, you see the beats, you know, you've studied it and, and do all of that, but you've had so much success, not just doing crowd work, doing stuff. That's. Yeah. Speaker 2 (8:33) I think sometimes I, I worry. People who know my work intimately know that I always worry, especially with comics that are older than me, that because of what goes viral on social media, they think of me as a crowd work person. He's only popular Speaker 1 (8:52) because he does crowd work. Speaker 2 (8:53) Yeah, and I'm such a... Speaker 2 (8:56) I'm so, I got my transcription app and I'm working, I'm working so hard in the other way. It's not that I'm necessarily embarrassed of crowd work. It's like, I just want comics that I respect to know I'm on their level of thinking that way about jokes. I'll Speaker 1 (9:13) be open with you. We were talking behind your back before you got here. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And we said that your act is better than your crowd work. Speaker 2 (9:23) Oh. Your crowd Speaker 1 (9:24) work's great. That's very kind. It's Speaker 2 (9:25) a Speaker 1 (9:25) very high level. Yeah, yeah, yeah. But your material's fantastic. Yeah, I appreciate it. Like, Speaker 2 (9:31) you're Speaker 1 (9:31) really good. Thank you. So we view you that way anyway. Oh, good. I'm glad. Yeah. Speaker 2 (9:35) It's just, it's always with, it's all social media where it's just like the things people get. you know, they get a specific thing. Yeah. And they don't always know you're full. Speaker 1 (9:44) Well, how quick did it pop off? Because you have a ton of followers on social media. Well, Speaker 2 (9:48) it's interesting because it was during COVID, I got on TikTok, not right away, but there was some comedians that were doing front-facing and telling a joke. Speaker 1 (9:57) Right. And Speaker 2 (9:58) I had written so many jokes, working these check spots, and I had them in Word documents. And I think because I was an actor, I'm fine. just performing it. I don't, you know, it's great to have the laughter, but I think some comedians are like, I'm not going to just say a joke to the camera. But Speaker 1 (10:15) I was like, fuck, Speaker 2 (10:15) what else am I going to do? Speaker 1 (10:17) So Speaker 2 (10:17) I was just one by one, one joke a day on TikTok. And then I was just in tune enough that the second Facebook Reels started and YouTube Shorts started and built like just a social media output. And then... It got to the point where it was big enough I'd go to a show and I could see an audience member whisper a punchline to someone before I said it. And I go, okay, I have to start releasing less of my material. And that's when the crowd work kind of emerged. Just Speaker 1 (10:45) that short telling of how you went about it has been one of the most revealing things of this podcast for your generation of comics. Because I know what you're saying. The people that didn't come up with it. They kind of look at it like, why is that guy selling out? Why is he so popular? Oh, it's just social media. The amount of work that the successful people have put in to be successful as a comic on social media is astounding. You Speaker 2 (11:16) have to do, Speaker 1 (11:16) it Speaker 2 (11:17) doesn't just happen. Like captioning long jokes on TikTok, on my phone, timing it so that they change. And then. And then, you know, eventually, now I have like a team, but I'm still very much involved. Speaker 1 (11:32) I Speaker 2 (11:33) see a lot of like kind of older comics coming around to social media. And some of them I'm like, you're getting bamboozled Speaker 1 (11:40) by your team. Speaker 2 (11:41) You're putting up some hot garbage. There's one comic, older guy, he posted his meme. Like, you know, they're trying to just do content. Speaker 1 (11:51) And Speaker 2 (11:51) it was around Thanksgiving and it was like, Pumpkin pie or pecan pie? Sound off in the comments. And I'm like, that's, we're at the bottom of the Speaker 1 (11:59) barrel here. Oh, Speaker 2 (12:00) no. Speaker 1 (12:02) It's so bad. That's where the advantage of having my daughters in the house. Like, they would just let you know, like, don't. Do you Speaker 2 (12:12) feel like comedians with kids, does it like... ground them or keep them up to date in a way where comedians who don't have any kids, like they're just, they get lost? Speaker 1 (12:24) Nah, I think it might be the opposite, actually. Really? Yeah, because once you have a family, you detach from the world in a way. Speaker 2 (12:32) You're Speaker 1 (12:33) a little off in your own little tribe. Speaker 2 (12:35) Yeah. Speaker 1 (12:36) And you kind of, music isn't just coming to you anymore. You have to research, what's everyone listening to now? Yeah, yeah, Speaker 2 (12:44) yeah. Speaker 1 (12:44) Because you're out of that orbit now. And then when they get older, then they're saying that you're out of it. And you're like, but you were the cause. Speaker 2 (12:56) You Speaker 1 (12:56) know what I mean? Speaker 2 (12:57) Yeah. I'm thinking about, I'm 37 and I'm going like, oh, would I have a kid? Are you in a Speaker 1 (13:07) relationship? Speaker 2 (13:08) Long relationship. My girlfriend, she's my manager too. Oh, wow. We were together for a long time before that. Oh, you told me Speaker 1 (13:15) that. Speaker 2 (13:15) He's Speaker 1 (13:15) a Speaker 2 (13:15) mosaic, Tova Silberman. Right. And yeah, just thinking about what is this life with kids? And I wrote Jim Gaffigan, who I'd met a couple of times, but I was like, I almost like was like, like I thought maybe we'd have like a sit down and he talked to me about having kids. And he was just like, yeah, go for it. It's great. And I was like, Speaker 1 (13:35) yeah, he doesn't have time for me. He's got 6,000 Speaker 2 (13:38) fucking kids. And I want another like. Yeah, Speaker 1 (13:42) that's what I want to do is talk about kids when I'm not with my kids. Speaker 2 (13:45) You did the joke about, do you miss your family when you're going? No, what's hard is not whistling while I pack. Speaker 1 (13:51) Right. Yeah, I think about Speaker 2 (13:52) that a lot. I think about that joke a lot, even without the kids. Speaker 1 (13:59) We weren't sure if we were going to do it at 37. I guess we were a little younger. And, you know, probably like early 30s. And my wife was a comic too. Oh my God. Yeah, Cynthia Corey. And we were like, I don't know if we're going to do it. But then artistically, we were like, that's the way we viewed the world. And we really came to the conclusion, why would we pass on the biggest experience you could have? Speaker 2 (14:27) That's how my girlfriend- And we were in love. Speaker 1 (14:29) That was kind of intellectualizing why we were in love and like, let's make more of us. You know what I mean? You're great. You're great. Let's make another one. Speaker 2 (14:36) And Speaker 1 (14:37) so we, it was that. It was like, why pass on the biggest, we're just going to go through life and not know what that is. Speaker 2 (14:44) Yeah. Yeah. I get that. Speaker 1 (14:46) You know? Unfortunately, Speaker 2 (14:47) my mom, whenever she sees- a comic who talks about their kids, she always goes, ugh, I hate when comedians talk about their kids. She also says, I don't know if I should have become a mom. Like, that's Speaker 1 (14:57) who Speaker 2 (14:57) she is. Yeah. But when comedians talk about kids, and you know, there's a lot of hacky versions of that. There's a lot of my kids said a bitch. Yeah. And they're two. Right. And it's like, yeah, we've heard this. Speaker 1 (15:11) Yeah. No, it's, I mean, yeah, it's. How can you talk about your family with new thoughts? That's the thing. Speaker 2 (15:20) Did you have any boundaries of like what... I saw Lori Kilmartin with her son recently. I asked him, I was like, is there anything you're like, you don't want your mom to talk about? And he was like, no. Speaker 1 (15:31) Which is Speaker 2 (15:31) a blessing. I talk about my family a lot. Partially they don't pay attention. Speaker 1 (15:36) And Speaker 2 (15:36) it gives me a freedom. It gives me a freedom to talk about... I consider my special sauce is like I'm willing to say crazy things about my phone. Crazy things. But I know people where they're like, yeah, my sister said, please don't tell a joke about me. Speaker 1 (15:55) And especially Speaker 2 (15:56) with a kid, I feel like there'd be so many potentially humiliating experiences they might have that they're like, I don't want you to talk about. And Speaker 1 (16:04) you're like, but it was so Speaker 2 (16:04) funny. Speaker 1 (16:05) Yeah, no, my kids have never really said. Speaker 1 (16:11) My one did, I did a joke in one of my specials about how I had to stop smoking weed because my daughters were in the house. And then I found out when she came back from college, she had been smoking all through high school and I just didn't know about it. I'm like, Speaker 2 (16:28) I Speaker 1 (16:30) stopped for you and you were doing it down the hall? Yeah. And I, really, like a four-year hiatus. And I was like, son of a bitch. And I told that and she was like, at the taping, she was like, oh, I didn't know you were talking about that. That's so funny. Yeah, but she didn't cross it off. But that was like the first one where I saw that she registered it, you know? But no, I'm not too... Speaker 1 (16:56) interested in being too revealing about them, you know? Yeah. The only censoring, the censoring thing that I had was talking about drugs and stuff when they were little. I didn't want to just, I wasn't really that, you know, I did a lot of stuff, but I wasn't that, it wasn't present in my mind, but I didn't want to glorify that part of life while they're like figuring out where to go in the world. I get that. That was my only censoring, you know? And shit, my wife would just be like, no. Speaker 2 (17:27) Sure. Yeah. Again, I think it's part of the reason we're together, but she's very open about so many things. I think everyone's line is always surprising or you wouldn't necessarily expect it. Some people would be like, oh, it's probably sex. And it's like, no, it's not sex. For her, it's like anything that makes her look like not a professional woman. Anything where like some joke about struggling to get food for her, I implied like she would only eat buttered noodles. And she's like, I'm a fucking business