Interview: Gianmarco Soresi Digs into the Past With THEATER ADULT at Caveat

Standup comedian Gianmarco Soresi has amassed a huge following on social media and can be seen on stages around the country – but he got his start in musical theater. He’s exploring the special place of those childhood roles in a new show at Caveat called Theater Adult, which he describes as “hosted by me, failed musical theater performer/stand-up comedian Gianmarco Soresi (Bachelor of Fine Arts, University of Miami 2011).”

Soresi will “interview former theater kids about their “careers” in the performing arts from the time they were children up until they graduated college. Whether it’s the year they were cast as a tree in third grade or their star turn as Tevye in a Catholic high school’s ill-fated production of Fiddler on The Roof, each role is approached with the investment of Inside The Actors Studio accompanied by the comedic riffing and introspection of You Made It Weird. And of course, performing arts isn’t limited to theater! I’m talking talent shows, short-lived punk bands, graduation speeches that almost had your diploma revoked, debate team romances, attempts at professional wrestling in the backyard that resulted in a broken leg, and over dramatic readings of the Passover story at seder (that last one might just be me).”

We spoke about what to expect from the first Theater Adult on July 7th with guest Natalie Walker, with whom Soresi co-starred in an off-off-Broadway show called Buzz, and the upcoming live tour for Soresi’s podcast, The Downside. (The New York stops will be July 1 at Sesh Comedy in the Lower East Side and July 26th at City Winery.) Read our conversation below.

[This conversation has been condensed and edited for clarity.]

Where did the idea for Theater Adult come from?

I've had it for so long. I was a musical theater major, I went to University of Miami. And I really kind of quit, for all intents and purposes, once I moved to New York. But I loved and loved theater so much. I still like... whenever I would listen to, like, a good Sondheim musical or Falsettos, I would just be transported back to the thing that got me into the performing arts to begin with.

And I would always tell people, the happiest I ever was on stage was, I was at a summer camp called cherubs, which is kind of a popular musical theater, theater camp at the Northwestern campus. And we did a montage from A Chorus Line. And I think it was so much fun because it was before I knew I couldn't sing and I couldn't dance, and because of that, I was able to, like, enjoy the thrill of it, and do things that looking back, it's crazy. I was dancing, I was singing, I was playing all these weird characters.

I would always find myself talking to people about their high school theater and their talent shows. And I realized that there's so much of childhood and growth and people's history that are tied in those earlier years of them performing. I feel like my life has been punctuated by doing The Princess and the Pea when I was in kindergarten or going to musical theater sleepaway camp. Musical theater sleepaway camp was where I had my first kiss, was where I had my first “girlfriend.” So many of my life moments came within the theater, and in many ways I... You know, my family's divorced. I didn't quite have a full family unit. I grew up with no religion. I grew up with no sports teams.

And I look back and I go, theater was my community; theater was my religion. And there's so many stories within that, that are worth telling and are worth exploring and really show you a side of a person as they were figuring things out and.

I sometimes would get complaints, from some listeners of my podcast [the Downside] about like, enough with the f-ing theater. And so I said, I want to have a place where, where it's just straight up, this is what you're going to get, and we're going to talk about this element of a person's life. And that's how Theater Adult was born.

What’s your vision for the future of Theater Adult?

So this is very much to test out kind of how the model works, but I would love to kind of have a mix of a podcast that you could listen to on Spotify and whatnot, but also a live element to it. I'd love to have on people who do theater still and kind of not talk about their Broadway years, but talk about the early years.

Natalie Walker, my guest, is still a phenomenal performer and does concerts at Studio 54. But I also would love to be able to bring in people who left theater and talk about how theater plays into their lives now. Like, for me, I'm really a standup comedian now, but I can point to the places where all that theater life, informed what I do onstage as a comedian.

But I'd also love to talk to someone who's now, you know, a judge. Talk to someone who's now a businessperson. Talk to someone who's now a teacher, or just an actor in movies. And really hear [about] just the earlier life and when they were doing that, that kind of stuff.

So that's where I would love the show to, to go to kind of show being a theater adult is not contained to you do theater now, currently. And, believe you me, I couldn't be more excited to see Natalie sing. But I also think it would be so cool to see someone who hasn't sung in ten years recreate the time that they were Sally Bowles in Cabaret sophomore year of high school.

I'd love to see them do it again, because you get to really kind of experience their authentic selves without the kind of varnish of voice lessons and acting lessons. And I think also give them an opportunity, because if I know anything about theater adults, it's that there is a part of them that still wants to perform. And I think would be happy for the opportunity to do it again.

At what point did you officially decide to shift your focus away from musical theater?

Honestly, being at college for musical theater, I feel like I hit a wall. I used to practice singing very neurotically two hours every day, really. And I just wasn't really improving. And it wasn't until I got to New York City and you really see what you're competing with vocally that I think reality sets in and you go, well, I'm not going to make a living.

I'm going to these auditions where, you know, it's a non-Equity chorus call where you get to sing eight measures and I can hear the other auditioners through the wall, and they're blowing me away. And we're all nonunion performers, and our chances of even getting this role is negligible to begin with. And I think just the results and the kind of wall I was hitting vocally led me to lean more into acting.

And then I really was like fully pursuing acting, TV, film, commercials, theater for a number of years and had a couple bookings here and there, but I struggled to like, embed myself in the community and so I wrote my own play that was at the Fringe Festival. I did well enough at the Fringe Festival, but I think in writing something for myself, I found the thing I was best at was talking directly to the audience.

And from that, I had a friend who really recommended I lean into standup comedy, and I did, and I just became addicted, or fell in love, whatever terminology you prefer. And, before I knew it, I was doing standup every single night.

Do you have any advice for people who wanted to do musical theater when they were kids and are struggling as adults?

Oh, man. I think broad advice is so challenging as an artist because, like, a lot of it depends on your talents. And I think the brutal part of being in the arts is, everything is “subjective,” but it also isn't. And I think the only real broad advice I could give to an artist aside from “work hard” or whatever, is to really keep your ear to the ground of what are you good at? What is it where you are most masterful? And the heartbreaking part of life is, it's not necessarily going to be the exact thing you dreamed of.

And also, I would say that sometimes our dreams can be very narrow and part of it is like... You know, there was no standup comedy class when I was in high school. There was just theater, and I gravitated towards theater. And who knows, maybe if there had been standup comedy, I would have done that and realized, oh, I'm really good at this, and leaned in more.

But you have to allow your dreams to change. And you want to be open because... I never would have thought standup comedy would have brought me the kind of joy it does now. And it took a lot of me hitting my head against the wall to realize that I was good at this thing. And that's what I'd say ultimately. It's like, see if you love musical theater. And maybe you do, and maybe you just need a new voice teacher. Maybe you just need to accept you're not a tenor and just sing baritone songs. Or maybe there's some other element of this that you love and that you're good at. And yeah, that's kind of the only thing I'd say overall, because it's very hard. Everyone's working with a different set of stats. And it can be very hard to come to terms with the talents you have.

You’re also about to do a live tour with your podcast, The Downside. How are you feeling about that?

Good. I think in the past our live shows have been, more, “Oh, you're going to see us do, a podcast taping. You're going to see the podcast live, just recording with the guest.” And for this tour, I wanted to elevate it. And so, me and my co-host have devised more kind of segments.

We're going to have a special guest that does a 20-minute conversation. I'm going to open it with some standup. We might have some singing, because my co-host [Russell Daniels] is a brilliant theater performer in his own right and blew up playing Rose's mom in Titaníque, and then was understudying Josh Gad on Broadway. And my comedian friend suddenly... Josh Gad calls out sick, I think in the first month of shows, and he suddenly has a lead in a two-hander Broadway show. So, we're incorporating that. We're taking advantage of that.

And I'm excited to have a show that is like, you get a little bit of a podcast, but then you get something special. And I think if you're a fan of my standup comedy or you're a fan of musical theater or you're a fan of comedy, podcasts, this show is going to give you everything you could want.

Is there anything else you want to add about the podcast live taping tour or Theater Adult?

No. Just, they’re going to be great shows and I'm really excited to kind of marry my love for comedy and my love for musical theater.

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Tickets for Theater Adult are available on Caveat’s website.

Tickets for the Downside podcast tour in NYC, Washington, DC, Boston and Philadelphia are available here.

Header photo credit: Mindy Tucker

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