GIANMARCO SORESI

Interview by Helen O’Brien

You might have seen some of his viral crowd work clips online, but there is a lot more to New York based comic Gianmarco Soresi.   A trained actor and skilled storyteller, his frenetic observational comedy and dramatic theatre kid flair has seen him perform stand up on The Tonight Show with Jimmy Fallon, The Late Late Show with James Corden and somewhat bizarrely The Real Housewives of New York. Here, Gianmarco tells Loaded what to expect from his Edinburgh Fringe show ‘Theater Adult’ how he’s taking risks, subverting audience expectations and why his shows are as much for him as they are for his audience.

 

If your life were turned into a musical tomorrow, what's the title, and which Broadway star would play you?

 

Oh my gosh, so okay, okay, yeah, sure. Sorry, my girlfriend's here. Who would a funny boy, funny boy, and it would be the, you know, sequel only in name only to that to that musical, and I think I think if Christian Borle was willing to do it, it would certainly be a high honour to be played by him. He played every role I want to play.

 

You poke fun at your musical theatre degree, so is that something you genuinely regret, or are you just taking easy shots at yourself?

 

You know, it's.. I have so many mixed feelings about it, like there's a part of me now that I look how all these other degrees are being overtaken by AI, and I'm actually like, oh, this is actually the most useful degree there is, in a way. It's like I went to a trade school, I learned things I could do with my body that AI just won't replace. But no, I do think it was a huge mistake to go to college for the arts. I think a four year programme, I mean, to be completely not funny about it, I think a four year programme is just too long to not participate in the marketplace. It's so constantly shifting and moving, and I went to a very small conservatory. By the end, we started with 20, by the end, it was 11, say maybe three are still like full on in the industry now. This is a lonely industry where you depend on connections and relationships, and if you're gonna stow yourself away for four years, you better be interacting and connecting with multiple people, so you have relationships to foster. Moving to New York City, after that, you know, I saw kids who went to NYU, even those who weren't in theatre, just by being in New York City for four years, they knew people, the comedy school, and this theatre, and that director, and that magazine editor, and I think, like, a four-year programme for the arts is just a mistake in an industry that ultimately does prize youth, and you get a little more shine on you when you're young, and to spend those prime years in a movement studio in a non-performance heavy city is a mistake.

 

That's so interesting. I hadn’t thought about those four prime years of you not being in front of a true audience

 

Yeah. And listen, I feel a real mix, because I, I love training, I love classes. I ultimately look at my early career, and I was too obsessed with perfecting my instrument, as opposed to practising it in public and whatnot. But you know, you see this world where people become social media stars, and then get brought into movies and TV shows, and some of them are excellent, they're natural talents, and then some of it is just schlock, and you go, oh, they need to go back to training, so I feel this real mix and the push and pull of training and real life experience, but I think playing by the college system rules and doing four strict years is way too isolationist.

 

Is there anything that you learned during that training that you think that comedians could benefit from learning from, like comedians specifically?

 

Yeah, I think comedy's such a unique one. There’s, there's a couple comedy majors now in America, at Emerson, you can major in comedy.

 

Wow, that’s so funny, I didn’t know that

 

People used to feel that way about musical theatre. They're like, what, a musical theatre major? And, I think what's unique about comedy is, unlike singing a song, there's so many different ways you can be funny. There's even more than you could, you know, interpret one song. You do have to hit the note, and in comedy, you know, you don't have to hit the note. It might be funnier if you don’t. So I just learned different ways to be flexible with my instruments, I learned how to use my body in dance class, so I think that could help a comedian in playwriting. I learned how to structure a story, and I think that can help when you're telling a story as a comedian. So I look back at all those skills, and can you take those tools, and then kind of subvert them for yourself. I'm on stage sometimes, and I think I can misdirect the audience because I know how to emotionally connect to a moment, and then, as a comedian, I undermine it, and I think I did take that connecting part from those Lee Strasberg Stanislavski classes.

 

How different is the Gianmarco who wanted to be an actor to who you are now, the stand-up comic to the actor, what's the difference between those two guys?

 

I mean, when I wanted to be Daniel Day Lewis, I mean, truly, Daniel Day Lewis, Philip Seymour Hoffman, these were my idols, I guess, there's not, I still have an obsession with like some version of like greatness or perfection, or my vision of divinity is through high art, I think, just like with with comedy, it's almost less clear what that is, and I'm still a perfectionist, so I don't know, maybe it's no different at all, but I'm more aware that there's no such thing as that perfection, and that frees me more than I used to be. I used to be more constrained by a vision of what greatness was, and now I still seek it out, but I'm more aware of the absurdity that it doesn't exist, really.

 

So, saying about being a perfectionist, do you give yourself time to sit with and celebrate the achievements? Or do you immediately want to go on to the next project because you feel that what you've completed isn't perfection, so are you chasing that?

 

I always think like the moments that I feel happiest creatively are when I'm on stage and something works, it's very fleeting, but it usually is not tied to the end of a project or anything like that, it's when that new line works, or it's when that new movement suddenly pops, and it could be at a big theatre, it could be a first show for 12 people, that was a terrible set otherwise, and so you know, a lot of times the way people congratulate you or ask, "Hey, how you feeling? usually corresponds to these, you know, how on the outside it would be perceived, like, "Is this where you feel great? And for me, it really is just it's in the process of it that I have those those pockets of joy. I kind of am always moving. I'm about to film a special, and I'm sure there will be 30 minutes after when I'm drinking for the first time in two weeks, that's my big sacrifice, and that I'll feel good, but then, the second a new joke doesn't quite work, but you think it could be funny, that's that's the new dominant thought.

 

Now you are in to filming a new special,  how have audiences changed? It feels like they've changed enormously, and I suppose there is a section of of an audience that will turn up to see you that had the only anything that they know about you is online clips its bits of crowd work, do you find that you're now tailoring your shows to that 30% of audience that might get a little bit itchy in their seat, because they're not used to sitting through 60 minutes of stand up?

 

yeah, it's always been a thought, it’s very weird, because I'm accountable to no one but myself and the audience, there's no script, there's no director, and I’ve explored where, there's times where there will be crowd work, and there's times where I'm like, I am running an hour, and I'm not fucking around with any talking to the audience, and I think, as I've gone along, I just keep my ear to the ground. I mean, being honest, there's maybe been nine times in performing for, you know, 1000s of people all over the world where someone said, 'Oh, I was.. I was hoping there was going to be more crowd work, but then sometimes they go, ‘there wasn’t any crowd work, but we had an incredible time, and if I ever felt like, oh, this is a constant response I'm getting, I go, okay, maybe I release less crowd work clips, but ultimately I think what I'm trying to pitch, in this vast social media output of mine is this is my mind, this is how I operate comedically, and if you come, you're gonna get an expression of my comedic sensibility in some way.  And you know, the contract you have with the audience is, pay the money to see me, and then do you walk away feeling good? Did you have a good time? And there's some people, I mean, truly, in the last two months, I've been so set on this hour that I've done no crowd work, and ultimately, I think people feel good. I think sometimes, if I talk to an audience member, if I say only one thing to them that scratches that itch, they go, oh, I saw some crowd work. It’s, it's a weird thing, where, I did a show, I tried to do this, I'm working on the show called ‘Theatre Adult’, where I talk about theatre a lot more, and that's how we sell it, you know, I don't go John Marcus Raising Headlines, it's ‘Theater Adult’, and someone wrote me after, and they said, "Hey, I came tonight, it was so much like theatre material, and you're like, "You know, what are you gonna do? We called it ‘Theater adult’, and I just think overall it's.. I keep a high bar for myself sometimes. I mix up the kinds of things I'm doing in the show, but you're always going to get me, you're always going to get my sense of humour, and who knows, as I progress, I might get to a place where I'm like, okay, I need to make more of a crowd work show, okay, I need to make more clear I'm headlining, but even when you do that, not everyone's paying attention, they just pay to see you, all you can really do in the chaos of it, is crush, you know, in some capacity. People laugh, they're not going to be mad.

Do you think, as a theatre adult, you're as precocious as a theatre kid?

 

GM  

I think to a degree, there's all different kinds of theatre kids, and I'm a little more introverted in real life, but I need that moment to explode on stage, and so I think partly doing stand-up and getting so much of that does make me a more tolerable person off stage.

 

Did you learn anything from doing Edinburgh Fringe last year about the way that the crowds work and the whole system of the beast that you wish you'd known before, and do you think that's going to inform how your show goes this year?

 

I'm nervous in a way that will motivate me. I think what's so nice about Edinburgh is, I still have fans there, for sure, but it is more people who don't know me, and that's so exciting, you can become so spoiled with a fan base, and so I think in Edinburgh, I come ready to fight a little more, because there's going to be some people who it’s the fifth show they saw that day. The last time it was stand up, and I could just do whatever, and I could just kill for an hour, that's no problem. With this one, It's like, okay, I'm trying something a little more themed. I do some more specific crowd work. There's going to be some singing, and I'm excited for the challenge. I'm nervous in a way that I haven't felt with just strict stand-up for a while, and I think that will churn up something really cool

 

Gianmaro Soresi’s new comedy show ‘Theater Adult’ will be at the Underbelly – Cowbarn @ Bristo Square from 17th - 30th August at 7.40pm for tickets go to www.edfringe.com