Anna Valenzuela Listens to the Universe

There once was a girl with tiny hands, who grew up to be Anna Valen­zuela, her tiny plas­tic hands accom­pa­ny­ing her on her many online shows since the pan­dem­ic. How did we get from a young Anna to the Anna we know today? Let us take you on a jour­ney. Grow­ing up, Anna had no inten­tions of becom­ing a com­ic. While she was sur­round­ed by com­e­dy through her fam­i­ly hilar­i­ty and her mom’s love of standup, she did­n’t do her first open mic until she was in her 30s. Her humor fre­quent­ly prompt­ed peo­ple to ask whether she was a com­ic (we lost count at the num­ber of peo­ple that asked her ​“are you a com­ic”), one of her last straws was – as she puts it – ​“My ther­a­pist, my own ther­a­pist was like, ​‘have you ever thought of doing stand up?’ And I’m like, Oh, wow.” And with sup­port from a cowork­er – who found the Com­e­dy Bureaus list­ing of near­by open mics – she set her mind to it.

If you’ve seen Requiem for a Dream’s visu­al sequence of the injec­tion of hero­in, to the mad rush of adren­a­line, this is how Anna might describe how she approached com­e­dy in that first year. From the first open mic, she was addict­ed. And I say this with def­er­ence to her own admit­ted­ly addic­tive per­son­al­i­ty. She pur­sued com­e­dy to the detri­ment of her sleep and even­tu­al­ly her work, reach­ing peak exhaus­tion until final­ly she real­ized some­thing had to change.

That change was a move to Los Ange­les, where she could pur­sue – with the same relent­less enthu­si­asm she’s notable for – the vaunt­ed halls and fish­bowl stage (one of them at least) of The Com­e­dy Store. Then an oppor­tu­ni­ty land­ed on her lap. 

Com­e­dy Cen­tral’s Roast Bat­tle was promi­nent in the scene and Anna found her­self observ­ing that per­form­ing fo that show cor­re­lat­ed to comics increas­ing their skill lev­els. ​“What I knew about those come­di­ans is I want­ed what they had, I want­ed the comedic skill that they had. And this was a thing that they used to hone it.” ​“This” being the abil­i­ty to roast. As a fan of the super nice and super kind Anna per­son, I was stunned that Anna had a turn spit­ting fire not only at the Com­e­dy Cen­tral Roast Bat­tle (we lis­tened to a clip dur­ing our inter­view), but that she would go on to host (and still does) the Com­e­dy Store’s week­ly roast show. ​‘My sweet Anna could­n’t pos­si­bly be a vicious attack­er, could she??’. Valen­zuela put my mind at ease by con­fess­ing ​“if you love a roast, what you love is the alge­bra of com­e­dy.” And so, with my mind at ease, I under­stood that what Anna was gift­ed at was­n’t being mean, but under­stand­ing the for­mu­la behind roast­ing a fel­low com­ic. And she said Algebra…we all know how I feel about algebra.

After anoth­er intense phase of roast bat­tling, Valen­zuela took her foot off the gas ped­al to address severe health issues, while watch­ing some of her peers land writ­ing jobs on shows or become reg­u­lar head­lin­ers. But she was­n’t jeal­ous or angry. In fact, she shared a lev­el of intro­spec­tion that explains why I first con­nect­ed with Anna at Out of Bounds Fes­ti­val years ago. She says, ​“when the uni­verse puts some­thing in your lap, just accept it. Just accept it, just explore it. If it’s not for you, you don’t have to do it.”

There is no greater truth, espe­cial­ly in the com­e­dy world where every­one has to carve a dif­fer­ent road. There is no guide book, there is no instruc­tion man­u­al (sure peo­ple have writ­ten many, many books, but what works for one, may not work for anoth­er), and so you just try. You put your­self out there and try, and Anna did plen­ty, and the rewards start­ed to roll in. Every­thing from book­ings across the world, to record­ing a debut album, to buy­ing the plane tick­ets and book­ing shows for her first road tour. The uni­verse whose gifts she had accept­ed was show­ing her the way forward.

Then the pan­dem­ic hit, and she used her trade­mark intro­spec­tion to guide her through this chal­lenge as well. ​“The pan­dem­ic did­n’t hap­pen to you, it did­n’t hap­pen to your career, it did­n’t hap­pen to your hot five new min­utes, or the album you want­ed to record or the tours that you had booked and the plane tick­ets that you bought. The pan­dem­ic hap­pened to all of us. And you can sit around being sad about it, or you can help anoth­er per­son and maybe take some time to help yourself.” 

She’s done all of that, tak­en online class­es, and jumped into per­form­ing on online shows. She is a record hold­er for the Com­e­dy Wham Iso­la­tion Com­e­dy show at 6 appear­ances, all bril­liant. She applied her phi­los­o­phy of what the uni­verse has to offer. Stuck at home? Take an online karate class, accept a book­ing for an online show (bring tiny plas­tic hands to said online show and bring us to tears from laugh­ing so hard), it is all part of try­ing what the uni­verse has to offer. And that includes reded­i­cat­ing her­self to her on-again-off-again pod­cast 12 Ques­tions. Inspired by the notion of the 12 step orga­ni­za­tions, it brings Anna and her cur­rent co-host, Dave Yates, both com­mit­ted to their own sobri­ety, togeth­er with a guest who is asked 12 explorato­ry questions.

As the new year approach­es, we can choose to remain in the mis­ery of all we lost out on dur­ing 2020, or we can adopt some of Anna’s phi­los­o­phy’s. Accept what the uni­verse drops in your lap, say yes, but also say no when you’re run­ning your­self ragged, just keep digest­ing and work­ing on your­self. And even­tu­al­ly, the uni­verse will reward you. That’s the les­son we learned from Anna and we hope you’ll enjoy our con­ver­sa­tion with her. And don’t wor­ry, we also talk about but­t­holes, so it’s not all peach­es and roses.

Anna can be seen and heard:

• Watch and lis­ten to this inter­view on
  • Twitch: twitch​.tv/​C​o​m​e​d​y​W​h​a​m​/Anna Valenzuela
  • YouTube: Youtu​.be/​C​o​m​e​d​y​W​h​a​m​/​A​n​n​a​V​a​l​e​n​zuela
  • Face­book: Facebook/​ComedyWham/​AnnaValenzuela

• Her pod­cast 12 Questions
  
• Roast Bat­tle — Anna Valen­zuela with Kei­th Carey

Fol­low Anna -

• Web­site — www​.annavalen​zuela​.com
• Twit­ter — @annavisfun
• Insta­gram — @annavisfun
• Face­book — face​book​.com/​a​n​n​a​.​v​a​l​e​n​zuela
• Youtube — youtube​.com/​c​h​a​n​n​e​l​/​A​n​n​a​V​a​l​e​n​zuela