Garrett Buss Likes to Noodle Around

The first few of times I saw Gar­rett Buss per­form, it was in ear­ly 2018 and I thought to myself ​“dang, this kid is too young to be this nat­ur­al on stage”. I did­n’t see him per­form again until this sum­mer on the now dear­ly depart­ed Sand­box with Rob Gagnon. The large gap can be explained by the fact that he was com­plet­ing his senior year in San Mar­cos at Texas State Uni­ver­si­ty and not com­ing up to Austin much. And you wan­na know what? He’s still a total nat­ur­al on stage — even while, or per­haps espe­cial­ly as, a char­ac­ter actor. It all start­ed at a fair­ly young age for Buss with an instruc­tion­al armpit fart demon­stra­tion by his grand­fa­ther at a zoo. And who among us does­n’t love a good armpit fart sesh at the zoo? Gar­rett then began a sto­ried career per­form­ing in church camp pro­duc­tions, musi­cals, and high school the­ater per­for­mances. Per­form­ing in the­ater and musi­cals, Gar­rett was no stranger to the stage by the time he grad­u­at­ed high school and moved from the Hous­ton area to San Mar­cos to attend Texas State Uni­ver­si­ty to pur­sue a, you guessed it, the­ater degree (before real­iz­ing that drunk­en­ly pur­su­ing a mar­ket­ing degree was­n’t in his future). 

Yet, with all this expe­ri­ence and train­ing, much to his sur­prise, things did not go well when he made his very first attempt at stand-up at the oft-maligned, yet nec­es­sary to any per­former launch­ing into stand-up in Austin, Love Goat open mic 4 years to the day of this record­ing. Despite things not going so well his first few times (one of the rare times we can say it is the nature of the audi­ence at those par­tic­u­lar open mics…think haz­ing), he did­n’t ever want to stop and knew there were bet­ter times ahead. Frus­trat­ed with not hav­ing easy access to the Austin com­e­dy stages, he cre­at­ed his own forum, the Texas State Com­e­dy Asso­ci­a­tion. Cre­at­ing this offi­cial cam­pus stu­dent orga­ni­za­tion elim­i­nat­ed the heavy com­mute time (to Austin) while afford­ing him ample oppor­tu­ni­ty to per­form and pro­duce shows fea­tur­ing improv, stand-up, and sketch. And the ori­gin sto­ry is one of the best indi­ca­tors of how cre­ative and unique Gar­rett is. We won’t spoil it for you here. We want you to hear it for yourself. 

“I’m pret­ty good at pro­cras­ti­nat­ing until the point that I just absolute­ly have no oth­er choice but to make some­thing.” Gar­rett Buss

This past May marked the end of his col­lege career, the launch of a musi­cal he wrote and pro­duced (“Cana­di­an Bacon”), in addi­tion to work­ing and per­form­ing standup. A run­ning theme for this con­ver­sa­tion is ​“he just did it” (Nike, be damned!). When dis­cussing why he wrote and pro­duced the musi­cal in the midst of his final semes­ter in col­lege, he ratio­nal­ized to him­self that he had an entire com­mu­ni­ty of fel­low col­lege stu­dents at his dis­pos­al to help him. ​“Well, I guess I have to make a musi­cal now. … And the same thing with mak­ing any of the stuff that I’m into. I’m pret­ty good at pro­cras­ti­nat­ing until the point that I just absolute­ly have no oth­er choice but to make something.” 

“And I used to just say, well, if it sucks, it’s still a musi­cal, you know what I mean? A bad musi­cal is bet­ter than no musi­cal. I mean, maybe the next one we will be good.” Gar­rett Buss

And whether you take on a project and it’s a good out­come is less impor­tant to him than the fact that he’s cre­at­ed SOME­THING. He notes, ​“And I used to just say, well, if it sucks, it’s still a musi­cal, you know what I mean? A bad musi­cal is bet­ter than no musi­cal. I mean, maybe the next one we will be good.” It’s all for­ward momen­tum until you get to the ​“good” stuff. But, the fal­la­cy in Buss’s the­o­ry here is that every­thing I’ve seen of his is ALREADY good. And he’s only 22!! For some­one who’s been so pro­lif­ic (this episode’s obvi­ous­ly overused word on my part) at this young age, it’s excit­ing to imag­ine that in 10 year’s time he’ll be mak­ing big, nood­ly waves some­where. Catch Gar­rett in one of the following: 

• Explorato­ri­um with Gar­rett Buss — 1^st and 3^rd Tues­days at Fall­out The­ater 9:30pm (the hon­orary ​“Sand­box slot”)
• Plano Com­e­dy Fes­ti­val — Fri­day Sep­tem­ber 13 11pm and Sun­day Sep­tem­ber 15 1pm at Hub Seat
• The upcom­ing short film release ​“Part­ners” with Rob Gagnon and Ron Lech­ler

Twit­ter

Gar­rett Buss

Valerie Lopez Com­e­dy Wham