Andrew Rosas: Telling His Own Story

If you think that every­one in com­e­dy has a child­hood tale of woe, tap­ping into the pain to draw cre­ativ­i­ty, Andrew Rosas is here to prove you wrong. I recent­ly caught up with Rosas at Cos­mic Cof­fee + Beer Gar­den and found out cre­ativ­i­ty and tal­ent can also come from hap­py sto­ries. With an upbring­ing from two very sup­port­ive par­ents, Rosas’ cre­ative side was fos­tered very ear­ly-on. Born in bustling San Anto­nio, but raised in a rur­al part of the city, his par­ents would make the long dri­ve each day to the North East School of the Arts (NESA), where Rosas went to high school. When asked how ear­ly on it became obvi­ous he leaned toward the per­form­ing arts, Rosas ques­tions whether it was ​“nature ver­sus nur­ture.” Hav­ing a pen­chant for being a ​“ham,” paired with writ­ing and telling sto­ries from a young age, it was obvi­ous there was already a raw tal­ent there to cultivate.

Study­ing film in the NESA mag­net pro­gram, com­e­dy wouldn’t come into play for him until well into his 20’s. Begin­ning col­lege at The Uni­ver­si­ty of Texas, music was the next pas­sion to catch Rosas’ atten­tion, but real­iz­ing that didn’t hold his focus, he left UT. Ulti­mate­ly he would find his aca­d­e­m­ic niche, earn­ing a Cre­ative Writ­ing degree from St. Edward’s University.

Com­e­dy Wham Presents

Andrew Rosas

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How­ev­er it was soft­ball that got him his intro­duc­tion into com­e­dy and sketch, play­ing in a league with Mac Blake and David Jara. Both were mem­bers of the pop­u­lar sketch group Stag Com­e­dy and also cast mem­bers of Mas­ter Pan­cake The­ater. It wouldn’t be long before he met John Erler, quick­ly becom­ing a cast mem­ber him­self. For Rosas, this was a dream come to life, won­der­ing what it would be like to work on the show way back when it was known as Mr. Sinus (don’t sue us, this is his­to­ry). Rosas recalls his moment of being invit­ed to join the cast as one of those scream­ing on the inside moments, while try­ing to play it cool. As a reg­u­lar part of the cast of Mas­ter Pan­cake since 2012, Rosas has got­ten to flex and hone his com­e­dy writ­ing mus­cles. Those skills have recent­ly got­ten the atten­tion of the enter­tain­ment and media giant, Roost­er Teeth, after writer/​director Owen Edger­ton sent a pilot over for them to view. Rosas was hired on as a full-time writer for the stu­dio last Sep­tem­ber, yet anoth­er one of his dream jobs. 

Hav­ing dab­bled in improv, and still per­form­ing some standup, Rosas admits standup com­e­dy ​“didn’t get its hooks in me” the way writ­ing seems to have. While I can per­son­al­ly vouch that Andrew Rosas def­i­nite­ly has the skills for standup, he seems to rec­og­nize it’s not his true love. Per­haps it’s this self-aware­ness and focus that have giv­en Rosas the abil­i­ty and tenac­i­ty to keep land­ing the next ​“dream job.” He recalls com­ing home with that same ​“what if they dis­cov­er I’m a fraud” voice that often seems to plague cre­ative peo­ple pur­su­ing their dreams. But with the real­iza­tion that he was already doing it, he learned to qui­et the voice and keep going.

As an inter­view­er, it is some­times a chal­lenge to get peo­ple to talk about them­selves and tell you their own sto­ry. Sit­ting down with Rosas was an interviewer’s delight. A nat­ur­al sto­ry­teller, he did all the heavy lift­ing for our inter­view and it was fan­tas­tic (I should’ve asked him to do this arti­cle). Now go lis­ten to our inter­view to hear him tell the tale himself!