Erik Escobar - Brings Us Together

We all know the col­or­ful fruit chews (or we should, they’re so irre­sistible) ad logo ​“Taste the rain­bow”, right? This week’s guest is a vari­a­tion on that logo ​“Hear the rain­bow”. Erik Esco­bar gives us such a col­or­ful, enthu­si­as­tic, hap­py ener­gy, that sit­ting down with him was almost like talk­ing with a rain­bow. And no, I did not over­dose on caf­feine and choco­late before I wrote that. 

Hail­ing from Los Ange­les (born and bred) Esco­bar’s tall build and frame were per­fect­ly suit­ed for foot­ball. In high school, this was his pur­suit, but unlike most play­ers on the foot­ball team, he was a self-described intro­vert. Imag­ine the scene, then, of a young Esco­bar faced with can­celled foot­ball prac­tice wan­der­ing around the emp­ty halls of his school killing time and stum­bling upon, and you’ll nev­er guess this, the school’s improv team deep into prac­tice. To me, the scene before us is a very blue pill vs red pill moment. Will he walk on by, con­tin­u­ing his path as an intro­vert­ed foot­ball play­er then fol­low­ing that path into college? 

But we already know the answer, since we absolute­ly loved hav­ing Esco­bar on our 2020 Iso­la­tion Com­e­dy show last year. Young Esco­bar took the improv pill and joined the team imme­di­ate­ly, lit­er­al­ly burst­ing out of his shell and lov­ing every moment of it. For him, the improv team and com­e­dy in par­tic­u­lar “…was a way to be more social and less introverted.”

It’s from this foun­da­tion­al point in Esco­bar’s life that I start­ed notic­ing how his entire ener­gy is built upon bring­ing peo­ple togeth­er. Imag­ine all his foot­ball and improv team mates cheer­ing each oth­er on (I like to imag­ine the cheers from the stands ​‘Yes, and.…get that touch­down!’) because he brought those two worlds togeth­er. His abil­i­ty to bring 2 worlds togeth­er did­n’t stop in high school. In col­lege, he again pur­sued 2 dif­fer­ent worlds — the­ater and social work. 

It’s an unusu­al com­bi­na­tion, but Esco­bar’s con­ta­gious ener­gy makes it all work. He want­ed to do good in the world while doing good on stage and for a good while he did just that. Work­ing as a behav­ioral ther­a­pist until land­ing with The Unusu­al Sus­pects The­ater Com­pa­ny, whose mis­sion is to work with under­served youth, where he con­tin­ues to share his love of per­for­mance. Ear­ly on in his train­ing in the­ater, he con­nect­ed with Tom Clark, a com­ic and a teacher with notable cred­its (spe­cials, Conan, etc) and real­ized that standup was where he want­ed to focus his ener­gies. It was­n’t just about con­nect­ing with the right men­tor or teacher for Esco­bar, it was about prag­ma­tism, too. Look­ing into the prover­bial crys­tal ball and see­ing what his future was, Esco­bar thought ​“Well, how can I sus­tain a career? How can I build a career and you know, have a sol­id income. I think I can do it more with stand up per­son­al­ly than I can with improv.” And so it was.

The great con­ver­sa­tion with Esco­bar cov­ered a lot of ground that you’d expect of a com­ic — per­form­ing standup in unusu­al venues (12-step recov­ery house stands out), col­leges, and yes, the online Zoom shows. Com­e­dy Wham was a bene­fac­tor of Esco­bar’s will­ing­ness to par­tic­i­pate in Zoom shows, not just for his hilar­i­ous sets ​“on cam­era”, but also because of his infec­tious joy­ful ener­gy in the vir­tu­al green room. What we did­n’t expect to hear was that Esco­bar’s for­ay as a TEDx Talk speak­er occurred right at the start of the world­wide COVID shut­down. When you watch Esco­bar’s TED Talk, you imag­ine a full audi­ence of col­lege stu­dents, but nope, he per­formed to essen­tial­ly only the pro­duc­tion staff. Which is a momen­tous chal­lenge when your TEDx Talk relies on a big audi­ence call and response in the first few min­utes. Lucky for me, I was none the wis­er. Hav­ing watched the TEDx Talk before inter­view­ing him, I thought the TED Talk was won­der­ful and yet again, a great dis­play of his abil­i­ty to bring 2 worlds togeth­er. The title of his TEDx Talk is ​“Cre­at­ing A More Ful­fill­ing Lifestyle Through Humor” which is meant to apply to what­ev­er world you hap­pen to operate. 

Once I picked my jaw off the floor at his accom­plish­ment with the TEDx Talk, it was only nat­ur­al that Esco­bar could no longer fight his ​“teach­ing and help­ing” ten­den­cies. Lots of great advice was shared, but one top­ic that many new­er comics always have a weird reac­tion to is mon­ey. Esco­bar says ​“Don’t be scared of [ask­ing about] the mon­ey. And you want to make them hap­py. So you know, work clean and don’t make any­one mad.” While the advice was spe­cif­ic to book­ing with col­leges, I think this opin­ion works across any venue or book­er you work with (though work­ing clean is most­ly spe­cif­ic to colleges).

Esco­bar had a wild sum­mer, mak­ing an appear­ance on NBC’s I Can See Your Voice (a spin­off of The Masked Singer) which brought lots of atten­tion to his TEDx Talk (anoth­er exam­ple of 2 worlds brought togeth­er). He’s also had a fair amount of small TV roles and I had to ask, which world does he pre­fer? Will he choose act­ing over standup? The peo­ple (me and Miss Purring­ton) want­ed to know!! In expect­ed Esco­bar-2-Worlds fash­ion, he admit­ted that he loves the act­ing oppor­tu­ni­ties because they become ways of cre­at­ing big­ger fol­low­ings for his standup. If he wants to oper­ate in these two worlds, I am more than hap­py to see Esco­bar thrive and suc­ceed in both. As long as he brings that infec­tious ener­gy along. 

Oh, and if you do see him at a standup show and men­tion you heard this episode, be sure to take him up on his gen­er­ous offer (you’ll have to lis­ten for your­self, though) and tell him Valerie sent you.

Want to know more about com­e­dy in Los Ange­les, Cal­i­for­nia (and out­side LA)?

Erik ​‘s rec­om­men­da­tions for comics to check out from LA (and beyond) include: 

LA — Tom Clark, Stephanie Clark, John­ny Flow­ers, Jim­my Bro­gan, Daniel Eachus, Savan­nah Man­hat­tan, Mike Masilot­ti, John Yabes, Alyssa Poteet, Jay Aquino, Ron Josol, Kevin Camia , and Lin Sun

In the North­west — Mon­i­ca nevi, Cameron McCormick, Brent Lowry, Leroy Fir­wood, Ty Boice, and Carl Lee

In Vegas — Kel­ly Lee Williams

Fol­low Erik

• Twit­ter — @erikescobar
• Insta­gram — @erikescobar
• Face­book — Face​book​.com/​e​r​i​k​e​s​cobar
• Youtube — Youtube​.com/​t​h​e​e​r​i​k​e​s​cobar

Erik can be seen and heard:

• TED Talk Cre­at­ing A More Ful­fill­ing Lifestyle Through Humor: Youtube​.com/​C​r​e​a​t​i​n​g​A​M​o​r​e​F​u​l​f​i​l​l​i​n​g​L​i​f​e​s​t​y​l​e​T​h​r​o​u​g​h​H​u​m​o​r​-​E​r​i​k​E​s​cobar
• Film/​TV — Last Com­ic Stand­ing (Sea­son 7), Sex Life (Sea­son 2), Worst Week Ever, The Great Amer­i­can Eat Off , and com­ing soon VHYes