Rochelle McConico: Teaching for US All
January 9, 2022
Nkechi Chibueze
We’ve been working hard over the years at Comedy Wham to bring you interviews, articles, live shows, and a calendar of events to keep you very, very busy. Our own Valerie Lopez is on the cusp of her 200th interview which she will be doing live in a little over a week. That said, it was just as important that interview 199 be someone of great value to the local Austin comedy scene. We have to thank our recent Summer Vacation Series guest Nkechi Chibueze for introducing us to this VIP who recently moved from New Orleans. Lopez could not contain her excitement, before and after, prepping me that I was really going to love this guest. She wasn’t wrong.
Born and raised in Austin, Rochelle McConico grew up in the pre-gentrified eastside of Austin. Not aiming for the spotlight, McConico claims, “I never considered myself a performer.” However, it seems that entertainment and performance kept drawing her in. McConico reflects, “I have a blessed life because I kind of hop from thing to thing, but kind of still find my pattern.” After being rejected from theater in high school and deciding that she didn’t have a voice for the singing career she dreamed of, she decided to go to business school to open a nightclub she and a friend had fantasized about opening.
Following business school, the illusion of business owner was shattered by the expectation of being in a suit and office. McConico pivoted and found Teach for America. What was a two-year commitment, turned into a ten-year career. Her first assignment of Detroit was daunting but proved to be the best experience she could’ve asked for. Detroit prepared her for the most challenging city that would become her heart…New Orleans. That heart is perhaps reflected in her description of the culture where “…life is so tough, and yet they make gumbo out of it. You know, they make love and culture and jazz out of it.” McConico seems to carry that positivity with her and sprinkles it into everything she does.
McConico would also teach in New York, Boston, and Houston as she continued to teach children in some of the most challenging districts, where food insecurity isn’t just real, it’s commonplace.
There was never an obvious point where Rochelle McConico decided to be a comedian, but rather through a continued desire to reach children, she landed on comedy. Realizing, after seeing a friend and fellow teacher do a show, that if she could use comedy as a way to reach adults, that maybe those same lessons would work their way back into the home. Reach the parents…reach the kids. After a decade of experiences in the classroom, she began taking those lesson plans to the stage. But as we all know, performing as a process and until she had the confidence to be Rochelle McConico on stage, she found her voice in a character, Stangela Angela Hemsworth Kingsley Winthrop Farrouk Adams III…a name that must be said with flourish and helped me meet my word count.
Now confident in her own voice (and her ASMR skills), McConico uses Stangela as an alter-ego and device to make some strong points about the more divisive issues going on in the world and our culture today…and it’s hilarious. But McConico doesn’t just share the stage with Stangela (I don’t think you’re reading it with enough flourish…try again), she also does sketch, acting, improv, and has her own production company, MoonCricket Productions. Why so many hats, you ask? McConico is all about connecting people and entertaining people as she states, “I don’t care what the medium is, I just want to talk to people. I want to talk to people and I want to laugh.”
And in that connecting spirit, Rochelle McConico hopes to bridge the gap between the pre-pandemic Austin comedy scene and the post-pandemic Austin scene with some of its new arrivals. As someone who has left the city and returned, herself, she seems just the person for the task. And in that forever blossoming scene, she hopes to increase the diversity of the scene for audiences as well as comics, offering, “All of us are people going through a human struggle, so if we can remember that then there’s a whole bunch we can talk about together.”
Forever the educator, in November, McConico launched her column/blog “Rochelle Takes on Comedy” where she shares her own experiences on and off the stage and offers some advice for comedians and comedy fans alike. She also reviews shows and showcases to give comics and fans an idea of what shows they should be looking for in this eclectic comedy buffet Austin has to offer. In keeping with her positivity, and Comedy Wham’s objective, McConico never slags a show, she will only bring you excellent recommendations. The raw vulnerability she mingles with humor in her column makes you so open to any advice she has to share. First children, now adults…with a little bit of time, McConico may just make good humans of us all.
Follow Rochelle and her projects:
- Website — MooncricketProductions.com
- Linktree — Linktr.ee/mooncricketproductions
- Twitter — @ariaava
- Instagram
- Rochelle @rochelle_war
- Mooncricket Productions @mooncricketproductions
- Facebook — Facebook.com/Rochelle.Aria.McConico
- Youtube
- Rochelle Youtube.com/RochelleMcConico
- Mooncricket Productions Youtube.com/MooncricketProductions
- Lysistrata Comedy Festival — New Orleans on March 18 – 20. Festival for women to celebrate our comic genius in all visual formats — short films, plays, improv, sketch, standup, etc.
Rochelle can be seen and heard:
- Skivvies ATX — 1/10/21, 8pm
- Stand Up at New World Deli — 1⁄14
- Tower City Comedy Festival — 1⁄27 — 1⁄30
- Part of the No Lye Collective (NOLA)
- Writing her recurring column on our very own website!
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Valerie Lopez
Lara Smith