Vanessa Gonzalez Turns Dating On Its Head

Vanes­sa Gon­za­lez has a new show called I Don’t Know Dat­ing (Cred­it: Katie Pengra).

Dat­ing can be weird. Going out with strangers, nev­er know­ing what the oth­er per­son is think­ing. Sit­ting there won­der­ing if you good enough, smart enough or if you smell weird. It can all be very daunt­ing. Vanes­sa Gon­za­lez is will­ing to talk about it in her one per­son show, I Don’t Know Dat­ing, at the Spi­der House Ball­room in Feb­ru­ary, and it will leave you with a new per­spec­tive on things.

A Class Clown Moves to Austin

Vanes­sa Gon­za­lez, grew up in Lare­do and after high school, the class clown made her way to San Mar­cos and Texas State Uni­ver­si­ty. Here she grew her love of act­ing and com­e­dy. She got her first sketch gig in 2009 with the Lati­no Com­e­dy Project. After that wrapped up, she met Chris Trew. If I may digress for a moment, I am con­sid­er­ing chang­ing the name of this site to Peo­ple Who Know Chris Trew Dot Com. Any­way, it was around this time he was get­ting The New Move­ment The­ater on its feet and Gon­za­lez hopped on the improv train.

In 2013, when Jeff Whitak­er want­ed to rev­o­lu­tion­ize sketch com­e­dy in Austin and formed Bad Exam­ple. Vanes­sa Gon­za­lez was on board has been a mem­ber since its incep­tion. When I saw their Christ­mas show in Decem­ber, I very much enjoyed Gon­za­lez’ tim­ing and the aware­ness she had of her characters.

Going Solo With a One Per­son Show

When we chat­ted after the show, she told me of her one per­son show called I Don’t Know Dat­ing. In my writ­ing class­es, I was always told to write about what I know. The same goes for com­e­dy. Vanes­sa Gon­za­lez knows about the idio­syn­crasies of being sin­gle in the mod­ern age. She knows about being self con­scious and unsure, and she knows how to laugh at it.

The show is a series of sketch­es with Gon­za­lez play­ing the main char­ac­ter and the audi­ence is some­times a pas­sive char­ac­ter. The sketch­es cen­ter on the awk­ward world of dat­ing. They poke fun at her inse­cu­ri­ty, and inter­ac­tions with the oppo­site sex. One par­tic­u­lar sketch has her play­ing a male char­ac­ter lit­er­al­ly lives out typ­i­cal excus­es men use to not call a girl back: Dead grand­ma’s, lost phones, etc.

If we can’t laugh at our­selves, then what do we have? Dat­ing is rife with awk­ward moments and I am glad Vanes­sa Gon­za­lez is will­ing to pull out a mag­ni­fy­ing glass and explore those uncom­fort­able moments. I am look­ing for­ward to see­ing I Don’t Know Dat­ing, because even at my age, I still don’t know women. Some­times I look at my wife and won­der what’s going on in her head. Maybe this will pro­vide some insight. If any­thing, it will pro­vide some laughs.

Time and Location

I Don’t Know Dat­ing will be fea­tured the first three Mon­days in Feb­ru­ary at the Spi­der House Ball­room. Tick­ets and $5.00 gen­er­al admis­sion and $2.00 with a stu­dent I.D. But before Gon­za­lez does this, she’s tak­ing on the road to the San Fran­cis­co Sketch Fest.

Feel free to fol­low me on Twit­ter: @ElDavidThomas