Erik Rivera on Comedy as a Healing Process

For Psychological Well being Consciousness Month, we requested Latine comedians and creators we admire how comedy has supported them in overcoming trauma and confronting life’s most vital challenges. Learn the items right here.

Erik Rivera’s life is nice. Becoming a member of our Zoom session from his Los Angeles residence, the author, actor, and comic is all smiles beneath a worn baseball cap. Perhaps it is that sunny climate Angelinos are all the time bragging about. Or perhaps it is the truth that he is labored arduous to attain what he has now: a good profession, a secure marriage, and two great boys. Both method, the distinction between the place he as soon as was and his present standing is not misplaced on him, even whether it is misplaced on his youngsters.

“My youngsters don’t know how good they’ve it,” the comedian says with amusing.

Rising up because the youngster of a Puerto Rican father and Guatemalan mom in New Rochelle, NY, Rivera is aware of the worth of a greenback all too nicely. He spent his youthful years navigating between his dad and mom’ immigrant sensibilities and the pressures of American life. Unsurprisingly, that dichotomy is one thing that Rivera has been in a position to mine for comedic gold, incorporating it into his stand-up together with different features of his life, like his interracial marriage and what it is actually like elevating two boys. However, regardless of a lifelong love for stand-up, comedy as a profession wasn’t one thing that Rivera noticed within the playing cards.

“While you come from immigrant dad and mom, you do not know that that is a profession. You are hammered into the standard, like physician, lawyer, and informed, ‘Do one thing that is constant and brings in constant cash,'” Rivera says. So Rivera deliberate to attend Tempo College to pursue a level in communications. Then 9/11 occurred.

“[After 9/11], they reopened [the school] as a result of that they had been utilizing the campus as a triage heart. And I bear in mind going again, and it was simply this eerie feeling. There was soot in every single place. We’re watching vehicles deliver particles out each day. Youngsters have been simply not feeling comfy,” Rivera recollects.

In an try to flee the morbid environment, Rivera and a good friend went to a comedy membership, which they have been shocked to seek out packed.

“Folks needed to overlook,” the comic says plainly. Then, the thought got here to him to prepare a comedy night time on campus and provides his fellow college students the chance to come back collectively and heal by way of laughter.

“Stand-up comedy is such a pure artwork type . . . it doesn’t matter what you are going by way of in your day, you come out to a present, and for an hour and a half, these issues you’ve got, you allow them on the door, and you’ve got a great time,” Rivera says. “Yeah, they’re going to nonetheless be there [when you leave], however you get to calm down and launch.”

However whereas serving to others by way of their trauma by organizing comedy reveals was nice, part of Rivera needed extra. As a child, he’d seen John Leguizamo’s “Mambo Mouth,” which instantly sparked one thing in him. Right here was someone from his tradition, speaking about issues he may relate to. Now, as an grownup, organizing stand-up nights and rubbing elbows with comedians, he has had the prospect to inform his personal story and use it to assist individuals come to phrases with theirs.

“I bear in mind there was one night time sitting [at a comedy show], and it was the primary time I noticed how the rabbit was pulled out of the hat. Like, I noticed the setup, I noticed the punchline, I noticed how the man was main the viewers a technique and taking part in with their feelings of feeling pissed off, of anger, and releasing it with laughter,” he says.”I used to be like, ‘I believe I can do that.'”

A month later, he was onstage at a membership referred to as Hamburger Harry’s in Instances Sq.. For many of us, the considered simply leaping into the deep finish like that might be unfathomable. However for Rivera, it is what makes stand-up particular. It is not nearly telling jokes, however about placing your self on the market — exposing your ache and hardships in service of the viewers.

“Look, you possibly can stand up there and write jokes; there are wonderful joke writers on the market,” Rivera says. “However [the real connection comes] from the vulnerability. Yeah, we discover it by way of stereotypes, however there’s additionally that vulnerability of ‘hey, that is taking place to me,’ and folks can relate to that.”

For him, comedy is an outlet, a approach to discover sure features of his life that are not all the time neat or fairly, whether or not it is his mother-in-law suggesting having a Mexican mariachi band for Rivera’s rehearsal dinner or making a degree to maintain the fridge stocked with guacamole only for him. Exploring these points on stage permits him not solely to course of them in a wholesome method, but in addition take the viewers on the journey with him.

Because of this stand-up comedy has historically been such a path to achievement for oppressed or marginalized communities. Our hardships could make for a great snort that helps lighten the load we supply. However channeling that ache may be difficult. Rivera admits he is made the error of attempting to discover sure traumas earlier than the injuries have absolutely healed — particularly, his father’s passing from Parkinson’s illness.

“I am not gonna mislead you, after I first began doing that story on stage, it was dicey. I wasn’t prepared to start out speaking about it,” he says.

However then one thing lovely occurred. The extra Rivera labored on the fabric, the extra he refined the story about his father, and the extra individuals began coming as much as him after his reveals to thank him and inform him they have been going by way of one thing comparable.

“Anytime you are going by way of one thing, you are feeling like, ‘I am the one one going by way of this.’ We’re all going by way of it; it is simply that no person talks about it,” he says.

For that reason, writing has turn into part of Rivera’s therapeutic course of. Even when he hasn’t gotten the space from what he is going by way of, even when he cannot see the humorous simply but or is not able to deliver it to the stage, his thoughts is all the time working it over on the prospect that sometime he’ll be capable of share it. He journals regularly, seeing it as a type of “map” of how he will get by way of tough instances. The comic additionally mentions the necessary function working performs in serving to him course of his ideas.

“Everyone ought to have some type of quiet time or meditation or one thing to get you out of your individual head and your individual house,” Rivera says.

Whether or not it is working by way of materials on stage or working within the honest climate of Los Angeles, Rivera has his. All through our dialog, he exudes a type of self-assuredness that comes from engaged on his bits, which is definitely him engaged on himself. Now, he is prepared for what comes subsequent, even when it isn’t essentially comedy.

“You all the time should evolve, man,” he says.”You need to do all the pieces, it’s important to write, it’s important to direct. The extra instruments you’ve got in your toolbox, the tougher it’s for them to say no to you.”

Rivera does all of that. Throughout the pandemic, he wrote an animated present he is seeking to store round sooner or later. And whereas he nonetheless loves comedy and shares that it’ll all the time be how he heals and helps others heal, he additionally admits that there are extra methods to inform the tales that matter.

“Having youngsters modified my perspective on all the pieces,” he says. “Watching tv and never seeing the illustration there, the place my youngsters aren’t even seeing themselves . . . now I’ve form of pivoted to, let’s write these subsequent TV tasks so we are able to see ourselves there.”

Rivera needs to see extra than simply the stereotypical Latine narratives about “border crossing trauma” or “we gotta save the taco store.” He simply needs to see common reveals about Latines as common individuals with common issues, working by way of these issues the identical method he has and continues to do.

“That is my subsequent objective in life, to make these reveals that folks can snort at and watch collectively and vibe with and simply occur to have Latinos in them,” he concludes.

Miguel Machado is a journalist with experience within the intersection of Latine id and tradition. He does all the pieces from unique interviews with Latin music artists to opinion items on points which can be related to the group, private essays tied to his Latinidad, and thought items and options referring to Puerto Rico and Puerto Rican tradition.