AI Summary
5 min readGianmarco Soresi started as a musical theater actor who couldn’t sing. He wrote a play for the New York Fringe Festival and, between scenes, talked to the audience. The positive feedback was all for the talking parts, not the scenes. So he took that to a “really shitty comedy club” in Times Square, did four shows a night (six on Saturdays, eight on holidays), and dove in hard. That was around 2016. By the time of this conversation, he had a Comedy Works hour, a huge social media following, and a reputation that straddles two camps: crowd-work comic and joke writer. He worries that comics who know him only from viral clips think he’s “just a crowd work guy.” Tom Papa, who watched the hour, reassures him: “Your act is better than your crowd work. Your material is fantastic.”
The social media grind and the pivot to crowd work
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What you'll learn
- 1 (00:02) **Opening Banter & Gianmarco's Origin Story** - Tom Papa and Gianmarco Soresi greet each other, discuss the LA driving nightmare, and trace Soresi's path from musical theater to stand-up.
- 2 (08:48) **The Actor's Mindset in Joke Writing** - Soresi reveals how his acting background shapes his meticulous, script-like approach to writing stand-up material.
- 3 (09:23) **The Crowd Work vs. Real Comic Debate** - Soresi opens up about the anxiety of being pigeonholed as "just a crowd-work guy" despite his written material.
- 4 (10:18) **The TikTok Breakthrough & Social Media Strategy** - Soresi details how he built a massive following during COVID by posting one joke a day to TikTok, then expanding to Facebook Reels and YouTube Shorts.
- 5 (11:55) **Older Comics on Social Media & The Kids Question** - The conversation shifts to how having kids changes a comedian's perspective and the pitfalls of delegating social media.
- 6 (14:36) **Family in the Act: Boundaries & Sensitivity** - Soresi and Papa discuss the delicate art of telling jokes about family members, and how their reactions can be unpredictable.
- 7 (21:10) **The Father, the Will, and the Girlfriend** - Soresi tells a wild, darkly funny story about his father's quintuple bypass and the bizarre introduction to his dad's new girlfriend.
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Guests on this episode
Show Notes
This week we welcome Gianmarco Soresi to the table! He and Tom talk about the easy things, you know, like weddings, funerals, religion, and relationships. Laughs abound! Enjoy! Our thanks to: ASPCA Pet Insurance! Visit https://www.aspcapetinsurance.com/PAPA to explore care options. Monarch! Start a free trial, and get 50% off your first year of Monarch Core Tier with code PAPA at monarch.com
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