How Erik Rivera Uses Comedy to Heal and Help Others

For Psychological Wellness Consciousness Thirty day period, we questioned Latine comedians and creators we admire how comedy has supported them in conquering trauma and confronting life’s most sizeable difficulties. Study the parts right here.

Erik Rivera’s everyday living is great. Signing up for our Zoom session from his Los Angeles household, the author, actor, and comedian is all smiles beneath a worn baseball cap. It’s possible it is that sunny climate Angelinos are always bragging about. Or probably it is the actuality that he is labored tough to reach what he has now: a respectable vocation, a secure relationship, and two fantastic boys. Both way, the contrast among in which he at the time was and his recent standing is not lost on him, even if it is shed on his young children.

“My kids have no strategy how very good they have it,” the comic suggests with a giggle.

Rising up as the boy or girl of a Puerto Rican father and Guatemalan mom in New Rochelle, NY, Rivera appreciates the value of a greenback all far too well. He used his young decades navigating among his parents’ immigrant sensibilities and the pressures of American lifestyle. Unsurprisingly, that dichotomy is anything that Rivera has been able to mine for comedic gold, incorporating it into his stand-up along with other areas of his everyday living, like his interracial relationship and what it is really seriously like boosting two boys. But, despite a lifelong enjoy for stand-up, comedy as a job was not something that Rivera observed in the playing cards.

“When you occur from immigrant mothers and fathers, you don’t know that that’s a career. You are hammered into the regular, like doctor, law firm, and explained to, ‘Do a thing that’s regular and delivers in regular revenue,'” Rivera says. So Rivera planned to attend Tempo College to go after a degree in communications. Then 9/11 occurred.

“[After 9/11], they reopened [the school] since they experienced been utilizing the campus as a triage center. And I don’t forget heading back again, and it was just this eerie experience. There was soot all over the place. We are looking at trucks deliver particles out daily. Kids ended up just not feeling at ease,” Rivera recollects.

In an try to escape the morbid ambiance, Rivera and a mate went to a comedy club, which they had been shocked to locate packed.

“Folks wanted to forget about,” the comedian states plainly. Then, the plan arrived to him to manage a comedy night time on campus and give his fellow pupils the possibility to occur together and mend by way of laughter.

“Stand-up comedy is this sort of a pure artwork form . . . no make any difference what you’re likely via in your day, you arrive out to a exhibit, and for an hour and a half, those people challenges you have, you leave them at the door, and you have a great time,” Rivera claims. “Yeah, they’ll still be there [when you leave], but you get to relax and launch.”

But when encouraging others by means of their trauma by organizing comedy demonstrates was great, a element of Rivera needed much more. As a kid, he’d witnessed John Leguizamo’s “Mambo Mouth,” which promptly sparked anything in him. Here was someone from his lifestyle, speaking about factors he could relate to. Now, as an grownup, arranging stand-up nights and rubbing elbows with comedians, he has had the chance to inform his possess tale and use it to help persons occur to phrases with theirs.

“I keep in mind there was one evening sitting [at a comedy show], and it was the 1st time I noticed how the rabbit was pulled out of the hat. Like, I saw the set up, I noticed the punchline, I observed how the person was foremost the audience one way and enjoying with their feelings of experience pissed off, of anger, and releasing it with laughter,” he states.”I was like, ‘I assume I can do this.'”

A month later, he was onstage at a club termed Hamburger Harry’s in Times Square. For most of us, the believed of just leaping into the deep stop like that would be unfathomable. But for Rivera, it is what makes stand-up particular. It is really not just about telling jokes, but about placing you out there — exposing your soreness and hardships in company of the viewers.

“Search, you can get up there and compose jokes there are incredible joke writers out there,” Rivera claims. “But [the real connection comes] from the vulnerability. Yeah, we come across it by stereotypes, but there is certainly also that vulnerability of ‘hey, this is taking place to me,’ and men and women can relate to that.”

For him, comedy is an outlet, a way to examine selected features of his everyday living that usually are not generally neat or very, no matter if it’s his mom-in-regulation suggesting obtaining a Mexican mariachi band for Rivera’s rehearsal evening meal or building a position to hold the fridge stocked with guacamole just for him. Checking out these concerns on phase allows him not only to system them in a healthful way, but also consider the viewers on the journey with him.

This is why stand-up comedy has typically been such a path to good results for oppressed or marginalized communities. Our hardships can make for a great chuckle that allows lighten the load we carry. But channeling that ache can be difficult. Rivera admits he’s designed the oversight of attempting to discover specific traumas just before the wounds have totally healed — specially, his father’s passing from Parkinson’s condition.

“I’m not gonna lie to you, when I first commenced accomplishing that story on phase, it was dicey. I wasn’t completely ready to start off conversing about it,” he states.

But then one thing stunning transpired. The extra Rivera labored on the materials, the far more he refined the tale about his father, and the more persons started out coming up to him following his demonstrates to thank him and convey to him they were being heading through anything similar.

“Anytime you’re likely by means of a thing, you really feel like, ‘I’m the only one particular likely via this.’ We are all likely via it it’s just that nobody talks about it,” he suggests.

For this cause, creating has become a element of Rivera’s therapeutic system. Even if he hasn’t gotten the distance from what he’s going by way of, even if he can not see the humorous just nonetheless or is not all set to carry it to the phase, his mind is normally functioning it above on the chance that someday he’ll be in a position to share it. He journals often, viewing it as a sort of “map” of how he receives by means of complicated periods. The comic also mentions the crucial position running plays in supporting him approach his ideas.

“Every person should really have some form of quiet time or meditation or a little something to get you out of your personal head and your own room,” Rivera suggests.

No matter whether it’s doing the job by product on stage or jogging in the truthful temperature of Los Angeles, Rivera has his. In the course of our discussion, he exudes a kind of self-assuredness that arrives from operating on his bits, which is actually him functioning on himself. Now, he’s completely ready for what will come future, even if it truly is not automatically comedy.

“You usually have to evolve, guy,” he claims.”You have to do anything, you have to create, you have to direct. The much more equipment you have in your toolbox, the more challenging it is for them to say no to you.”

Rivera does all of that. During the pandemic, he wrote an animated clearly show he is on the lookout to store all around in the upcoming. And though he nevertheless loves comedy and shares that it will constantly be how he heals and aids many others mend, he also admits that there are additional means to notify the stories that make any difference.

“Getting young ones changed my point of view on every little thing,” he says. “Seeing television and not looking at the illustration there, in which my kids are not even looking at on their own . . . now I have sort of pivoted to, let us publish these future Tv set projects so we can see ourselves there.”

Rivera wishes to see extra than just the stereotypical Latine narratives about “border crossing trauma” or “we gotta conserve the taco shop.” He just needs to see typical demonstrates about Latines as common persons with common problems, doing work by way of all those problems the exact same way he has and continues to do.

“That is my upcoming aim in life, to make these exhibits that individuals can chuckle at and check out collectively and vibe with and just take place to have Latinos in them,” he concludes.

Miguel Machado is a journalist with expertise in the intersection of Latine identification and culture. He does everything from unique interviews with Latin songs artists to viewpoint pieces on difficulties that are related to the neighborhood, individual essays tied to his Latinidad, and thought pieces and options relating to Puerto Rico and Puerto Rican culture.