Today we’d like to introduce you to Alyssa Sabo.
Alyssa, please share your story with us. How did you get to where you are today?
I grew up in a small town just south of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania called Johnstown. I was the youngest of three sisters. All of my family members are extremely loud, animated, and easily distracted, and so I quickly learned how to tell stories and keep people engaged. I started creating funny characters at age eight when I got a video camera for Christmas and after seeing Chris Farley on SNL. It was the most natural thing I could do.
I never really took acting classes or did theatre because in my town that wasn’t really an option. You either played sports or were smart. I played sports. I then made my way to college to be a Spanish teacher. I was excited to be a teacher and most importantly find my husband in college because that’s the only path that really made sense to me. I found myself distracted in college by making funny videos and always trying to make my lesson plans HILARIOUS… forgetting that my number one job was to teach Spanish.
Then, right before my senior year of college, I traveled to Dallas for an ESL internship and a few days into the trip, I wasn’t feeling well. To try to make a long story short, the doctors found that I was in complete liver failure. It was an emergency and life-threatening situation. Within a few days, I was put into a medically induced coma, then put on the transplant wait list, and within 12 hours, I received a life-saving liver transplant. I woke up with a new liver and a completely different outlook on how precious and short life is.
This situation caused me to re-think everything about my life. The next few months of recovery were intense and painful. I had to stay in the hospital for over a month dealing with other complications and recovery. Once I was back on my feet, I finished up college but decided to move back to Dallas to pursue a career in acting/comedy with a woman who I was introduced to named Nikki Pederson. I made some new friends and gained some tools to make the scary move to LA.
Once I made it to LA, I started performing stand-up comedy and studying at The Groundlings and UCB. I found some incredible friends in these communities and began writing my own material and collaborating with talented comedians and directors. To this day, I can’t imagine myself doing anything else. Although my liver transplant brings on its own set of issues and follow-up care, I am so grateful for it, because I know without that experience I would have never had the courage to pursue this. I see my life as a bonus life, and I am so incredibly grateful to be alive as cheesy as that may sound.
Great, so let’s dig a little deeper into the story – has it been an easy path overall and if not, what were the challenges you’ve had to overcome?
Aside from health struggles, pursuing comedy and acting in LA is an extremely complicated road full of rejection, loneliness, and disappointment. Trying to balance working a day job to pay your bills with pursuing your dreams is draining and exhausting.
It can sometimes seem impossible and foolish… but then you remember it’s good to be a little delusional and crazy. I’ve experienced depression, anxiety, over-exhaustion, etc. but the great thing is that you have so many friends who can 100% relate… so you don’t feel so alone.
We’d love to hear more about what you do.
I love exploring comedic ideas through writing and performing characters. I also enjoy writing material based on my own life experiences. It has been an extremely therapeutic way to process the trauma and overall crazy things that have happened. I wrote and perform a one-woman show called, “Comaland” where I explored the different characters I met and the experiences I had while I was in a coma.
Here is a list of cool things about me that I usually talk about during a “get to know your game.”
-I love to rollerblade, and I host a talk show on rollerblades!
-I’m really good at hosting karaoke which is a skill that not many realize is hard.
-I play the kazoo!!
-I have six toes on one foot!!
-I have been on over five different game shows.
What moment in your career do you look back most fondly on?
Let me preface this by saying each little victory can be considered one whole proud moment… even waking up and making my bed today was a huge win that allowed me to write a sketch for my class later this week–But I’ll give a better answer… can completing this interview be my proudest moment???!
When I started doing stand-up a few years ago, I couldn’t quite find the confidence I knew I needed to have in order to ‘crush it.’ Week after week, I was bombing at mics even though I knew my material was funny and well prepared. I saw so many men go up and KILL IT, but mainly because they were owning the stage and themselves.
So… I started performing stand-up in character as a hardcore bro from Chicago named “Danny Beckman.” This gave me the freedom to not judge myself so harshly, and Danny started to take off. Some people thought he really was a guy and they wanted to work with him. People loved Danny, and it all started to make sense.
I submitted him to several festivals, and he got in and has been able to perform all over the country. The success didn’t stop with Danny, though… I saw that when I would perform my own stand-up as Alyssa, my confidence in my awkwardness was skyrocketing. It’s not that I needed to be a bro to kill it… I just needed to own what makes me stand out.
Also, I won 26,000 on the Price Is Right by spinning the one dollar on the wheel two times… and I don’t know if I’ll ever top that.
Contact Info:
- Website: www.alyssasabo.com
- Email: [email protected]
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/alyssa_sabo/
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/alyssasabocomedy
- Twitter: https://twitter.com/alyssa_sabo
Image Credit:
Chris Evan, Greg Wallace, Eric Johnson
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