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Meet Tony Torrico of Fancy Hobo Improv

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Today we’d like to introduce you to Tony Torrico.

So, before we jump into specific questions, why don’t you give us some details about you and your story.
The first time I really began to take performing seriously was in middle school when I first took a theatre class from a teacher named Mrs. Pantomime (that was her real name too!). She had taught our class some basics of acting and improv comedy. And from that moment, I’ve never stopped performing. After that, I found that I actually enjoyed doing this in high school, in a grossly underfunded theater department, where the drama teacher was whoever pulled the short straw that year. We built our own makeshift proscenium stage after fundraising it and founded the improv comedy troupe at that school. That’s the school where I would meet my best friend and business partner, Rob Ferreras. A lot of the work ethic and “do it on our own” attitude we learned there, we would take with us when we founded our improv company, Fancy Hobo Improv.

After high school, I had my first college theater experience in Huntington Beach. It’s hard to look back at times back then because it held both good and bad memories. At that school, we founded Fancy Hobo Improv, the performance collective that I am now Artistic Director of, I met some lifelong friends there, worked with incredible performers, learned fundamentals of Shakespeare, Commedia dell’arte, Musical Theater, and received many opportunities. But that place was also where, looking back, I first experienced racism within the field I love. Theater has always been a “traditional white space,” but it was at that school that I first learned that lesson the hard way. I had an acting teacher call me “dirty cuban” in class, was told that even though I read the best, I couldn’t be cast in a production of Streetcar because I was white, was always make the sidekick or the servant or the butler. That’s where I learned what role traditional theater had in mind for me. Looking back at that time definitely leaves a bad taste in my mouth and I wouldn’t wish that anyone would have to go through that, but those experiences really began to shape the person who I am today.

After too many years there, I branched out and thought that I would find a better experience in the professional acting world. Boy, was I wrong. I signed with an agent that I would either need to lose 100 lbs or gain more weight because they “didn’t have roles for people that looked like me.” I was sent on commercial auditions where I would read for the “troubled Latin youth that’s just trying to make it in this world” and even at one specific audition, I was supposed to portray a stereotypical indigenous character and was told to take off my shirt and jump and shout like a savage. It’s truly is horrific what the entertainment world was allowed to get away within the early 2000s. After one particular audition that I was sent to by my agent, one where every actor there was black except for me, and where the casting director recommend that I leave whichever agent sent me there, I left my agent and the craft that I was furiously passionate about behind dejected and embarrassed.

I spent a few years working an office job, absolutely hating the situation I was in and everything changed from then on. I got cast in a local production of Shakespeare Twelfth Night where I got the opportunity to write my own melodies for the songs I sang. That’s when I formed my rock band, FESTE, with a few friends. We began furiously writing an album and as that was close to being done, we had our first performance in the Ernie Ball Battle of the Bands. With lots of hard work and some incredible fans that cheered us on the whole way, we ended up winning that contest at the old House of Blues Anaheim and our fourth performance ended up being at the VANS Warped Tour. We raised over $5,700 on Kickstarter to fund our first album, held our debut album release show at the HOB Anaheim to hundreds of screaming friends and fans.

Shortly after that, I got the urge to ground myself in some professional training and I went back to school. I finished up some preliminary courses at Fullerton College, where I got more opportunities to act, sing, write music and hone my skills. Eventually, I nervously made the decision to apply to Universities and was lucky enough to get accepted to a place where I would be offered some incredible opportunities, the California Institute of the Arts. During this time at school, I’ve gotten the opportunity to work with some incredible artists, mentors, clowns (yes, real clowns), and I began to finally look at myself as an artist rather than just a performer. I’ve gotten the opportunity to work with Lagartijas Tiradas al Sol, an incredible group of Mexican performance artists, on a new piece about representation and immigration relations between Mexico and the US, which premiered through CalArts Center for New Performance and traveled to the Festival Internacional de Teatro Universitario at UNAM in Mexico City. I went from being only cast as the servant a decade prior to playing King Lear at the Walt Disney Modular Theater. I’ve developed agency and feel empowered in my craft and now, at the age of 34, I am finally graduating with my first college degree.

I feel proud to have gone on the journey I have and feel this way. I am currently the Artistic Director and Co-Founder of Fancy Hobo Improv, a collective of talented improv performers that has adapted during the age of COVID to put on live-streamed improv shows on YouTube and Twitch every Friday and Saturday night. And though the industry that I love and hope to be an important part of has gone through so much during this unprecedented time, I am looking forward to pushing it forward to become more inclusive, accessible, and even better in the future.

Has it been a smooth road?
Racist problems in traditional white theater spaces, trying to push my improv company forward during a time when we don’t know when it will be safe or we will be allowed to perform in person again, going back to school at 30.

Please tell us about Fancy Hobo Improv.
Fancy Hobo began back in 2005. Back then, my friend Rob Ferreras and I had just left the comforts of performing together in high school and our appetites for performing improv weren’t fed enough at the college we were attending. We formed a small troupe of actors from the theater department and began training and performing shows whenever we could. In all honesty, back then we had very little training and had no idea how to produce a show, but we sort of just said “Screw it. Let’s give it a shot and see what happens” in the true spirit of improv. We called our group of rag tag performers Fancy Hobo because the spirit of the company had come to embody that of a hobo, that is to say “a worker moving around and working temporarily in different places”. We had no theater to call our own before we would move on to the next place that would give us the time to perform. And we just kept doing that for years. Lots of trial and error in performing, coaching, and producing. There were times we ran incredibly successful sold-out shows and times when we performed to three or four people.

Through the years, the group evolved and grew into a completely different creative creature. I took the helm as Artistic Director of the company after I got training wherever I could afford it. Sometime around 2013, our flagship show was consistently performing in Orange County and it was consistently funny. As the years went by and I went off to study acting at the California Institute of the Arts, our company started branching out and started establishing new forms and shows. We recruited some incredibly talented musicians and taught our group musical improv and began integrating that into all of our shows. Eventually, we started producing differently themed shows in different spaces and that’s where we ended up with our current lineup of shows.

Just as that was starting to build, COVID happened and we had to close all of our operations. But over the past few months, I am so proud of my team because we have adapted beautifully. We currently produce improv shows every Friday and Saturday night that livestream on YouTube and Twitch. Every Friday, we produce an interactive D&D Improv Show, Hazards & Hijinks. On Saturdays, we rotate between our flagship improv show, The Fancy Hobo Improv Show and other specialty improv shows like Ladies Nights, Holiday Themed Shows, and other identity -driven improv shows. I am excited to see what the future hold for us and I set our sights on trying to find the funds to rent our own theatre space that I want to set up as the first live-streaming improv theater.

How do you think the industry will change over the next decade?
With Covid, there is nothing but questions in the theater world. What will the industry look like? Will people even come out to shows? The good news is that once we have the capabilities to rent our own performance space, we have established an infrastructure to make sure that in any space we take over, we can now livestream all of our content directly to you at home. So audiences can feel safe at home and still see performers creating in the space in the moment. I think improvisors are uniquely suited for a moment like this. The spirit of the improvisor is all about not being afraid and aiming for success, embracing failure and rebounding from it, and finding a way to make the show happen while bringing some joy to the audience. That’s why I think we are uniquely suited to handle a moment like this.

Pricing:

  • All of our current online shows are free and we accept donations! And we appreciate all who have helped us produce more shows during this time.

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