Today we’d like to introduce you to Peter Berube.
Peter, we’d love to hear your story and how you got to where you are today both personally and as an artist.
I grew up in the suburbs of Connecticut. My parents got divorced when I was really young which meant I was raised in two very different households. I lived mostly with my mom and my stepdad whose rules were pretty strict. My Dad’s rules were different. Some of his rules were the opposite. He also had random other rules which my mom didn’t have. I was an intensely inquisitive kid and needed to know why they were different. From what I could see, rules appeared to be things made up by whoever seemed to be in charge. If that was true, then rules were merely suggestions based off of ideological preferences, rather than a definitive separation of “right” versus “wrong.” Rebel Peter was now born.
From that moment on I got into questioning EVERYTHING. The things I saw in the world around me didn’t make any sense. We would go to church to learn about loving everyone, then later in that very same service; my mom would tell me she’s not allowed to eat their wafer because she’s protestant. It doesn’t take a genius to figure out that what they were preaching was bullshit. Sarcasm became my way of expressing my frustration, and that love of pointing out the flaws in the system is what drew me into the world of comedy.
My first “gig” was hosting my elementary school talent show. My grandma made me a blue sequin vest, and I told all my favorite jokes from the playground. “What do you feel when a giant letter “D” sits on you?… You feel D-pressed.” I was very passionate about mental health issues as a fourth grader. My sophomore year of high school I got my first role in my first play as the comedic relief. I came up with a physical comedy bit that got the audience laughing one night for two minutes straight which completely stopped the show. After that, I was hooked on the drug of being ridiculous. All throughout college, I dressed in weird clothes that made me laugh. I did social experiments on my classmates. One year I even made a terrible show on purpose to prove that performance art is bullshit. It was a silent 80’s musical called, Palveter. To give you an example of how bad it was, I stood on stage at the end of the show for eight straight minutes and did absolutely nothing while listening to The Final Countdown. We won most original show at our Blackboxie awards that year. They clearly missed the point.
My first gig in LA was with a stripping improv troupe called, Scriptease. That group brought me some of my favorite collaborators and life long friends. From there, we branched out into our own comedy troupe where we created sketch shows, web series, and produced a full-length mockumentary feature. At the end of 2008, Prop 8 passed, and I stepped away from comedy for a while. Marching in the street with my friends who had become second class citizens made my world a hell of a lot less funny. The next few years were spent developing a musical called, Behind Closed Doors which was my very angry response to what the world had done. I moved with the show to New York. I got super depressed. Nothing in my life seemed to be working. The only thing I knew how to cope was to make art. I decided to get myself out of that funk by doing a 52-week art challenge where I made a new project every week for an entire year. Eventually, I clawed my way back to LA. I fell back in love with comedy and ended up getting cast in Game of Thrones: The Musical which had a run in LA and NY.
My years have been full of so many highs and lows. I have faced more failures than I ever could have imagined. That used to be the most painful part of my story. It’s not anymore. I know I have failed so much because I have never stopped taking risks. Those risks have paid off. I have a beautiful life full of incredible people, and I spend all day doing what I love. Every day is a new adventure, and I’m grateful I get to keep playing.
We’d love to hear more about your art. What do you do, why, and what do you hope others will take away from your work?
My art is fueled by my desire to understand the full spectrum of who we are, and why we do the things that we do. I’m not interested in the rose-colored glasses version of who we wish we were. We have to first be honest with who we are before we can shift into who we can be. Comedy helps us be honest. That’s why I’m such a huge fan of shows like Last Week Tonight or The Daily Show. If we had to hear about all the tragedies happening in the world every day with the real emotional weight those tragedies deserve, we would all just be depressed. Comedy gives us hope. It lets us face things we don’t want to face and talks about pain out in the open in a way that allows us to connect. That is ultimately what art is about anyway. It’s about connection.
Comedy takes that pain you are feeling and transforms it into joy. It takes that weight off your shoulders so that you can keep going. That’s a lot of the reason why so many comedians suffer from depression. We are driven to stare the ugly parts of life in the face because we want the full truth. It is that truth that unites us, and we don’t have to be afraid of it. We can laugh about our fears and insecurities so that we may someday rise above them. We cannot change things until we accept them. Comedy not only helps us accept our worst fears, but it gives us the energy and the courage to move beyond them.
Artists face many challenges, but what do you feel is the most pressing among them?
Artists have to stop measuring their work or worth by the feedback loop of social media. The only thing that makes you an artist is your unique voice. You must constantly find deeper ways to trust in yourself. Who we are is enough. Trying to measure your art by other people’s opinion is a useless endeavor. There are thousands of stories of artists who were passed over multiple times or they were misunderstood for decades before they became legends. History often changes their story so that they were always legends. That just isn’t true, and it isn’t how it works. You have to make YOUR art. The art YOU enjoy. The art that inspires YOU. That’s a really challenging thing to do today since social media makes everything so immediate. You make something, it doesn’t take off right away, so you think what you made must not be very good. You have to be patient in a world brimming with instant gratification.
It will connect with some people and not with others. One day you may be fortunate enough that your art happens to strike the right chord at the right time in history, and your work will be celebrated by the world. Regardless, you need to find a way to be the biggest brightest version of yourself which is way harder to do than most people think. People around you may not like when you shine at your brightest. In fact, most of them won’t. You being your big beautiful self can be very threatening, because it may bring up all the ways in which they are not. I have spent a lot of time dimming my own light because I could feel how uncomfortable it made some other people in the room, especially some of my romantic partners. Dimming my light was a mistake. You are not responsible for their feelings. Your only responsibility as an artist is to be authentically you.
Do you have any events or exhibitions coming up? Where would one go to see more of your work? How can people support you and your artwork?
I’m always jumping from project to project so the best way to keep up with me is on Instagram @PeterBerube.
I perform regularly with Mission Improvable over at the Westside Comedy Theatre and with Blockbuster Improv at The Improv Space. www.WestSideComedy.com
I’m in a wonderful indie feature which is coming out this year which also has a spin-off web-series I wrote. You can follow that at www.WeAreGatheredHere.com
There is an animated series called Toy Stories, and a Game of Thrones Therapy series coming out on the Epic Robot TV channel on YouTube.
You can also here some of my voice-over work on the sci-fi audio-drama series, The Veil which is available wherever you get your podcasts. I wrote the premiere episode titled, Search and Rescue.
I also have children’s book coming out later this year which is a zombie apocalypse story told entirely in the nostalgic rhyme scheme of Dr. Seuss called, The Rat with the Bat.
Contact Info:
- Website: www.PeterBerube.com
- Instagram: @peterberube
- Twitter: @ptberube
Image Credit:
Caity Ware, Erin Stegeman Marrero, Rich Baker, and Jeff Perkins
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