Stand-up guy

Comedian’s love of sitcoms fueled his passion for performance

B orn in South Bend, Indiana, Nate Gropp performs in Indianapolis at various clubs and toured the Midwest with three other comedians in “The Gentlemen of Leisure” tour.

Q: When did you get serious about pursuing comedy as a career?

A:

I was studying music education at Ball State but I was over it — all the talk about administrative red tape and the things you had to deal with outside the classroom just turned me off. By the middle of my junior year, I had a pretty common thought: ‘If I could do anything and I knew that I would eventually succeed, what would I do with my life?’ I was really into ‘The Office’ and ‘Arrested Development’ at the time. I grew up watching ‘Seinfeld’ and ‘Frasier.’ I always loved sitcoms. I was an only child with a single parent so I had a lot of TV time. I watched a lot of comedies because I think the laugh track soothed me, especially when I was a little kid. I think it made the world seem less lonely and more happy and I just kind of thought, you know, I think I’d like to write for a show like that. Then I did a little research and found out — surprise — a lot of people who write for sitcoms had experience as a stand-up, so I tried stand-up and I fell in love with it.

Q: When was your first experience on stage?

A:

It was in January 2008, right before my 21st birthday, at a bar called Motini’s in Muncie, Indiana, at an open mic. You had to sign up ahead of time. I hadn’t really watched too much stand-up live so I went and watched a show and signed up for the next open mic, which was two weeks later.

Q: Did you know what you were going to do?

A:

I thought I did. I’d been writing jokes for about six months, just adding them to a Google Docs page, and I also started geeking out on stand-up really hard. I memorized the Jerry Seinfeld CD when I was 12 and I heard Brian Regan and Dane Cook, but that was pretty much it. One of my good friends was a comedy nerd and he gave me a bunch of CDs and told me to listen to them, so I really threw myself into the art form and exposed myself to different people. I actually didn’t use any of the jokes I wrote in those six months. Everything I did that first night was prepared the week of the open mic. It went well and I kept performing. By the summer of 09, I decided to drop out of Ball State. I moved to Indianapolis and started doing open mics at a place called Crackers and did well enough that they started booking me as an MC.

Q: You eventually took a break from comedy. What happened?

A:

I had a rough time in my early 20s trying to figure out how to be a person. I did comedy off and on for a few years but a girl broke up with me and it kind of messed me up. I figured I could maybe win her back if I proved myself to be a worthy partner so I dropped the comedy and went back to school and got a real job. And then about a year and a half later, I knew it wasn’t working. I started doing comedy again in 2014 and I figured it out. I just figured I had to commit to it and not look back.

Q: When you’re putting your act together, how do you decide what’s funny?

A:

A lot of what I do on stage now is based on my personal life — dating, relationships, family stuff — but I also try to maintain a worldview that could be mined for comedy. I still like to do observational stuff within the personal stuff but it’s all about having a consistent perspective and then saying what you think is the funniest thing in the funniest way possible.

Q: What advice would you give someone who wants to be a comedian?

A:

I would tell them to not drop out of school. I would tell them to write and perform as much as they can. It’s all trial and error. I would also tell them not to ask for advice — just go do it. Give it a try, keep your head down, be nice and if you want to keep doing it, people will give you advice and help you out.

Q: So no romantic notion of dropping everything to work on your comedy?

A:

It’s not realistic. It’s nearly impossible to be a professional stand-up comedian. It’s really hard and you’re not going to make decent money at it for 10 years or longer. It’s a lot easier if you have a good day job because comedy’s a night thing. I work in a brunch place now so I have my nights free but for a long time, I worked nights and I had to schedule everything around it.

Q: What’s the hardest part for you right now?

A:

I spent a long time getting funny enough to where I feel like I have a product I can stand behind and confidently say ‘hey, put me in a room of 200 people and I’m going to crush. I’m going to do the job.’ Now I have to figure out the business side of it — the merchandise, the clips, the marketing. I’m more creative than analytical and to succeed, you have to be both.

Q: Are other comedians helpful? A:

If you’re a decent human being. If you’re just nice, people will try to help you but if you’re nice and funny, they’ll do more. There are a lot of really funny people who quit and a lot of really unfunny people who don’t, so it’s important to encourage the funny people to keep going.

Q: What’s the best part of doing stand-up?

A:

Other than just the joy of being on stage and having it go well, the best part is when people go out of their way to talk to you after a show. It’s when they wait around to tell you how funny you were, when they tell you they thought you were great.