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Welcome to another episode of the Comedic Pursuits podcast. It’s going to be fun. It’s going to be wacky. So far, season one has been a good time. I’ve been enjoying all of these interviews. I’ve gained a lot of knowledge and all sorts of really cool backstories of people and learned some really cool lessons. It’s great. I love it. I’m gonna keep doing it.

If you enjoy this show: like it, subscribe to it, share it with your friends, write reviews, rate it, all that good stuff.

Today we’re going to listen to an awesome interview with Erik Beringer, a stand-up comedian and improviser from Charlottesville. I was really excited to sit down with him and talk to him about his stand-up experience.

You can check out some highlights from the interview below or listen to the full version by downloading or following the podcast.

Highlights from my interview with Erik Beringer

Erik started doing short-form improv in middle school, eventually moved to DC, and got into all sorts of stand-up craziness. Now he tours and gets paid to do stand-up, which is kickass. He’s moving to LA soon, so catch him in the DC area while you still can.

Some of the interview questions and answers below have been edited for clarity.

What’s your comedy background?

My first intro into anything comedy-related was improv. When I was 14, I took a class at Bent Theater, which was a short-form improv group in Charlottesville. They liked me, so they asked me to audition for their house team. We traveled around a bit and did some shows in Maryland, southern Virginia, Norfolk, and a couple other places.

That was in high school, so I was between the ages of 14 and 18. That was my first time doing comedy a lot. The group started performing at a resort in central Virginia, and that was my first realization that someone could get paid to do comedy.

But the Charlottesville comedy scene sort of fell apart because a lot of the people who were talented and involved enough to put it together moved away and onto the next thing. Bent Theater survived, but pretty much nothing else did. After high school, I came up here and started doing improv at George Mason University, where I went to college.

My first year at Mason, I auditioned for the Mason Improv Association, and I didn’t make it. When the team roster came out, I went and found the other people who didn’t make it, and we started an indie team called Big In Certain Countries. That was with Elijah Sloan, Alex Galloway, and Eric Schlein. We did some shows in DC, and I think we ended up performing more and meeting more people through that than we might have through the college team.

How did you get into stand-up?

I’ve been doing stand-up comedy since I was 16. But actually doing it well and getting shows, it’s been two years. When I was a kid, I asked my parents if, instead of college money, I could have a bus ticket and starter money to go to Second City in Chicago and enroll in their program. They said no.

How did your improv experience inform your stand-up?

I think doing short-form helped a little bit with my stand-up because short-form is definitely a lot about mugging and going for the laugh. People can get as artsy as they want about stand-up,