Julio Torres

So I started going to them as a way of showcasing my writing.

And the very first time I did it was sort of like means to an end.

The end being being a professional TV and film writer.

And then I fell in love with performance.

I fell in love with the world I accidentally wandered into.

And I made a lot of friends in that world.

And then the stand-up became a calling card for what I do now.

I will say that the very, very first time I did an open mic in New York City.

So one thing that I think that people who have never done a comedy open mic don't realize is that the audience in the open mic is just other comedians waiting to go up.

There's no real audience.

It's almost like a workshop.

And at the good open mics, everyone is very engaged in listening to each other and cheering each other on.

At the very bleak ones, everyone's on their phone just killing time till they get to go up and be ignored.

And the latter is the first ones I ever did.

And in waiting to go up, I was just sort of like observing how people did it.

And I was like, okay, okay, you have six more people before you have to go up.

You better learn how to make this fast.

And then the first time I performed, I was sort of doing my impression of what I thought a stand-up comedian should be.

And that didn't feel right.

So then I just decided to ignore it after that.