Finding My Thing
by Frenchie Lynn Augustin
I’m the
youngest of four kids, three of which are living versions of television sitcom
tropes: the smart and perfect one, the trouble maker, and the parent charmer.
Not only am I the youngest of four kids, I’m also the youngest of four kids
where the closest age gap between them and myself is eight years.
That means
that, literally, almost every four years of my life, someone was having a baby,
someone else was graduating from college, another someone was learning to
drive, and I was stuck trying to get attention by doing things like making
impressions of famous paintings with my dinners (you should have seen my Mona
Lisa. It was my master-peas.)
This isn’t to say that I was completely
ignored by my parents. My mother made it her mission, as with all of her
children, to make sure that I was good at something that sounded fancy: playing
the piano, taking voice and dance lessons, et cetera, et cetera. I never really
had a say in anything I’d be doing, but that finally changed in the fourth
grade when I asked if I could be in a musical being put on by a camp in our town
(“Big” was the musical, in case you
were wondering. The lead wasn’t as charming as Tom Hanks, but at the age of
eight, I was sure he was just as dreamy).
Now, I’m
not sure if it has anything to do with being the youngest of four kids eager to
find her sitcom trope but I’ve always been a little silly and I liked that.
Being silly made my parents laugh at my antics, it made people want to be
friends with me, but mostly, it was something I could do that other people
couldn’t. It was my thing.
While
being silly one day at Big rehearsal,
one of the directors came up to me and said I’d be great in a scene with bit
role as a toy store worker who would pop in with something the owner didn’t
want, look confused, and then leave: my
first big break! When show time came, I popped on stage then made my confused
reaction and the audience laughed. I made people I didn’t know laugh. “It was
probably a fluke,” I thought. But it happened again, and again at all of the
shows I performed in. Making people laugh wasn’t just something I could do; it
was something I could do well.
Once I
realized making people laugh was something I could do, I wanted to do it as
much as possible. And thank goodness it was the early 2000s, because lucky for
pre-teen me, Whose Line Is It Anyway
was on television and if I knew what a calling was at the age of eleven, I’d
tell you that improvising was mine. I begged my mother to let me take an improvising
class for teens and she agreed. I took the class and I fell in love with improv:
thinking on your feet, creating amazing things out of thin air. I loved it.
Eventually, the class ended. But my passion for comedy, my need to make people
laugh, never went away.
When I
came to Arizona for college, I thought was finally free. I didn’t have to keep
up with my sitcom creation siblings or try to get my parents to pay attention
to my antics. I could just be without worrying about anyone else. I thought. But
I found myself trying to keep up with the Jones’ in a different way – other
college freshmen who knew what they wanted to do with their lives, friends
getting jobs and internships and getting into relationships. I found myself
feeling like a kid again –wanting to feel like there was something special
about me. For a while I didn’t know what to do until a familiar feeling
whispered in my ear:
Knock, knock.
Who’s there?
Make ‘em laugh.
I did
have something that made me feel special, something that I could do that I
loved: make people laugh. Soon, I started doing stand-up and eventually I
auditioned for and became a part of National Comedy Theatre’s Thursday Night Improv Troupe and now,
I don’t have to search for something that makes me special anymore. Comedy
makes me special. Making people laugh makes me special. Being in a group of
people with the same passion I have makes me special. I think that’s why I love
comedy so much, why I love being a part of NCT: it means so more than just
making people laugh. Every time I walk on stage, I’m making people laugh, but
I’m also telling myself, “Hey. You’re good at something. You have something to
be proud of.” And as good as the laughter of an audience feels, having
something to be proud of yourself for feels even better.
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