Interview: Rich Alfonso of SECOND CITY'S 65TH ANNIVERSARY SHOW at Southern Theatre

Before he takes the stage as a part of the Second City’s 65th Anniversary Show Sept. 4 at the Southern Theatre (21 East Main Street in downtown Columbus), Rich Alfonso will go through the same ritual he always does as he prepares to perform.

He sweats. He paces. He taps his feet up and down. Mostly Alfonso waits for the fear to subside. As soon as he steps into the spotlight, the nervousness disappears.

“I’d say the biggest thing I’ve had to overcome is anxiety,” Alfonso said in a telephone interview from Chicago. “I’ve had it my entire life. Some days it’s manageable, but every blue moon or so, I’ll have a panic attack … and that’s very scary. When I first started taking classes with Second City, all my teachers would say, ‘You can take all the courses and you can learn from the best teachers. But ultimately, the best teacher is going to be going out there and putting what you’ve been learning into practice.’

“That prospect of performing in front of an audience petrified me. My first time performing, my anxiety level was at an 11. I began looking for the nearest exits in the theater in case I had to leave. Once I stood on stage and the lights came on and I was with all my castmates, all those feelings subsided.”

As odd as it sounds, those fears have become almost a security blanket for Alfonso, who has been performing improv and sketch comedy for the last decade.

“Every single time I feel anxiety before a show, I always remind myself, ‘Hey you’re going to feel this way from the time the stage manager says, ‘places’ to the time you go on stage,” he said. “But once you step on stage, that anxiety is going to disappear. It always happens.”

Alfonso and castmates Kennedy Baldwin, Anna Bortnick, Deb Duncan, Ross Taylor, and Riley Woollen must shoulder a heavy legacy as they present the 65th anniversary show across the United States. This tour will draw on songs, sketches and characters created by a host of talented alumni over the last six decades.

You may not have heard of Second City but its influence on comedy is inescapable. Called “the Harvard of Comedy,” Second City, which has branches in Toronto and New York City in addition to its Windy City main campus, has placed its thumbprint on shows like Saturday Night Live, The Daily Show, the Office, The Simpsons, Schitt’s Creek and many more as well as producing its own program, SCTV, from 1976-82. Among Second City’s noted alumni are Bill Murray, Keegan-Michael Key, Tina Fey, Steve Carell, Dan Aykroyd, Tim Robinson, Eugene Levy, John Belushi, Catherine O’Hara, Michael Myers, Joan Rivers, and Chris Farley.

Alfonso was part of the Bob Curry Fellowship, a tuition-free, 15-week professional development master program directed at students from diverse cultural backgrounds. Students must go through a rigorous audition process to receive a chance to work with and study under Second City’s top instructors and creative team.

 “Second City is to comedy what milk is to cereal,” Alfonso quipped. “When you are taking classes at Second City, you are not only learning about improv and sketch comedy, but you’re also learning about the place it has in comedic history.

“When you join Second City, you get to work at a place that only a few people have been fortunate enough to perform in. You have entered the annals of its history and you get to add your own flavor into it as well. You bring your own point of view, life experiences, and comedy into that mix.”

You might think going into the performing arts, especially a field like improv comedy where one is live without a net, would be a horrible career choice for someone who has social anxiety. And coming out of high school, Alfonso might have sided with you. He attended Keystone College, earning a degree in communications with an emphasis on journalism and English. He ended up working at an entry level job, which he wasn’t happy with and began to wonder what exactly he wanted to do.

“I went through what I like to call a quarterlife crisis,” he said. “People around me were so sure about what they’re going to do. ‘I’m going to be a doctor.’ ‘I’m going to fly planes.’ I thought to myself, ‘I’m not doing what I should be doing.’

“I did this silly exercise. I told myself, ‘OK, I'm going to take a piece of paper and write down if money and location weren’t a factor on my decision, what would I do and where would I go?’ The first thing I wrote down was comedy. I thought, ‘OK, so where do I learn to do this stuff?’ I went down a rabbit hole on the Internet and put down ‘comedy’ and ‘school.’ The first thing that came up was Second City.”

Alfonso said the two most important things he has learned through Second City has been to embrace failure as a friend and to, above all else, trust his fellow castmates.

“With any group, whether its sports, working in an office or in any type of collaboration … you need to have chemistry and the ability to understand everybody’s sensibilities, in terms of what their strengths are,” he said. “Are they more of a straight man versus being a funny man? Are they musical or not musical? We spend a lot of time in rehearsals improvising with each other because that’s when you get to understand a person’s comedy and their sense of timing.

“I’m fortunate to work with some of the funniest and most talented people ever. One of the best compliments I can get from somebody when they watch our show is it really looks like you guys love being around each other.”

It takes time to build up that kind of rapport with someone, according to Alfonso. When he first started out at Second City, he was in a trio of performers and they were struggling with an improv exercise in class.

“The other two were creating what the parameters were and I was trying to add on a bunch of stuff that didn't make a lot of sense,” he said. “The teacher paused the class and said to me, ‘I can see the gears turning in your head. I’m going to tell you right now that you need to stop thinking about what you’re doing. You’re afraid that what is being put out there by your teammates isn’t good enough. You need to take whatever they’re giving you and be comfortable in the uncertainty of what that is and let things happen.’

“It was probably the best note I’ve ever received. It got me out of my head and told me, ‘all I need is right there.’ I don’t have to invent much in my head because it’s going to happen naturally.”

Second City has provided Alfonso with opportunities he never would have gotten anywhere else: doing comedy for four months on a Norwegian Cruise liner; running movie lines with Second City alum Jim Belushi; and performing for pop stars Olivia Rodrigo and Gracie Abrams.

“(Rodrigo and Abrams) were in town for a concert and apparently seeing a Second City show was on Rodrigo’s bucket list of things she wanted to do in Chicago,” he said with a laugh. “We decided to use her song, ‘Good for You’ in one of the blackouts. We were worried it might freak her out and she’d think we were going to pull her onstage. The music comes on and a couple of us were looking from the sides of the stage and watching her reaction. When the song came on, she was like ‘Oh God, they’re playing my song’ and she ended up applauding after the blackout. That was our little nod to her and we were all giddy she enjoyed that.”

One of the best thrills Alfonso receives doesn’t come from being on stage but by leading improv classes with his troupe during the tour. Inevitably, someone attending the workshop will say, “I have anxiety. I would like to do this but I feel my anxiety is not going to let me do it.”

“I've never felt more purposeful than when I get to tell that person, ‘Yes! You can absolutely do it. Anxiety’s something I've been struggling with my entire life. If you love this thing so much and want to do it, you’ll find a way,’” he said. “It gets better and I'm here as proof to let you know that.