We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful Russ Gooberman. We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with Russ below.

Alright, Russ thanks for taking the time to share your stories and insights with us today. Do you wish you had started sooner?

Like many Angelinos, I moved here from the east coast with an eye on becoming a creative. I come from a funny family – my Austrian-accented grandfather would crack up the staff at the local pizzeria in Brooklyn by demanding they make him a hot dog. He would do surprise vaudevillian comedy acts on cruise vacations with my grandmother.

Despite moving here wanted to do comedy, I didn’t get started right away. I had a number of seemingly random jobs — for an environmental lobbyist group, for a financial newspaper, for a tech startup in streaming – before I actually started working as a segment producer for a Web 1.0 daily video series called BoingBoingTV.

In my off time, I would do open mics and bringer gigs. Eventually, through the grapevine I heard that Groundlings was a good place to develop improv skills. Two sessions of frustration there taught me the lesson that they’re less in the business of teaching improv than showing off improv skill that you’ve already acquired elsewhere. My Groundlings experience caused me to abandon improv completely for seven years.

It wasn’t until 2013, while living in Kips Bay in NYC that I wandered into the

in Chelsea. There, studying with luminary Rick Andrews, I finally found a place I felt welcome.

Moving back to LA that winter, I started the program at Hollywood’s IO West. I’ve been improvising for live audiences continually for the last ten years since then.

While it may have been more advantageous to getting selected to top teams as a fresh-faced 20 year old at IO West, I found myself more self aware, more willing to take risks, and more savvy in knowing how to earn a living on the side while I pursued the usually financially bereft artform of improv.

As always, we appreciate you sharing your insights and we’ve got a few more questions for you, but before we get to all of that can you take a minute to introduce yourself and give our readers some of your back background and context?

Based in Los Angeles, Russ is a veteran of longform improvisation, physical comedy and clown technique. His online sketches, music videos and commercials have been viewed on YouTube over 200 million times. He’s performed in sketch and improv with top comic luminaries including Jenny Lorenzo, Natalie Palamides, Jeremy Gumbo Christian, Ian Boggs, RJ Aguiar,, Kane Diep and Sam Song Li.

He is currently on the faculty at LA’s longest running improv theater, Burbank’s LA Connection. He performs on two of the longest running genre teams in Los Angeles – Drunkards & Dragons, and LA’s Harry Potter team — The Show That Shall Not Be Named.

The Show That Shall Not Be Named has been performing for 10 years at major venues including Burbank’s Town Center, Barnes and Noble at the Grove, LA Comic Con, and the Last Bookstore.

Russ has spent the last decade honing his skills with IO and Second City legends including Jeff Michalski, Jane Morris, Dave Razowsky, Jaime Moyer and Kent Skov.

As a teacher, Russ’s coaching focuses on the deep-tissue listening needed to be present in scenes and how to combine deconstruction of an abstract with dynamic spacework and physical presence.

Is there a particular goal or mission driving your creative journey?

To quote eccentric theater director Andre Gregory, sometimes you have to “burn down your career to go where your vocation leads.”

As a stand up comedian, I was very competent. I had jokes, I had political material. I had impressions. I had stories. But night after night, I would bore myself as I repeated these things over and over to supportive audiences. Eventually, I started spending half of my set just riffing on other comics’ material or doing crowd work.

One of my favorite sets, involved finding myself in a lineup following legendary comedian Rick Shapiro (a cast member of Lucky Louie). In what would normally be a booby trap of a slot, I spent the first 10 minutes doing a Rick Shaprio impression while quizzing some tourists about their knowledge of Denver. The crowd ate it up. At a post show House of Pies binge, Rick called me “super quick.”

A light clicked when I started doing improv full time. There was something ‘alive’ about improv and the reaction I could get from an audience doing it. I especially enjoyed seeing the look on a traditional comedy audience of — ‘who is this lunatic?’ when I would be booked to do improv as a pallet cleanser in a stand up show.

I guess this is a roundabout way of saying, because improv is harder to commodify and monetize, it’s considered a less valuable artform. I’m here to elevate the artform. That’s my mission. That is what I will do for the rest of my life.

Have you ever had to pivot?

In 2012, I had a steady but depressing job at a tech start up in Los Angeles.. What had started as a creative gig (I was initially hired as a VJ for a streaming show) evolved into a job focused on analytics and managing a content team. Hearing that both of my New York grandmothers were in poor health, I requested to move to NY to work remotely. My employer initially agreed and then fired me over the phone 2 weeks after landing in NY.

While the immediate financial insecurity in a new environment was stressful — the extra free time allowed me to pick up the practice of Iyengar Yoga (in Chelsea’s amazing Iyengar Yoga Institute) and to rekindle my love for improv at the Magnet Theater.

Those four months spent in New York were incredibly valuable — I consider that time the key pivot point in my entire life arc. When I did return to LA, I had a mission, a purpose. I haven’t stopped moving in that direction since.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://russgooberman.com/
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/russgooberman
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/russgooberman/
• Youtube: youtube.com/@RussGooberman