We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful Amey Goerlich. We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with Amey below.
Amey , so excited to have you with us today. So much we can chat about, but one of the questions we are most interested in is how you have managed to keep your creativity alive.
I am constantly inspired by our community of performers who give so much to us and South Broadway in Denver. We have so many cool and different shows at our theater and i am blown away by the imagination that everyone puts into the shows. From Idiot Theater (Modern Clowning) to The Character Show where we have new original characters presented by different people each month.
Great, so let’s take a few minutes and cover your story. What should folks know about you and what you do?
I started in Theater in Northern California and then headed to New York City where i stayed for 19 years and continued directing and producing Theater productions but then found The Upright Citizens Brigade Theater and began my journey into Long Form improvisation Comedy and Sketch Writing.
I feel in love with Improv and i knew my life mission would be to introduce as many people as i could to the magic of making stuff up on the spot.
I loved teaching and preforming but i knew one day i would want to have my own improv theater so i could elevate under utilized voices. Being a woman in comedy in the early 2000s in NYC was not easy and had many challenges but i kept at it and never fell out of love with improv comedy.
in 2016 i had the opportunity to move to Los Angeles and teach/perform at Westside Comedy Theater.
It was such an amazing opportunity to work with so many talented improvisers from Second City, IO Chicago, UCBLA.
Then in 2020 i was given another amazing but challenging opportunity to move to Denver and create my own training center. Eventually i became co-owners with Robert Abbott & Zak Roland of Chaos Bloom Theater.
Now we see people drive from all over Colorado just to take improv/sketch and clowning classes with us. Seeing our little theater grow and thrive to having Ten Classes a week is truly a dream. We have been able to open up our schedule to different types of comedy shows from Makeshift Shakespeare to Drag shows with sketch and music.
We even have annex classes up in Boulder of our higher level improv classes.
Our newest thing coming up is we are in the Westword Best of audience choice competition. We are super jazzed about it and we hope you come by and check out a show and maybe vote for us!
Looking back, what do you think were the three qualities, skills, or areas of knowledge that were most impactful in your journey? What advice do you have for folks who are early in their journey in terms of how they can best develop or improve on these?
Immersing myself in the comedy scene in NYC was such a joy and a lot of hard lessons but i don’t regret a thing. I found something i liked and i went in head first and never looked up. Don’t be afraid of the unknown, take a chance on yourself and that crazy new thing in your life.
Never give up on your dreams. It may take longer than you expected or come from a direction you did not expect. Don’t Judge how you got there make the most of every opportunity that comes your way. Believing in yourself is probably the hardest thing to do especially when others give you no reason to continue. Keep reaching for your dream.
The entertainment business has a lot of Nos and maybe next times or you were so close. Brush yourself off and keep on moving. Come at everything with kindness and an open heart. Admit when you made a misstep and then keep on going. No ones perfect all the time so be willing to fail, fall and fight for what you believe in.
To close, maybe we can chat about your parents and what they did that was particularly impactful for you?
My parents let me explore whatever it is i wanted to do. All though they were a bit nervous when i landed on the entertainment business but i had been entertaining my family since i was a kid so i think they knew that i would probably try to expand that to non family members.
Seeing how proud my parents were when they came into my business and saw what we built was the coolest thing to hear them say how proud they were of me. Sometimes we forget what our end game is and we need the people we care about the most to stop and take a look at how far we have come and give us that nod.
I am thankful every day for my parents support, hesitation and love.
Contact Info:
- Website: chaosbloom.com
- Instagram: chaos_bloom_theater
- Facebook: Chaos Bloom Theater
- Youtube: @chaosbloomtheater435
