Meet G-Su Paek

We recently connected with G-Su Paek and have shared our conversation below.

G-Su, we’re thrilled to have you sharing your thoughts and lessons with our community. So, for folks who are at a stage in their life or career where they are trying to be more resilient, can you share where you get your resilience from?

I feel like I’ve always been the odd man out.
My upbringing: Born in South Korea but moved to Brownsville, TX at the age of two. So ethnically very Korean and raised in a Korean household but within a primarily Hispanic community. I believe the term is “Third Coast Kid”. There were very few Korean families in the area, let alone many who had children my age. My parents were busy running a business and didn’t have the time or knowledge to help assimilate their children into this strange new culture. I had to learn how to defend myself and quickly learned that if I tried to go the physical route, I’d be fighting the rest of my life. So I learned how to be shrewd. How to make friends. How to talk my way out of situations. To improvise and adapt.

I eventually found my space when I discovered the magic of theater and improvisational theater, specifically improv comedy. And I’ve followed that passion for 22+ years and have continued to try to hone that art fanatically. During my first 5 years of learning improv, I noticed there weren’t a lot of Asian faces on the stages I played on. Nor were there any Asian improv coaches/teachers. I thought this was just due to it being a small art form and that I had just not met other Asian folks doing the art. After experiencing it at every level many years later, I can confidently say that there just weren’t that many Asians venturing into the world of improv comedy. That began to change around 2014 and I started to see a few Asian faces on stage and in classes. It wasn’t a massive change but it was enough to notice. In 2017, I helped Yola Lu and Kim Tran found Y’all We Asian, what we believe to be Austin’s first, and definitely only, improv comedy troupe made up of entirely Asian Americans. To this day, the troupe still performs and have performed at every major comedy festival you can think of and have a monthly show at Fallout Theater.

In 2019, I was fortunate enough to be noticed by CBS Network during a visit to LA. They were surprised to learn we had funny Asians in Texas and they were so intrigued, they actually brought CBS auditions, for the first time ever, to Texas. I auditioned, was the first and only one cast that year, and moved to LA in 2019 for the CBS Diversity Showcase. I’d never wanted to be famous, but my hunger for getting better had just led me to that path. It was a great program with fantastic people and I learned a great many things during my time in it. But even there, I was the odd man out. The only one from Texas. The only one who came from a mainly improv background. The only one who had left everything behind to start a new life. Everything looked great until 2020 when Covid hit and shut down the industry. It forced me to move back to Texas, to start again and live a different life. I would be lying if I said it wasn’t initially depressing. I kept hoping that I could pursue tha California life again. But I realized that all we can do in life is move forward, not backward, and if I do end up back in Hollywood for any reason, it’ll be because I worked my ass off to get there again.

Thanks, so before we move on maybe you can share a bit more about yourself?

38 years old, professionally I work in the Database DevOps field as a Solutions Engineer. I run demos, proof of concepts, and validate the business and technology for potential customers.

My passion is in improv comedy. I’ve not only been performing and teaching improv for 22 years, I’ve also toured the country and opened for folks like Wayne Brady and Ben Schwartz.

I am a founding member of Y’all We Asian, an all Asian-American improv troupe here in Austin, TX. We perform monthly and have performed at various festivals across the 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?

1 – Determination – Being able to follow through on the things you say. I told myself I would take improv classes when I lived in Brownsville and the closes classes to me at the time were in Austin, which was 5 hours away (one way). So I commuted from Brownsville to Austin for a year and a half to take classes. I would happily make the 10 hours round trip drive to take a 1.5 hour class once a week because that is what brought me joy.

2 – Active Listening – Be present and attentive to what’s in front of you. On stage and off, people are talking to you but they’re also TALKING to you. It’s not what we say, it’s what is the intention behind those words. If we are actively listening, we can inherently understand the message without needing it spelled out every time.

3 – Adaptability – Sometimes you will be wrong. This is fine. Just be able to understand that and you can always learn from that mistake. Mistakes are gifts on stage as they can change a scene or add a different perspective. Use those mistakes!

Awesome, really appreciate you opening up with us today and before we close maybe you can share a book recommendation with us. Has there been a book that’s been impactful in your growth and development?

The Inner Game of Tennis by Timothy Gallwey

It’s a fantastic book for anyone in anything. It tries to teach you how to deal with overthinking, overcoaching, and overdoing from the perspective of learning tennis. But it’s a great book for learning anything as the skill of learning is the same for every new thing you might try. My three favorite nuggets would be “Don’t be attached to the outcome”, “Learn by feeling”, and “Focus on the action until it becomes effortless”.

Contact Info:

• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/gsu.paek
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/gsupaek/
• Other: https://www.instagram.com/yallweasian

Image Credits

Credit – @stivwho in Instagram