FROM ACTOR TO COMIC, ALWAYS A PRODUCER - BY KADIJAH WINGO

As I learn more about what it looks and feels like to produce live shows, I can see my possibilities multiplying. With experience and some successful projects as evidence, my confidence has tripled in size like the Grinch’s heart. Now with confidence and true belief from within that I can conquer just about anything, it seems the opportunities jump out at me like salmon swimming up stream. Excuse me for all the analogies, but finding the words to describe the drastic transformations over the past 4 years makes me want to vomit from realizing all the change I’ve undergone.

Through my acknowledgment of all these changes, there’s also an awareness of at times that felt like horrible seasons. Over time, these road-blocks or just indescribable tragedies have revealed a lesson of some sort that guides me to what is meant for me. It’s all alignment. From having to learn how to even have a voice of my own as a child by pushing past my insecurities to project on stage at a YMCA holiday play (2009); this was all in the plan for me.

The failures were also aligned. The first time I bombed telling jokes, with grace (because I had on a blazer and no straight-faced/non-laughing audience member can take that energy of a blazer from me!), in Cleveland Heights after leaving Ohio University (where I first did stand up for over-eager white people waiting to get blasted by a Vegas bomb or 3 after the show.) The first time I did comedy (2019) in my hometown of Cleveland, back when Coventry had more clubs than smoke shops: it was bad! What I gained from the silences between punchlines was the urge to try again. Perfect this newfound, but “always inside me” craft. Maybe the fuel of embarrassment also pushed my Libra Sun to prove that I am as funny as I and my friends think I am.

I see that hunger for artistic accomplishment as an integral component for artistic producing. You have to truly believe in the growth/potential of a project to even begin to produce it. I truly saw my potential re-watching the recording of that stinking mess of a stand up set and GOT TO WORK. Sometimes consciously with the goal to just be a better comic. Other times subconsciously with the goal to just feel better releasing my innermost thoughts, feelings, and ideas I thought had to be kept in the shadows.

Producing can at times feel like glorified secretarial work but - similar to life where we all could use a little bit of help managing all the things - producing is organized planning for incubating art to then expand it out to the world. Basically, in the most cheesy but I’m proud to say way, Producing is life. If I didn’t have all the experiences of creating weird lil plays, shows, or inventions in my room alone as a kid, I wouldn’t have the ability to continue to create this life now.