#34 - Life Comes at You

I gotta remind myself every once in a while

Not everything I put out into the world needs to be a big production.

Sometimes, a newsletter should just be about that - news.

So let’s get cracking. We’ll save the deep thoughts for next time.

You know us, you love us - Dallas’s stupid-smartest sketch team The Wickedly Talented is performing at the Dallas Sketch Festival! We’ll be showcasing some old favorites and some new goodies on Friday, May 29th at 8:30pm. You are not prepared for the shenanigans!

But it’s easy to become prepared - check this space for tickets, and check out our YouTube page for a taste of what’s in store.

Yes, Ann Improv Fest

Your favorite long-form improv team Black Tie Casual is doing some traveling this summer! We’ll be performing in Ann Arbor’s premier improv festival on Thursday, June 25th at hear.say brewing - sharing a festival weekend with some TITANS of comedy, including Improved Shakespeare, Holy Sh!t Improv, and Yes, Also All-Stars. This isn’t even getting into the surely incredible regional teams joining us on the festival’s Showcase Schedule.

This is legitimately a very cool thing - if you’re Michigan-adjacent, follow the festival’s Instagram for details, and come out and support!

Recent Gigs

Featured Role: Cocko, An Adventurer’s Daily Grind at Age 29

Look, I can’t in good conscience recommend “Adventurer’s Daily Grind”, it’s like, not great, but if you’re going to watch it, watch the dub. A lot of very talented people put effort into making it as entertaining as it could be, and I count myself lucky to be among them as one of the show’s most interesting characters.

As soon as I learned what Cocko’s deal was I felt a kinship. Her father is a scholar with a focus on the beasts that roam the adventurers’ dungeons, but his work isn’t taken seriously because…well, look at him. Cockdole is a pretty easy-going guy so he isn’t hurt by what people say, but poor Cocko feels every insult - she dreams of becoming a scholar like him someday, and feels like she has to work twice as hard to show off her smarts and protect her dad’s honor.

Cocko exhibits a lot of the qualities that I did when I was her age — a big vocabulary, a keen sense of justice, a hair-trigger temper, and an inclination towards over-seriousness. By the end of the show, she’s learned to relax…somewhat…and has a close-knit group of friends her age. Which is all we can wish for a gifted child with the world on her shoulders.

I don’t get to voice little girls often, and there aren’t many girls like Cocko in the anime canon. I’m so grateful to Lee George for thinking of me when he saw this cutie’s scowling, bespectacled face.

Anime UwU - Wind Breaker Day

Me and the Wind Breaker Boys had one last hurrah at the Vista Mall in Lewisville - due to rising costs, our hosts at Anime Yankii have closed up shop. Anyone who’s attended these events in the past two years knows what a blow this is for the local fan community, as well as its indie artists.

The business lives on in the e-commerce sphere, so if you want imported goods please please hit them up. The Anime UwU events were the first ones I was invited to as a professional, and I was and am so grateful for the chance to meet real people who appreciated my work and are so passionate about this show.

Dallas Indie Comedy Fest

My buds The Idiots have been creating amazing opportunities for independent teams to meet, perform, and try out some weird stuff. Last month I performed at their second comedy festival — first alongside the talented Colten Windburn and Fritz Francis on some improvised songs (debuting sure-to-be-hits such as “A Kid and Two Wives” and “I’m Happy to Be Here”), and then with my long-form team Black Tie Casual (responsible for one of the most-quoted lines of the night, “you can’t run from math”.)

If you haven’t heard, improv is very cool. If you missed those shows, well, they’ll never happen again, but come out and support some entirely new ones next year!

Consume!

I played a budding scholar in an anime, and shortly after read a book about academia, and I have a lot of feelings.

There’s a version of me that went into academia, and she is probably miserable. Going to art school didn’t save me from probing scrutiny into my identity and personal motivations, pressure to produce genius work quickly, and a scarcity mindset regarding pathways to success that are both profitable and respected, but imagine experiencing all of that AND the only people getting anything out of it are a niche collection of peers more interested in their own output?

Wait, I got turned around for a second.

Anyway, a “katabasis” is a sort of inverse Hero’s Journey about a descent into Hell. That’s exactly what you get from this book - a highly-specific, metaphorical, personally-upsetting version of Hell, told from the perspective of someone who’s lived it and survived to return to the surface. It might not be for everyone — not even YOU, reading this — but it got me good.

Performance of the Week

I’m finally working my way through my backlog, and want to give Kelsey her flowers for her stellar work as the lead in “The Dark History of the Reincarnated Villainess” - an overlooked show from the Fall 2025 season.

In a show with a LOT going on conceptually and stylistically, Iana as a character represents a wide range of challenges that Kelsey tackles with technical skill without losing her humanity. Any given episode requires her to switch from “high-energy heroine” to “fed-up perfectionist” to “cackling teen gremlin” to “plotting saboteur” on a dime, and it would be so easy to rely on the tropes of the genre the show parodies to pull it off. Instead, Kelsey grabs hold of the innate weirdness of this woman and her shameful, weeby past and finds ways to inject flashes of that strangeness in a way only she can.

Some Things I Wish I’d Said at the Time

I might not be strong, but when it’s assumed I can’t lift something it feels bad.

I really need to take the evening for myself - I’m burning the candle at both ends.

I need you to sell me more on this idea.

Please please believe that I am not mad that your credit card didn’t go through - I wish I didn’t have to charge you money in the first place.

You are so much more capable than you know, and I hope you find the people to help unlock that.

You are not listening to me.

I am not sure how we got to this emotional place. Can we back up?

I’m sorry, I have too much on my plate.

I miss you.

Let’s work on that together.

Do you believe in me?

Hollis Beck is a performer and writer who crafts narratives about queer identity, found families, and people who try very hard. More information can be found on her website.