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When one of his students hits the stage to try out their comedy material, Aidan Park is usually pacing back and forth in the back, hoping his students don’t forget a line.
“If a [performer] flips two words, it can tank the next six jokes,” he said. “I’m like a nervous dance mom.”
That anxiety is a different feeling from when Park is the one on stage.
“Me getting the laugh is cool,” he said. “But I’m like a football coach [when I’m teaching].”
It’s not about the jokes. It is about getting the story across, in a manner that allows the audience to relate and gives the performers the opportunity to share their story in a positive way, without feeling shame.
Through the Yay Foundation, the former comedian has helped hundreds of people struggling with some form of mental health own their stories with stand-up.
Comedian Aidan Park is the founder and CEO of the Yay Foundation.
(Dania Maxwell / For The Times)
“The thing that bonds is not necessarily the laugh,” Park said. “The laugh is a vehicle through which we’re doing this. The intimate connection of people revealing something vulnerable from their heart, that creates a connection that is healthy and thoughtful versus just getting laughs.”
The approach isn’t one-size-fits-all. When Park is preparing to build a program for a specific community, he doesn’t analyze the problem through his own lens, he involves the entire community to figure out what works best for them, Veronica Mejia, a board member of the foundation, said.
“He’s meeting with community members, interviewing community members, asking how we can best support you and what does that look like?” she said. “We don’t necessarily come in with a framework that works for us, we come in with an open mind to learn what we can do to support communities.”
That’s the same methodology Park teaches his students when they tackle tough subjects on stage. In order for an audience to fully grasp a joke about abuse, HIV or drug use, a performer needs to build rapport with them. They won’t come along the ride without it, he said.
“There’s a place for lubrication jokes, you don’t want to just go [into it] right away,” he said. “We gotta build safety.”
Once that safety is established, Park is able to help his students feel empowered by their story, Mejia said. Turning pain or shame into a comedic tale allowed her to use creativity to discuss heavy topics in an environment that was very loving and open.
She performed comedy for the first time with the Yay Foundation. The organization planned a program in her hometown of Pasadena. It was nerve-racking for her to get on stage, in front of friends and family members and talk about her struggles with mental health but it was also liberating.
“It led to a lot of interesting family discussion,” she said. “I thought it went well, but what was even more beautiful about it is I received a lot of support from my parents, from my siblings, not just in having them show up, but in having them ask me more questions.”
“I’ve always thought that comedy and joking is something that is joyful and light, but almost always has a hint of the truth in it,” she added.
Park coaches students to build trust and safety before tackling taboo material, helping participants like Pasadena’s Veronica Mejia recast shame as empowering, candid conversations with family and community.
(Dania Maxwell / For The Times)
Mejia’s story is one of the reasons the foundation has grown so much in the last couple of years. Whenever Park talks about clients who have gone through the program and fallen in love with comedy, his face can only be described as being the embodiment of “Yay!”
“I’d like to say I trained 400 people in stand-up comedy, and under my watch, only three have ever bombed, and it’s because they didn’t listen,” Park said.
The organization’s next show will be a collaboration with Unshame California. It will tell LGBTQ stories of people in recovery in order to bring down the shame that’s attached to it. The two-day event on Aug. 22-23 in North Hollywood will host a mixture of comedians that have gone through his program, like Mejia, and heavy hitters in the comedy world, under one condition.
“The requirement was that the heavy hitters talk about their experience. I don’t care how funny you are. Joan Rivers could be hilarious. Does she have a substance problem that she’s gonna talk openly about her experience? No, you’re not doing [the show].”
