Luis Alcada. Photograph by Lydia Smith.
Luis Alcada- comedian, poet, and underwear model- talks to The Magdalen about starting Icebreaker, finding community, and what it takes to do comedy. With their varied talents, they have recently participated in an interactive exhibit run by Studio Space Art named 'Dud Hopes (Kryptonite?); before their career in the performing arts, however, Alcada had an office job.
LUIS ALCADA: I was financial analyst at a place called Alliance, just as they were going bust, pretty much as soon as I left, they went bust, so I'm taking full responsibility for that.
…I have a lot of ADHD traits, which means I tend to do really well with things for a couple years, then just super bored in the last [few years]. I was just bored out of my head, and I saw- looking through the Edinburgh Fringe- a one day comedy workshop that sounded like fun.
[I] did my first couple of gigs at the Fringe and then came back to Dundee looking for things to do, realised there was no comedy in Dundee at all, so I put on my own night.
Luis runs Icebreaker Comedy and has been putting on regular comedy and spoken word nights in Dundee for roughly seven years.
ALCADA: I started the ‘Icebreaker’ because I didn’t want to use my name on it.
The first few nights were rough, there was a handful of people in the room, and one of them was a guy called Andy Bullick…He ha done comedy and acting in improv years before but stopped because there was nothing in Dundee, and just started doing it again…I was like ‘you’re amazing at this, you should do hosting.’ And he was like ‘oh no, I’m not ready’ and then he did hosting and turned out to be amazing!
The sad bit [of the origin story] is that shortly after that, my daughter was born and my wife, at the time, had really horrible time post-partum and wasn’t able to work. I had to leave work [as a financial analyst] to look after the two of them, kind of overnight [comedy] went from like a fun thing I did once a week to ‘oh, this is my job’.
Icebreaker at Henry's Coffee House.
Soon after that, the manager of Henry’s Coffee House attended a gig and suggested his venue host the Icebreaker nights, and they began to grow- according to Alcada.
ALCADA: It was going great… This was early 2020 and I was looking at full venues then. In March 2020, something happened that we do not talk about…
The pandemic hit comedy hard, says Alcada, and with two years of being unable to gig they had to start again from scratch when restrictions lifted. It hasn’t taken away from the main goal, however.
ALCADA: I wanted to enable people to do different and weird things. I’ve got friends who were like ‘you should start creating content’.
Okay, so we are now comedy and content, one of my best friends wanted to start doing poetry nights…then we started doing music… so now we are music, comedy, spoken word, and underwear modelling.
The underwear modelling is a new pursuit, at the time of this interview Luis was fresh from their first shoot. They assured us the experience was good fun.
It seems that exploring mixed media and keeping it fresh is important to Alcada, they talked about the group at Icebreaker as building ‘creative community’.
ALCADA: No one gives you funding if you say it’s just your mates messing about…no one gives you funding if you say it’s comedy either.
Alcada considers funding and creating viable revenue is part of the ‘from scratch’ building process of a creative company. They warn against giving it too much weight, however.
ALCADA: Some people work with the marketing first, and I think it makes them absolutely miserable, because then you're just doing something you don't enjoy… I try as much as possible to do things that I like and then work out how to sell them, which doesn't always work.
Most people are scared they’re not going to be successful, and I always thought the really scary thing would be being successful and then hating it. You see that so much, see people who have just loads of money and fame and it's all going great… and they're just hating every second of their life.
Finding the fun is an important part of Alcada’s community building. They think of it as a cornerstone of comedy.
ALCADA: There’s something intrinsic about community in comedy and art. You can’t really have anything without community…audiences and performers.
…I think the way to actually build communities is to find something fun to do and get people together doing things they enjoy.
Icebreaker certainly has a strong community. There are several ‘regulars’ in both the performing cast and the audience. Alcada expressed admiration towards those involved.
ALCADA: Scott Redmond is, kind of, the third in command of Icebreaker. He’s been doing comedy and he used to run a theatre.
...I said I’m quite ADHD, Scott is off the charts- every time I see him he’s got a completely new idea, which I love. But I feel like a lot of my job is just being like ‘Scott, that takes more money than all of Scotland has.’ The first time I saw him he was at the Monkey Barrel doing five minutes as Elvis and I thought he was really weird… And then we did a rough gig in Peterhead…The locals were not up for anything, there was a bit of heckling. Scott shows up to headline, and he does…like a weird spoken word piece, a super sad performance piece, and they loved it so much. Shortly after that, he moved to Dundee top study medicine and, yeah, we’ve been inseparable ever since.
Scott Redmond (Right) and Andy Bullick (Left) performing as FEVERPEACH at Blend. Photographed by Lydia Smith.
I should mention some of the other people from Icebreaker: Chris Beattie, who used to host radio shows with Andy- I love him to bits... and Julia Sinclair, Charlie LaMassa. Charlie actually came to one of the first workshops we did...and he is now a very good comedian in his own right, which warms my heart… Julia studied in Glasgow; she used to be part of a sketch society years ago and just stopped, because there was nothing to do in Dundee, and when I started the Icebreaker she started doing it again, which is really sound.
Alcada attributes this community to his lasting enjoyment of performing.
ALCADA: It’s really easy to lose track of why you’re doing things as well and why you love things. I remember when I did my first Fringe run with my friends Andy Bullick and Scott Redmond…we were freaking out, being like, how do we promote this? How do we keep track? How do we check how many tickets we've sold? Because you have to think of all those boring things. And we were doing this at the grass market, and there was a comedian performing there who I love called Vladimir Mctavish, [he’s] been doing it forever…incredible…I remember just seeing him coming in, and we were like, tell us, do you have any advice for us? Meaning, like, how do we promote it? How do we sell it? All these really important, crucial things when you try to make money or just break even at the Fringe? And he was just like ‘oh yeah, you need to go for a run. You need to go for a run to keep your energy levels up and eat bananas.’ And he just looked so happy with himself.
Alcada has carried this advice with him, and he advises all new and future performers to keep it in mind.
ALCADA: Just make sure you’re enjoying what you do…there’s a lot of like ‘Oh, if you do comedy, you can’t do anything else’…that it’s not a real art, it’s ‘just’ entertainment…I think the kind of work that I love is things that are both [comedy and tragedy] or neither, just doing things and letting the audience decide what to do about it. And yeah, things where you’re not sure if you should be crying or laughing, I think that’s where the really interesting stuff is…
If you’re connecting with an audience, they don’t really care if you’re going to make them cry or laugh. It’s just there…It’s so free, you can just do whatever you want and mix stuff up.
Luis Alcada (Left), Scott Redmond (Centre), and Andy Bullick (Right). Photograph by Lydia Smith.
We asked if there was any further advice for new performers.
ALCADA: I feel like people get really, especially starting out, people get really caught up in this idea of talent as like something you're born with. You know people, they're really romantic about it… Most interviews with successful people are like ‘oh, I went on stage, and the light shone down on me, and I knew I was the chosen one’, which is absolute bullshit… I've seen so many performers that went on to be great [after] starting out awful, and vice versa. I think it's a lot more about finding something you really love to do and doing it for the right reasons. I see a lot of people doing comedy and feel like a lot of people do it because they want to be famous or want to make money, which in Scotland is ridiculous. My ex is American, and I remember going around the Fringe, being like, Oh, they've got their own show on BBC Scotland. They also work in a call center during the day.
Just don’t do it for money, if you want to make money- get an office job. If you want to be famous, start a TikTok. Doing anything creative should be finding something you really love to do and that you could do forever and ever, until you eventually get rid of it.
I tried very hard to make sure even if I've never become any more successful, nothing, you know, my career never gets past this point, I'll at least be happy that I did it, and I've had fun, and I've enjoyed what I've done. So yeah, find something you love to do.
Certainly, it seems like the Icebreaker group love what they do and Alcada continues to build a creative community around the performing arts in Dundee.
You can see Icebreaker’s next New Material night on the 17th October at Roots Music Venue.
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