Tien Tran
Though Tien Tran is an ensemble member at one of the most famous comedy destinations in the world, she says the word “comedian” does not exist in Vietnamese, her parents’ primary language.
When Tran asked about the word, her mom said the closest thing was “clown.”
“OK, I’ll take it,” Tran says. “I’ll be a clown.”
It’s this breeziness paired with unwavering determination that has allowed Tran to pursue a comedy career as a gay woman of color.
From Thursday through Saturday, you can find her standing where so many comedy greats have stood: on the Second City Chicago e.t.c. stage. The small stage, meant for experimental work, is packed on a Thursday evening. The dark room has electronic music playing in the background while audience members talk among themselves before the show starts. Later, this small crowd will echo like Soldier Field when the jokes really hit the right note.
Part of a cast of seven in the show “Fantastic Super Great Nation Numero Uno,” Tran brings a distinct energy and enthusiasm onstage. Her diversity is not only accepted but also celebrated in the show, which touches on race, gender and sexuality.
Born in Chester, Pennsylvania, a suburb of Philadelphia, Tran’s path has been anything but ordinary. Her parents immigrated to America in 1979 as Vietnamese refugees, and she later spent her formative years in the suburb of Mill Creek, where she said her family was one of the few of color.
In one particularly memorable sketch in her current Second City show, Tran uses this suburban upbringing for laughs. She’s looking into a mirror in a bathroom when a group of women come in, notice her lack of whiteness and ask where she is from.
Suddenly, instrumentals that could have come straight from the Mulan soundtrack begin to play as she turns to the audience and whips out a hand fan. While dancing with the fan, she starts singing about a faraway place and launches into a chorus that repeats “Erie, Pennsylvania” over and over, as the crowd erupts into laughter.
Tran began her comedy career on the PBS show “Ghostwriter” where she was part of a small cast of kids solving mysteries through reading with a ghost’s help.
"It feels very surreal to be not only sharing the stage with so many other wonderful comedians within my cast, but the history of Second City as well. I just feel very lucky to have reached a dream of mine that I’ve had for a really long time.
-Tien Tran
“From there, I just started to learn that I loved making people laugh,” Tran says.
This love of comedy followed her through middle and high school, where she would turn class presentations into sketches but never go beyond that. “I didn’t know that comedy was actually a thing you could do,” she says.
That all changed in college, where her parents insisted that she major in biology and become a doctor. While she fulfilled their wishes with her coursework, she also joined a sketch comedy group called “Hello Shovelhead.”
“I met some of my best friends there,” Tran says. “We would write sketches and put on a big two-hour show at the end of the semester. I just fell in love with sketch comedy.”
After graduating from Boston College with her biology degree, Tran moved to Chicago to pursue comedy and quickly realized she did not exactly fit in while taking improv classes.
“At the time, it was white, straight, bro-y dudes in these classes,” Tran says. “They kept making me play their girlfriends and their mom and their daughter and their wives in these scenes.”
Things started looking up once some of Tran’s friends from “Hello Shovelhead” moved to Chicago to pursue comedy as well. They soon formed the comedy group Astronaut Theatre with their fellow Shovelheads in New York City. KK Apple, one of the New York members of Astronaut Theatre and a close friend of Tran’s, says they would usually write their sketches over text or through Google Drive due to long distance.
But Tran’s attitude made the tedious process fun, Apple says.
“She’s the best to work with,” Apple continues. “She always brings really good positive energy and is willing to dive into things and figure them out.”
While performing with Astronaut Theatre, Tran branched out into solo work. Keeping her full-time job as a copywriter at an ad agency, she would write jokes at her desk when she could and go to bars to perform stand-up at night.
Her favorite place to go for stand-up was Beauty Bar’s Salonathon, a weekly show where artists are encouraged to present experimental work.
“It’s one of the best shows and places to perform in the city,” Tran says. “It’s a very queer space these days.”
But that doesn’t mean she always felt completely welcome as a queer woman of color when doing stand-up around the city.
Tran says that while it sometimes felt overwhelming that the industry is so dominated by straight white males, there were also plenty of strong, funny women cheering for each other to succeed.
"I would love to write and star in my own TV show, and it would be hopefully super gay and super funny and super, show a point of view that has not been seen in TV and film right now."
-Tien Tran
“It’s been about pushing back against the dominant narrative together and slowly making a space for ourselves,” Tran says. “And to not be discouraged sitting in an open mic and hearing someone say something homophobic. Then it’s like, OK, that’s what you used for your four minutes – making fun of lesbians. Great, I’m going to go up and talk about being a lesbian.”
While she may have received some pushback, it didn’t take long for her diversity to become an asset.
In 2015, Tran auditioned and was selected for
Second City’s Bob Curry Fellowship, a diversity and outreach program.
“Her audition was an audition that really sparked and blew us away,” says Dionna Griffin-Irons, the head of diversity and inclusion at Second City. “It seemed unapologetic. It seemed fearless and bold, which we always like because we’re looking for those stories and narratives that give us a perspective we haven’t heard before. Tien’s voice definitely did that.”
The fellowship consisted of 10 weeks of tuition-free master classes with teachers, directors and producers at Second City and an appearance in a large showcase at the end. After the showcase, Tran was offered a position on the ensemble of a show on the e.t.c. stage called “Unelectable You.” The show spent six weeks in Chicago and then two months on a bus tour doing shows across the country.
Now, Tran is working on her second show at Second City, “Fantastic Super Great Nation Numero Uno.” They have six shows a week, and Second City is her full-time job.
“(Second City) has been a dream of mine, so it feels very surreal to be not only sharing the stage with so many other wonderful comedians within my cast, but the history of Second City as well,” Tran says. “I just feel very lucky to have reached a dream of mine that I’ve had for a really long time.”
But the dreams don’t stop there. In the future, Tran says she wants to write and star in her own “super gay and super funny” TV show.
“I think people are craving stories outside of a very cis, white, hetero
narrative,” Tran says. “There are so many communities that need their stories told, so I’m excited to see everyone blossom and grow that (doesn’t have) a story about a man-child who is terrible at relationships but gets with the hot girl – no. I’m tired of those stories.”
Photography by Courtney Wolfe and Gracie Morales
Cheeky Comedian Clowning Around on a Stage Near You
By Courtney Wolfe
Edited by Kendra Brach
