MEET DAN BAILEY: COMEDIAN & ACTOR

This is Dan.

Dan, tell us more about how you got started in entertainment & comedy?

I think, like most comedians, I was drawn to stand-up because I really enjoy making people laugh.

I was always the class clown and the guy in the group that was turning everything into a joke and trying to find a way to make everyday situations funny.

It took me a while to actually try stand-up, though, because I did have a bit of stage fright.

I always found it amazing how one person could stand on a stage for an hour and keep the attention of hundreds or even thousands of people.

Even more, I was baffled at how they could memorize so much dialogue, and what would they do if they forgot something?

My first experience trying stand-up was a roast of a friend of mine.

Some mutual acquaintances decided to set it up for him when he was retiring, and asked me to do be one of his roasters.

It was pretty intimidating; I had no experience with stand-up at that point and I felt like these folks had high expectations since I was usually the funniest one in the group.

But, it was a decent experience since writing was relatively easy and because I knew a lot about him as a person since we all had shared stories and inside jokes.

So, a lot of my work was basically already done for me.

The roast went well, and I was able to get a spot in a local comedy showcase in Reno shortly after.

That set didn’t go nearly as well as I would have liked but it was a great learning experience for me, and all of the other comedians were really helpful and supportive.

They would go on and teach me a lot over the next couple years.

I was fortunate enough to get spots opening for some great comics and even got to tour Northern California and Nevada opening for Alex Reymundo.

I ended up getting a job as a producer in the video game industry, so comedy ended up taking a back seat.

While working at a game studio in the Bay Area, I was introduced to audio and voice over work.

It was a lot of fun and I had some of the best resources for recording and learning at my disposal. I got to work with award winning engineers, directors, and actors.

I was eventually able to audition for voice over roles in two of the games we were working on at the time, Batman: The Enemy Within and Guardians of the Galaxy: The Telltale Series.

Telltale games ended up closing and I moved back to Reno.

After taking acting classes for about a year and working on some films, TV, and commercials, I moved to LA to pursue a career in acting.

I still had the comedy bug and there was really no better place to learn and get experience than LA, so I was able to stay really busy working on voice over for video games and commercials, auditioning and filming during the day, and doing stand-up at night.

What is the most difficult aspect about launching a career in comedy?

The “most difficult” thing about starting a career in comedy is different for everyone in my experience.

It really depends on that person’s natural abilities, their situation when they start, where they first try comedy, and so on.

Some people are great performers, but are not good at writing and some are the opposite.

Some people have issues with stage fright, while some are just natural comedians and they just need to learn writing, timing, etc.

For me, the biggest challenge was where I was trying to start comedy.

There are only a handful of venues for comedy in Reno; most of them do not fall into the “mi