Cassie Cao on Maintaining Happiness

Cassie Cao has become one of Canada’s rising stars in stand up. Recently featured on CBC Gem’s The New Wave Of Stand Up, she was part of the inaugural New Faces: Canada at JFL and the NBC Second City Diversity Fellowship. I chatted with her about her process and the start of her career.

How has success changed for you?

I used to think the pinnacle of stand up was to be on the poster for the Alt Dot Monday night show because the comics on that show are amazing. Now I’m so on the other side of it, and it’s not that big of a deal. Even though I love that I’m able to do it, we’re all just sad and poor. The comics I consider my peers is a big indicator of my success. I started noticing in the last couple of years that my peers are so good! I feel that’s a reflection on how I’m doing, even though I’m not completely aware of my success. Like, how do you know, you know?

How do you choose what you work on?

The way that I choose projects now is based on feeling. I used to take everything when I started because at that point, you’re not good, you don’t know who’s good, and nobody knows who you are. You’re in a pile of shit and have to try anything that comes your way. You get burned a lot which is part of the process. It tests your resilience. I spend so much of my time now sitting down thinking about if a project makes me feel happy. It’s a more wholistic approach. I had a really great career as an economist where I was miserable but making a lot of money sitting in a comfortable chair. I don’t need to chase that in comedy.

What was the biggest challenge in performing early on?

One of the bigger hurdles that I went through was building confidence. At the beginning, you don’t know you’re not confident and keep doing it! Internally I still don’t feel it, but I hear people are saying I look confident now. Whereas before people said I had a “cute nervous energy,” which is not cute.

How do you approach stand up now versus when you started?

People tell you to go out and rehearse your set a billion times until it’s muscle memory. Many comics do that, and I applaud them. But if you do the same set over and over, you’re going to bomb eventually. I prepped for my first showcase by doing that. By the time I did the show, I was so sick of my own set, and I lost confidence in it. Since then, I don’t rehearse my sets that way at all.

What’s the biggest piece of advice you have for new stand ups?

If you’re doing comedy for success, fame, to be liked, money or anything else, then you shouldn’t be doing it. The root of all the decisions you make in the business of comedy it has to be because you just love doing it. If you don’t love doing it, get out now.

Also invest in open mics. Before I started doing it consistently, it seemed crazy to invest around 5 hours waiting on a list and travelling on the TTC for 5 minutes of stage time. The math just didn’t make sense. But once you’ve committed, it’s just time donated. You get into the groove of it and don’t think of it as sunk cost anymore.