Raw Clay For Self-Care: An Interview with Dominic Loise

In this interview, Dominic and Chase discuss the 90s Chicago improv comedy scene, the mad genius of Del Close and Chris Farley, mental health awareness, and the connection between mental health awareness and comedy.

Chase

Can you tell me a little bit about yourself?

Dominic

Recently, I just moved from Chicago to Durham, North Carolina. Partly because my wife got a new job here and partly because we were looking for a new location and pace of life.

Regarding pace of life and my writing, my work focuses on destigmatizing mental health awareness. I write for therapy, which I started up again after I got out of in-patient care for suicidal ideation. The writing I share through my pop culture essays and interviews on mental health awareness are intended to destigmatize the conversation around mental health, to tell my story, and to put something out that I was looking for when I started feeling the way I did, before starting therapy. To say to others, it’s okay not to be okay and there is no shame in reaching out for help.

Chase

Can you tell me about your time in the legendary Chicago improv comedy scene?

Dominic

The time that I was there was documented in the book Guru by Jeff Griggs. At the improv theaters, you pay to take classes and you can intern at the theaters to help pay for classes. Improv was about taking the levels of classes, and this theater offered learning from the legendary Del Close if you went through all the other levels.

Interning usually involves working the box office and cleaning up or setting up for shows. But this theater had an intern position, for those who chose to accept it, which was driving around the eccentric Del Close on his personal errands, since he couldn’t take the subway anymore. Griggs’s book is about the strange experiences he had with driving Del around up to Del Close’s death.

I was doing a show with Griggs at the time I was in the improv community, and I was in one of the last classes Del Close taught before his passing, so I heard most of these stories first hand. With Del Close, his big thing with improv was Yes-And, which meant not negating but building on what your scene partner set up.

The Yes-And approach applies to some of the legendary Del stories too but if you scratch the surface, the truth comes to light. For example, his skull was donated to the Goodman Theatre to be used in Hamlet. It was a big press conference, and the skull was at his memorial service, but the book The Funniest One In The Room: The Lives and Legends of Del Close by Kim “Howard” Johnson tells how it wasn’t Del’s actual skull.

I’ll give a personal example, I was there at a time in the 90’s when people who are now in movies and television were going through. Before I worked on ego death in therapy, I would say that I performed with “ ___” name person, but the reality of the situation was that we were both students paying for classes.

Chase

What was it like seeing Chris Farley in Second City, before he was on SNL? I can imagine Foley [Farley’s character] smashing a coffee table live to be something of a religious experience.

Dominic

LOL! I think the coffee table may have been added for SNL but yes, seeing Chris Farley on stage was the most impressive thing I have ever experienced. As a single person live, he was more immersive than any Broadway or Vegas show that I have ever seen. And he brought that expression of love of performing to the audience and cast members.

What I remember most about seeing Matt Foley live is fellow cast member Bob Odenkirk breaking up and having to go to the side of the stage away from the scene, then coming back and acting out for a fellow cast member what Chris had added that evening while the scene was still playing. It is a moment of comedy that has never been topped for me.

When Chris Farley passed, I left the improv scene for two reasons. One, I saw how the theaters in town saw him as a type and were just looking for the next Chris Farley like they were looking for the next John Belushi. I feel that few saw the delicate differences of the polished performers and were only looking for comedy bulldog bulldozers. I also saw how much the theaters were profiting off of his passing.

I remember the night I decided to walk away. Someone had said “We have been selling out every night since Farley passed away,” and I walked out, passed the long line and just kept walking. I can only speak for myself by saying that the improv scene was a place where my darker habits took root, and it took a long time after walking away to feel light again.

Chase

Can you tell me about your mental health awareness activism?

Dominic

I can’t say that I have entered the role of an activist, nor am I a professional counselor, but I would say that I am a mental health advocate. All I have ever tried to do is tell my own story and include the information of proper professional resources if anyone wishes to pursue it.

One thing that I have learned from looking back at my own pathway to getting professional help was that it took me years to actually reach out for assistance. Luckily, I had people in my life who could take me right to where I needed to be when that time came.

Over the years, I have come to the realization that what I do is not about me healing anyone. Meaning that when I wasn’t ready for therapy, I wasn’t in a mindset to do the hard and heart work of healing and breaking the habits which I’d created to put blinders on myself, to stop me from facing the triggers and traumas that I needed to confront from my past to move forward.

There is a great scene in The Neverending Story where characters are faced with a mirror reflecting back who they actually are, and that is what therapy slowly reveals to me. It was about taking off the illusions and safeguards to see the self that I’d been hiding in order to fit and function in the world from an early age. Like a knight without armor, I was now a fragile child, walking with new eyes on the path I had traveled so far.

So, when I write about mental health, the goal is only to share my own experiences from a place of my stumbles, my hesitation, and my truth. And through that mindset, advocating that my life now is better having put in the work with my mental health professionals.

Chase

Is there a connection for you between mental health awareness and comedy?

Dominic

I had a comedy journal before I actually started journaling. I am a big, BIG believer in journaling for my mental health. In journaling, I am getting the thoughts out of my head and onto the page to look at for processing with my therapist. Journaling was extremely helpful in dealing with my racing/spiraling thoughts and getting my anxiety under control.

When I was younger, I just never made the connection that I felt better when I was putting ideas into a journal, because it was for comedy, but those ideas for comedy were amalgamations of what was getting under my skin and buzzing around in my head.

Later in life, through therapy, I learned the importance and differences of journaling for therapy. I also wish to stress that journaling for therapy isn’t to create an end product for an audience like a comedy journal but the raw clay for self-care.