Everybody Needs to Calm Down — Comedian Laura Ramoso Says She Can Help With That

Whether you follow her or not, the image of Laura Ramoso is likely familiar to one of your feeds. The 31-year-old comedian become a regular on TikTok and Instagram scrolls for her character work — particularly impressions of her Italian father and German mother, the latter always in a black turtleneck, hair pulled back, glasses inexplicably atop her head.

It’s funny. It’s charming. But these quick hits may undercut the body of work that the 31-year-old is building. Her fifth show, Calm Down, is not just a reference to the catch phrase of one of her characters or a catch-all for what most desire in this punishing news cycle from which there seems to be no escape. It’s a culmination of a craft that melds sketch, stand-up, crowd work and, yes, clown. And after cultivating a devoted live audience in Europe, Canada and Australia, she’s about to perform Calm Down in Los Angeles, Oct. 17, on the tail end of her largest U.S. tour to date.

“Hopefully you do calm down after the show,” she says. “But the title and the show are a bit about where I am at right now. I need to calm down. We all need to calm down. That’s the motto that I’ve adopted this year. It’s not working, but it’s nice to put it out there.”

Ramoso is speaking over Zoom, with a bit of cold, from what appears to be a haunted Airbnb in a Gold Rush town I’ve never heard of. She insists the experience is pleasant, and her resume suggests she is a game traveler. Before globetrotting for work, she was raised as the altruistic equivalent of an army brat. The Italian-born Ramoso, who now lives in Canada, had childhood stints in Cameroon, China and Vietnam care of her mother’s work with the World Health Organization. Ramoso was never at risk of, say, proximity to Ebola, but she did see some real shit. In Baku, Azerbaijan, her school commute coincided with one punctual butcher’s punctual (and very public) 7:40 a.m. cow beheadings. “I think I was being taught a lesson,” she says. “Life is fickle. You might get your head cut off at 7:40 a.m.”

Sharing nuggets like these used to make her uncomfortable, she says, but she notes over the course of our conversation that Calm Down is her most personal work yet. But she’s muscled through the weird feelings, because her largely sold-out pivot appears to be working. “That direct line between myself and the audience, versus my characters or sketches, has been clearer than ever,” she says. “I’m really enjoying that, but that only came this year. I used to be terrified.”

You have audience participation during your shows. As an artist and consumer of art, do you think there should be a disclaimer when that’s on the table?

No. I think audience participation gets a bad rap from a history of really horrible examples. I try to foster an environment where you can say “no” if you don’t want to, and people do. And I just move on. But what I’ve found is that 99 percent of the time people are open to what it could be. It gets exciting because then the crowd is like, “Oh, OK, we’re all here together.” My favorite thing about it is that it can’t be recreated. It’s just for that specific audience. And then it was like, “Oh my gosh, I was at the show with Jake, the guy in the pink shirt. Oh my gosh.” And there was so many jokes about Jake and that’s what makes it special for me.

What do you do when the people who were game and maybe weren’t?

The struggles come from the people who are too game. That’s when I have to do math in the back of my head to be like, “OK, I have to take extra care of this person, because they’re changing the narrative of what’s happening.” So I’ve gotten good at picking the right participants by just the way that they’re sitting, just the way that they’re engaging with the show.

I would assume that the vast majority of people who pay to see you understand that the characters you’re know for online are only part of your arsenal, but there might be one person in every show who’s just like, “Do your mom!” How much did you consider the pressure of having to play the hits in the writing of this show?

Oh, a lot. The last two and a half shows, that’s when people started to come from my social media pages. I’ve always known to make sure the characters were honored and, also, I want to do them. In fact, I would love to do them the whole time sometimes. But I knew this had become the challenge. How do we incorporate these characters that people know from this one context into this different context? And it’s just fun to come out as the characters. You feel the excitement in the room. So there’s no way I would think about not including the characters in the show.

Can you tell the difference between someone who came to your comedy via Instagram versus TikTok?

Most of the tickets I sell are through Instagram and Facebook. And the vast majority of my audience through those platforms skew, like, 28 to 40. The differences that I do feel in my audiences are mainly geographical. But, in my audience, you’ll find mainly moms and daughters having a really nice time together. And boyfriends and husbands who have no idea who I am.

You’ve got some gay men in there.

Yes, definitely.

Your show Frances went from sold-out runs at Edinburgh Fringe Festival to the Soho Theatre in London. So much significant contemporary TV came from one or both of those platforms, Phoebe Waller Bridge’ Fleabag, Richard Gadd’s Baby Reindeer, Michaela Coel’s Chewing Gum. Do you have a desire to turn your comedy into something serialized?

Yeah, definitely. That’s something I’m working on right now. It’s fun, but also it serves to diversify my output. Any chance I can get to keep writing, I’ll take. I know the social media landscape will inevitably change. So I’m putting my hands in more than one bucket.

You studied clown. Have you noticed that clowning is having a moment?

Clowning’s having a huge moment, especially in Los Angeles. I was mainly focused on Commedia dell’arte, which is the Italian clowning. I know a lot of people who went to France to study with Philippe Gaulier or at Lecoq. La Coque School. Very serious. didn’t go that hard at it, really. But I think clown shows, some of them have been the most entertaining experiences of performance I’ve had.

You’ve opened for Tina Fey and Amy Poehler on the Restless Leg tour, which is a real flex. What did you learn from watching them work?

You’re always told that the greats, even your biggest idols who are at the top of your industry, they still feel the work. You never really believe that, but I got to see it. To watch them go out there, kill it, and then work on their material for the next show and pick apart their the moments they wanted to be better, it was really eye-opening. It taught me that it never goes away, that feeling of like, “God, I just need to get this moment right.” You can be the best of the best, objectively, and still have that. I guess that’s what makes them so great, this never-ending quest for doing it right in their eyes. And then I did ask Tina if she still gets nervous, because I do. She said, “Sometimes, but I’m not alone. I have Amy.”

Do you ever want someone on stage with you?

I only get that feeling when I’m making a show, especially when I’m trialing work-in-progress shows and I’m testing out new material. Sometimes it would be nice to share that bomb or win with someone else. But I do have a wonderful stage manager and a director. They’re just not up there with me. I share the burden with them and the wins with them. Also, because of the way my show is structured — and this is going to be so corny — I feel like the audience sometimes is my scene partner. Because I do have that participation and I feel that dialogue is always present.

When you’re on stage, you like seeing faces or do you like seeing lights?

I don’t like seeing faces. (Laughs.) I like seeing darkness. I don’t want to see someone getting up, going to the bathroom or shuffling. Just darkness, please.