ERIC CHEUNG
Welcome to the website!
Actor
I started acting relatively late in life. In second grade, I played Frosty the Snowman, but didn't even have to talk. My parents went to the drug store to get me a corn-cob pipe and that was the extent of it. Freshman year in high school, I played the lead in an Odyssey of the Mind sketch which parodied the film Forrest Gump. Junior year in high school, I played George Kittredge in a production of The Philadelphia Story. In 2005, I stand-up friend sent me a listing for a ten-minute play festival where I played an American-born Chinese son coming home from his father's funeral. In 2009, I started volunteering at Recording for the Blind and Dyslexic (now known as Learning Ally). When my nephew was born, I started recording picture books for him, and later, my niece, in a similar style. In 2012, I started recording radio spots for WGBH.
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But it wasn't until the summer of 2014 that I started to act on a regular basis...
Monologues
During the COVID lockdown, I decided to record a bunch of monologues. Some would be audition monologues I had been using. Some would be whatever struck my fancy. Some were contest entries for Theatre@First's monthly monologue contest that they held during lockdown. I didn't always win first place, but I was the participant that most frequently placed in the top three.
Work With Others
Here's a playlist of work I've done that's on other people's YouTube channels.
Accents and impressions have been a part of my life since childhood. When I did Odyssey of the Mind, I did a Forrest Gump impression. When I did my radio shows on WECB, I did sketches impersonating politicians. When my partner gave me the book Helter Skelter (I like the White Album, she likes digging into true crime, and she said I reminded her of Vincent Bugliosi), in my time in LA, I'd read it back to her, giving the characters different voices. So, various projects (of my own or with others) over the years have had me doing some kind of voices.
Voice Acting
Radio spots
I started doing stand-up in the spring semester of 2001 at a Starbucks across from my dorm building. But I didn't start in earnest until February 12, 2003, at The Comedy Studio, back in its original location on the third floor of the Hong Kong Chinese Restaurant. Coincidentally, my dad worked there years earlier, as well as at other Chinese restaurants, including the legendary Ding Ho in Inman Square. I'd do open mics at the All Asia Cafe in Central Square, the Emerald Ilse in Dorchester, and myriad other places. Aside from the Studio, I'd also occasionally run the door on Saturday nights at Dick Doherty's Comedy Vault on Saturday nights.
Stand-Up
Sketch
In 2005, Comedy Studio regular Erin Judge recruited me to join her previously all-women sketch comedy troupe, along with future Last Week Tonight writer Josh Gondelman, Broad City's Liz Simons, award-winning screenwriter Andrea Henry, pastor Rebecca Anderson, and Arielle Goldman.
I'm okay with being the weak link in a group like that.
