ERIC CHEUNG
BIO
How I got to Earth
My mom grew up in Athol, MA. Her family is from the Trentino province of Italy, an Alpine province that's switched hands back-and-forth between Italy and Austria over the years.
My dad is from Hong Kong. He moved to Boston when he was 18, with $100. He worked in a bunch of Chinese restaurants in the area (many of which turned into comedy clubs, including the legendary Ding Ho). He took care of his two younger brothers, who followed him here and finished high school in Boston, before they went to Berklee College of Music and moved to California.
My parents met at one such restaurant, where they were co-workers. They eventually moved from Boston to East Longmeadow and started their own restaurant, The Great Wall, on Riverdale Street, West Springfield from 1980-1996.
East Longmeadow
I grew up in the town of East Longmeadow, MA, home of a legendarily dangerous rotary in the center of town.
It's also the home of the former Milton Bradley company. I got to test games a couple of times as a kid. I worked in the factory between a couple of school years in college, mostly on Operation, Perfection, Electronic Battleship, and Trivial Pursuit.
It's also the home of Erics, Arics, and Eriks. Two of them wrote books about living as a teenager here. I know them both.
Here's a book about the wrong Eric. That's not my name.
Speaking of which, if you're looking for me on IMDB, I'm Eric Cheung (IV). I'm a popular name.
Drawing and Bowling
The very first things I ever liked to do were drawing and bowling. I assume drawing came first.
Eric Cheung
ca. 1985 Finger Paint on Paper.
His earliest represented work, it is perhaps the earliest work still in an existence. It was during his rose period, when most influenced by Jackson Pollack...and his available motor skills. Here he paints not the flames of the fire, but where the flames go. As the brush strokes are in reds, oranges, and yellows, he stood back and found the painting "told him" it was of a fire.
That's what I watched. It was a lot, but what I remember most was the satire in Looney Tunes and Nickelodeon, the sitcoms curated by Nick at Nite, from the warmth of Mary Tyler Moore to the wit of Dick Van Dyke to the spoofery of Get Smart to the surrealism of Green Acres. Later, I'd watch Mr. Bean and Burns and Allen, as well as Monty Python, the Beatles Anthology, Seinfeld, The Simpsons, and NewsRadio, shaping my tastes in comedy and music, as well as turning me into an Anglophile.
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By college, I'd devour books on Andy Kaufman, SNL, and Letterman, as well as the associated media.
An Obscene Amount of Television
What Now?
Some kind of art was always going to be a major part of my life pursuit. I had been doing some visual art, with a little bit of instruction, but also started to explore the aspects of filmmaking that looked like potential career paths. I tried making model kits for a bit, for example. Through this, I was really starting to inject comedy in my everyday life. I'd do impressions and riff with people. And I started to dabble in acting, first through Odyssey of the Mind, then through my drama club.
Drama Club, itself, was going through quite a turbulent time at ELHS in my time there:
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Freshman year: a male advisor mounted Little Shop of Horrors. I never even found out about auditions.
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Sophomore year: two women advisors attempted to mount You Can't Take it With You. They cast me as Boris. I was one of the few to show up for rehearsals, so the play was cancelled.
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Junior year: the school brought in an outside hire from Newport, RI (who happened to be an alum from Longmeadow High School), Ann Garner. She directed me in a production of The Philadelphia Story. I learned what blocking was, how to give a character a back story, some improv exercises, and techniques for memorizing lines. It was a special experience. The girl who played Tracy, Kim Allen, ended up as a professional actor in shows like Army Wives.
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Senior year: Ann had to move back to Rhode Island. I tried calling local community theatres to see if I could get an advisor (and even ended my essay to Ithaca by excusing myself to continue cold-calls), to no avail.
Next Stop: Wonderland
Three out of the five schools I applied to were in Boston. I wanted a city school. I wanted it to be in Boston. And I wanted it to be media arts focused. Emerson College fit the bill, perfectly.
I was technically a film major, but the beauty of Emerson was that I could take classes in all kinds of media arts. I had three radio shows and did a lot of news coverage at WECB. I could take classes in studio and field television production (with local legend Rex Trailer and Kubrick crewmember Tom Kingdon). I could basically minor in comedy writing with Mike Bent.
And I even took a couple of acting classes, foreshadowing my eventual path.
Dirty Water
The Comedy Studio was the home club for me and so many others in my stand-up days. It was north of the Charles, on the alt-comedy side of the river. I started there on February 12, 2003 and would perform there until August 2006, with one more appearance in April, 2007.
My adventures in those days included:
Performing at the Laugh Factory on both coasts, for NBC's inaugural Best of Stand Up for Diversity Showcase in 2004.
Producing a benefit stand-up concert at Riverside Theatre Works for victims of the Boxing Day 2004 Tsunami. The event was initially postponed, due to a blizzard, so I named it "The Benefit to End Ironic Weather." The proceeds went to care.org.
Joining Erin Judge's monthly sketch comedy show "Erin Judge Presents..." at the Comedy Studio.
Running the door, hosting, and crafting the line-up of openers on Saturday night's at Dick Doherty's Comedy Vault at Remington's.
It was also during this period that I met my partner, Mary Beth, when we both worked at the Museum of Science.
She's my film grad school.
She's an expert on historical architecture.
She's the quickest and most voracious reader I've ever met.
And she helped me begin to love cats.
California here we come
Two years after NBC flew me out to LA, I decided to move there and give it a shot. So, I moved just west of Koreatown, started interning and taking classes at iO West, and got a job as a file clerk at UCLA's Internal Medicine Clinic in Santa Monica. The irony is that my first grown-up office job was the result of me moving to LA to try to make it in showbiz. Friday nights, I'd walk from work down to the pier and bask in the atmosphere of the Promenade and amusement park.
At iO West, I'd call the lights at the improv show where MadTV castmembers would come to play on Tuesday nights. One of them was Keegan-Michael Key. I thought, "Wow. This guy's incredible. I guess I should start watching MadTV again." Then, I'd start calling lights on Friday nights at Andy Dick's Black Box Theatre. One night, he showed up to give a friend a tour of the place.
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Ultimately, though, I wasn't ready, so after my improv year of 2007, I spent most of 2008 trying to figure out what to do next.
It wasn't all bad, though. I managed to get some background work in the 2009 Star Trek movie, which shot over the fall of 2007 and spring of 2008. Most of the friends I still have from those days are from that film.
I also got to audition for the part of Morgan on the NBC series Chuck.
By the time I went home to my younger brother's wedding, in August, 2008, I wanted to come home to Mary Beth.
Volunteering for good
I moved back during a recession, so I signed up with six temp agencies and looked on HireCulture.org for other opportunities. This lead to three things in 2009: my current job at MassDEP and volunteering as a docent at WGBH and as a reader at Recording for the Blind & Dyslexic (now called Learning Ally).
2014: My Favorite Year
In 2014, MB and I got promotions, bought a house, got cats, and I started doing theatre.
I had been recording radio spots at WGBH for a couple of years when my director, Andy Hicks, told me about a theatre company called The Post-Meridian Radio Players.
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I'd play many characters with them over the years, and even help with post-production sound mixing.
In the years since, I've developed regular working relationships with Theatre@First, Dream Role Players, Breaking Light Productions, Playwrights' Platform, and the New England New Play Alliance, as well as working with several fringe companies and finding opportunities in voice acting, short films, and more.
I had finally come home.