Peter Lundquist: NERVOUS LAUGHTER

Peter Lundquist couldn't make eye contact without having a panic attack. Adrift in a sea of anxiety, shut in his apartment for three years, and on the verge of complete collapse, he received an unlikely prescription from his therapist: take an improv class. And it worked! He's totally fine now!

Now, after 100+ live shows and TV & radio appearances in Portland – plus a truckload of exposure therapy – Peter is turning the experience into his debut solo show. Merging sketch comedy, storytelling, and sudden left turns, Nervous Laughter is the story of how he got to the end of his rope, and how comedy brought him back.

Written & performed by Peter Lundquist
Directed by Brooke Totman
Set design by Benny Burnett

About Peter Lundquist
Smart, unfiltered, poetic, and punk, Peter Lundquist is a comedian, writer, and director whose work hits with the precision of a laser scalpel and the chaos of a late-night group text. He is exacting, unsparing, riotously funny, and deeply, disarmingly human, landing his jokes in a style that ricochets between precision and pandemonium with a deliberate, writerly swagger. A former competitive slam poet from Boston’s fiercely respected slam scene, he is an award-winning performer whose “Best Persona Piece” at the College Unions Poetry Slam Invitational placed him in the national championship grand finals of collegiate spoken-word talent. Born in Colombia to a fundamentalist Christian missionary and a closeted Jewish woman, and raised speaking Spanish as his first language, Lundquist brings a global, hyper-literate curiosity to everything he creates.

A veteran of over 15 years in sketch comedy, character work, and improv, he has written, acted, and produced with Sick Day (Portland), The Bill of Wrongs (LA), and Emerson Comedy Workshop (Boston). He is a regular improviser at Kickstand Comedy, where he runs the influential Sketch Coven writers’ workshop and hosts the monthly solo-sketch showcase Character Select. He starred as the lead in the Mt. Hood Repertory Theatre’s staged reading of Shakespeare’s Skull, a work recognized with a BroadwayWorld Award nomination for Best New Play. On XRAY.FM’s Friday morning drive-time show Kicking Off Your Weekend with Kickstand, he regularly brings his fast-twitch improv to Portland’s airwaves with characters ranging from “tech-CEO-turned-Hellraiser-demon” to “Midwestern empty-nester discovering kink.” In Los Angeles, Lundquist appeared on screen for Defy Media, attn:, and What's Trending, wrote for Smosh and Katalyst, and cameoed in the cult-absurdist feature Yeti: A Love Story: Life on the Streets. His foundation includes a B.A. in Writing for Film & TV from Emerson College, along with advanced sketch training under Shelley McLendon (Siren Theater) and Paul Stein (Kickstand Comedy).

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