Simon Mayer had been posting sketches to TikTok for about a year when Joey Cerone, IU graduate, standup comedian and comedy writer, reached out to him encouraging him to join the comedy group Boy in the Bubble.
"I auditioned, and from the very first week I was like, oh yeah, I'm going to be here as much as I can. This is fun,” Mayer said.
Currently Mayer is co-president of Boy in the Bubble, along with fellow performer and IU junior Sarah Warf. It’s his leadership skills within the group that IU junior Harley Babbit says he really admires about Mayer.
“He seems to find the perfect balance between keeping things focused and having fun, which is crucial for a group like this,” Babbit said.
Mayer doesn’t just help out through his leadership within the group. He also contributes through the sketches he writes for their performances.
“We all kind of work together to come up with themes or ideas for shows, but since he’s one of the presidents, he does a lot of taking charge,” Henna Patheja, IU sophomore and member of Boy in the Bubble, said. “He also writes at least one sketch per show, sometimes multiple.”
When it comes to his creative process, Mayer said the way he goes about writing sketches is a bit more chaotic than people might think.
“It's not me sitting at a computer typing immediately, like, oh, there's my idea. It's a lot of me talking to my friend and them saying one word, and that one word gives me an idea for something. And I'll pull out my phone and, like, discreetly write,” Mayer said. “My notes app is an insane app full of nonsense and crazy person ideas. Most of them don't make sense.”
After a sketch has been written it’s time to test out that material in front of an audience. Along with performing with Boy in the Bubble, Mayer has also done stand up at the open mic nights hosted by The Comedy Attic every Wednesday. While performing in front of a live audience can come with its challenges, to most performers it can also be very rewarding.
“You'll find a joke, or you'll have a sketch, and it's the right audience on the right night, and you kind of know that you're killing and everything is just coming together and working, and you're eliciting big reactions. There's very much just a special kind of, like, kinetic energy about that,” Mayer said.
But before the live shows at IU, Mayer’s comedy career started five years ago during the lockdown that occurred from the COVID-19 pandemic when he began posting on TikTok. The social media app which came out in September 2016 is home to many influencers and creators including Mayer, who currently has 1.2 million followers.
“I just started posting on TikTok and, to me, it felt like the natural thing. The easy thing to do was to make jokes and try to be funny. And it kind of just went from there,” Mayer said.
Ultimately Mayer is looking for a career outside of TikTok when it comes to his future in comedy. While TikTok has given him a lot of exposure for his comedy, Mayer has never thought of it as the place he’d end up.
“I knew I never wanted to do it forever, like, I never want to be like 30 and I have a kid and I'm like, ‘Babe, can you quiet down? I'm trying to record myself being funny,’” Mayer said. “I always wanted it to lead to something else.”
What that something else is remains to be seen. Mayer said he hopes to continue his comedy career in Los Angeles, where he is planning to move later this year in September. Though he’s unsure of exactly where he’ll end up, Mayer credits a popular comedy sketch from Conan O’Brien when talking about his career goals. In the sketch, appropriately called “Conan Goes Apple Picking With Mr. T,” O’Brien celebrates the fall by going to an apple orchard with Mr. T, an actor and former wrestler known for his “tough guy” personality. It’s the absurdity and randomness in the scene that Mayer felt most drawn to when hearing O’Brien talk about the sketch.
“He was like ‘What an insane career, what a blessing that I do this for a job.’ And when I heard that I was like, that's what I want to do. I just want to have a story where it's like, I got to do this nuts thing, this super cool thing with these super cool people and be proud of it,” Mayer said.
Until his eventual move, Mayer will continue to do stand up at The Comedy Attic and enjoy performing in Boy in the Bubble with his friends. And for aspiring comedians looking to break into the field, Mayer has some advice.
“No one is going to do it for you. You have to do it,” Mayer said. “And don't be afraid of the awkward phase where you're bad because like when I started I was not good, I was very much not good, and I have since deleted many of my early TikToks. But you have to be comfortable with failure and comfortable being bad before you get good.”
