How Improv Helped Giovanny Castillo Overcome Social Anxiety and Find His Voice at Peak Improv Theater
Giovanny Castillo is a newly minted performer at Peak Improv Theater with big dreams—and a refreshingly humble goal. “Someday,” he jokes, “I’d love to play a regular guy with a dog at home.” But behind that humor is a story about transformation.
After a New Year’s resolution to face his social anxiety head-on, Gio stumbled into improv through a Google search for “how to get over social anxiety Reddit.” What he found at the PiT was more than a class; it was a community that welcomes vulnerability, celebrates weirdness, and helps people grow in unexpected ways.
PiT: Tell us about your journey at PiT
Gio: I feel kind of cheesy about it, but it was the New Year, and I wanted to shake things up dramatically. I had done a DnD session for the first time and found that playing ridiculous characters was actually pretty fun. I wanted to continue pushing myself and just challenge myself to grow as a person. And one thing that I've never really been able to conquer is social anxiety. So did a quick Google search and saw that improv is one of the best ways to overcome it.
I remember that first class with Casey, and him making sure that everybody felt welcomed and free to express their ideas. I noticed very quickly that he would always find some positive aspect of any scene that played out, which is really good for 101. This is the first time you're expressing these ideas in your head, and for him to just sort of be like, yeah, that's good. It was a really great introduction into expressing yourself creatively in an open space.
I struggled massively just going on the stage. I would sit in the back left corner, and I try desperately not to make eye contact with Casey at any costs. He literally had to point at me and say, “Gio, take the stage.” I took 101 twice and it wasn't until the second iteration that I actually felt relatively confident taking the stage. And then I took Intermediate and then Advanced classes a few more times after that. And it's been a lot of fun. I've been fortunate enough to have been picked up by two teams here at Peak Improv.
PiT: Can you remember a time in class when laughter completely shifted your mood?
Gio: I think it would have to be the second Student Showcase of 101. The first Showcase was just me, like physically putting myself up on stage. But that second Showcase, I think a lot of things really clicked in terms of mood up. I mean, my improv journey was me kind of forcing myself to go to class and expose myself to these techniques. But nothing really clicked in terms of actually performing and actually feeling like I'm on the same page with my team members. So I was just a ball of anxiety, but then that second showcase . . . you finally just release and relax and allow yourself to sort of be caught in the wave of you and your other team members playing these games on stage.
PiT: How did it feel the first time your classmates laughed at something you said?
Gio: I had been playing a Cthulhu tabletop game. There's a lot of human sacrifice. So that's jumbling around in my head. I kept telling myself, “Don't do it. Don't do a scene about human sacrifice. Just do a regular thing. Just keep it chill. You don't know these people like, come on.” And sure enough, the first thing I do when I get up there is . . . welcome to my basement. This is my human sacrifice basement.
And then everybody else was like, “No, no. We love that stuff. Keep doing it.” It's almost like . . . subversive. And then feeling that kinship with those other classmates and being like, yeah, you know, I can do these weird scenes and trust that my fellow classmates will support me and just have fun together.
PiT Has laughter helped you cope with anything in your personal life?
Gio: Yeah, actually. Earlier this year, I did have, like, a death in the family that hit us all pretty hard. I was unfamiliar with that level of loss beforehand. I was in Advanced with Ethan and trying to decide if I should still go. I think I took that first week off, but I jumped back into it the second week. I remember talking to Shiloh, who I took a lot of classes with, and who's very dear to me, and she was just like, “Yeah, it's okay. You can be sad. You can carry that. You don't have to mask it.” And so that definitely left a pretty big impression on me.
Ethan likes introducing new games, like us making up our own things. I raised my hand and said, “Hey, can we have scenes where they're only sad?” We called it Sad Prof at the time. And funnily enough, we actually ended up playing that in our Student Showcase, something that was a result of my circumstance--and I guess being true to yourself and allowing those feelings to express themselves through you. We tweaked it from something that the goal is to only be sad and to never make a joke to you can only have one laugh, and that one laugh is at the very end. So it was a little more optimistic. It ended up being really fun on stage, but again, just sort of rooting myself in in those feelings and allowing improv to be an expression of that was really helpful.
To see Gio tell his story—and hear how he turned social anxiety into stage confidence—watch his full PiT Profile interview now on our YouTube channel. His honesty and humor might just inspire you to take the stage yourself.
