If you’ve ever gone to a show at Charleston’s longest-running improv comedy theater, Theatre 99, you’ve surely seen the hilarious Greg Tavares on stage. He’s the theater’s co-founder and artistic director, along with Brandy Sullivan since 2001.
But it might surprise you to know he got into comedy in a roundabout way — he started out as a playwright.
“I thought I would be a writer, actually,” Tavares said. “And then I ended up dedicating my life to improv.”
In 2012, he returned to his first love of writing and released Improv for Everyone, a step-by-step guide on improv comedy after 30 years performing and teaching.
“So that’s when I switched from being a fiction writer to a nonfiction writer, if you will.”
He went on to self-publish another book in 2019 about a near-death experience he had while on vacation with his wife.
“When you self-publish a book, there are no gatekeepers when it comes to creating content anymore,” he said. “If your goal is to put your idea to the world into a place where anybody in the world can find it, self-publishing is a great way to do that.”
This month, he released his latest book, Daddy Issues: How to Stop Worrying and Love Being a Dad. Tavares said he wrote this book to open the conversation about the trials and tribulations of fatherhood, but as you might expect if you’ve seen him perform, the book is funny and blunt. Lessons in the book include “what not to say when her water breaks” and “when to convert your man cave into the baby’s room.”
“It’s not really a memoir, or my story,” he said. “It’s more like a comedy how-to advice book for guys who don’t want to be dads. It’s like, here’s what you need to do, buddy, if you want to lose your reluctance.”
The reason he was reluctant to become a parent, Tavares said, had a lot to do with his identity as an artist.
“I was selfish. First, I really liked being the most important thing to me. I don’t want to stereotype artists at all — there are a million different kinds of artists — but the center of being an artist is listening to yourself, feeling your own inspirations. And I loved dedicating my life to my own self-expression.”
When he had his first son 11 years ago, he started keeping a journal to document “the profound dissonance between what I thought my life would be and what my life was,” he said.
“I wrote this book because I wanted other men who never wanted kids to know they are not alone. There are other guys out there who feel the same way I did, but eventually, even if you are reluctant, you can learn to love being a dad.
“Fatherhood can really suck,” he said. “But it’s also the most rewarding thing I’ve ever done. I wanted to write a book that would look at becoming a dad in a funny way, but also give men hope that they can be great dads even if they never thought they wanted kids.”
Daddy Issues: How to Stop Worrying and Love Being a Dad is available to purchase on Amazon.
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