Adam Guerino is a writer in Chicago who works nationally as a stand-up comedian and event producer. He is a regular contributor to the the site In Our Words with his weekly dating column “Serial Dater” every Wednesday and produces and hosts the web show My Funny Town for gaychicagotv.com. Guerino is the creator of OutLoud Chicago a production effort bringing queer entertainment to the mainstream with rotating venues including Zanies and The Hideout. He is the creator of the benefit series We Are Halsted which raises funds and awareness for queer homeless youth first appearing at The Center on Halsted and later at Berlin nightclub.

Adam has been featured in Timeout Chicago‘s “Joke Of The Week” and played at comedy clubs in Chicago and New York including Zanies, Lincoln Lodge, Lakeshore Theater and The Edge Comedy Club in Chicago and Shock Therapy and Happy Hour at Bartini in New York City. Adam is a regular reader of his original writing at Essay Fiesta a first-person narrative literary night and Paper Machete a live magazine show of current events, pop culture and American manners which is featured on WBEZ Chicago Public Radio.

He has hosted fundraisers from bar-shows to $120 plate dinners including Stars For Hope (with actors from The Daily Show, Iron Man, Star Trek and Glee.) As a producer, he has produced three seasons of the multimedia comedy show The Sarcastic Squad, two seasons of the performance and networking independent art event Art Haus, the sexy spectacle variety show Nightcaps as well as written and produced the full-length comedic play Mattress Matters and producing the short movies, I’m Gay, Everybody Is Having Sex But Me and Glitter Party.

Adam strives for innovation and authenticity with every story whether told on a stage or put together from behind the scenes–creating an all-inclusive community with every show. If you appreciate his art and can take something away from it, he doesn’t consider you a fan but a friend.

In My Own Words …

I believe a good storyteller retells a journey and a great storyteller takes you on a journey with them. My first stories I told had little to do with my life—they were escapist and fantastical, sending me far away from my town of 4,000 people in Iowa. Beginning in my parents’ basement, I created epic sagas with a huge cast of action figures accompanied with character development, back stories and subplots. By middle school I was committing stories to paper with convoluted, over-wrought science fiction novellas.

In high school, I came back to my own life. I wrote stories of a boy my own age, in a town very similar to my own, falling in love with another boy. Much of this confidence to share my stories came from my English teacher and mentor who placed me in advanced writing classes. I rose to her challenge and I excelled—academically and through my writing. Then I started writing stories to share with others, including two school plays, essays and poetry. I eventually ran out of classes to take and graduated high school a year early. I wonder if she taught tap-dancing, what a very different life I might have today.

I moved to Chicago for college, but 17 year-old-me found the only writing I accomplished was in my free time. I was sleeping on the floor of my small apartment when I decided school was a very expensive and time-consuming hobby. A hobby that was interfering with my ability to afford food, but mostly, it interfered with my writing.

I dropped out and moved to Hawaii with no job or promise of a place to stay. Friends and family were confused as to how someone with so much passion would quit school, but I figured if I was going to have a hobby it might as well be an exciting one. And is Chicago to Hawaii any stranger a move than small-town Iowa to Chicago?

I lived in Hawaii for less than six months and in that time went from sleeping on the beach to working at one of the best restaurants in the world. I did interesting things and wrote the entire time, not always about my surroundings, but constantly inspired by doing new and different things. I’m still compiling stories from this time in a book of essays entitled, “Tide Pools Of Maui.”

When I had the maturity to realize I could do new and interesting things in Chicago, I moved back. “You’re funny, you should do stand-up,” a friend of a friend said to me at a bar. I thanked her. “No, really, I run the comedy night here,” she insisted.

Within a week, I delivered thirty minutes of stand-up material. For those who aren’t familiar with stand-up, a comedian usually goes a year before collecting thirty minutes of material. My process of rapid writing and delivery became a staple of my style—sometimes writing material the day of a show to make sure my material was quirky, confident and raw. That confidence came from jumping head first into comedy.

Until that point, my creative process was still a private one. I might spend years on a story then decide not to share it. Suddenly I was writing with a destination. I would take an audience on a journey with me and they would respond instantaneously with laughter, applause, silence, or (sometimes) heckling. That level of interaction between a group and myself was incredibly rewarding. Performing more and more gave me the confidence to pursue publication and production of my other writing from plays to movies. I felt like Rip Van Winkle stretching. So much of my life, what I did on a daily basis, was completely separated from the world. It was a ferocious, unrelenting passion, but a quiet one.

Within a year, I had written and co-produced a full-length play, a series of short movies as well as created a multimedia weekly variety show that enjoyed three great seasons. With the play and group, I was writing and producing short movies as well as booking and financing our cast. And when I wasn’t working forty hours a week or performing, I was still writing novels and screenplays in my free time. It sounds stressful in hindsight but being appreciated for doing what I was already happily doing was constantly motivating, rewarding and rejuvenating. I constantly found new energy with each audience.

My performance abilities extended to hosting non-comedic events and correspondent work for websites. My hosting and production experience began as a function—a means to an end. I created shows I wanted to see and I facilitated them by funding, booking and hosting. Accidentally, I became better known as a host and performer than a producer and a writer.

I found peace in the fact that the lines between writing, producing and performing were constantly blurred. The peace came from the realization that my writing still colors everything I do because it has complimented everything I do. A closer fit would be to call myself a storyteller.

Every story I tell, in any shape, lives within the distance between me and you—finding commonalities and understanding between us and changing with each pass and exchange. With everything that I do, I strive to take audiences with me. I’m inviting you on this journey.