When a performer is capable of singing, dancing and acting, they are commonly referred to as a “triple threat.” But what do you call a painting poet who can tickle your funny bone while pricking you with needles? If the person in question is Orlando’s multidisciplinary artist Chris Trovador, you can call him Ink Addicted, which is the name of the solo show he’s premiering March 22 and 23 at the Oviedo Mall’s Imagine Performing Arts Center (imagineperformingartscenter.org). I recently chatted with Trovador ahead of opening night to learn about his journey from the west side of Orlando to the Canadian Fringe circuit, where he’ll be touring his new show this coming summer.
Born in 1990 and raised in Pine Hills and Forest City, Trovador recalls that “the first moment I could lift up a pencil I was drawing. I am an only child, so that was my form of entertainment,” he says, adding that his “first love other than art and drawing was music,” especially freestyle rap, which led him to study audio engineering at Maitland’s FIRST Institute digital media school.
Making music wasn’t paying the bills, but fortunately he found an apprenticeship via Craigslist in another lifelong interest: tattooing. “I would always draw on myself, do fake tattoos,” Trovador remembers. His mother, who had been an artist and clown in Puerto Rico, encouraged his art and music, but was less enthusiastic about the ink: “Growing up, she definitely did not like that. She was very religious [and] conservative.” Despite that, he went to work for Danny Wells at Stigma Tattoo Bar, which was located on downtown Orlando’s Orange Avenue directly below SAK Comedy Lab, where he discovered the world of improvisational comedy during what he calls a dark time when he experienced “a lot of partying, a lot of emptiness.”
At SAK, Trovador discovered an outlet for his innate inner “class clown,” a tendency which hadn’t been nurtured by the drama teacher who failed him in class.
“I already had this inclination of improvisation, I just didn’t have a name for it. … While I’m doing tattoos, I’m entertaining my clients. A lot of times they’re nervous, they’re scared, so then you go ‘OK, how do I make them feel comfortable? How do I make them not freak out?’ … I entertain them. I make them laugh.” Improv also had an edge over rapping that hit closer to home: “I can’t bring my grandparents to my hip-hop show, [but] I can bring them to this comedy show.”
After graduating from SAK’s training program, Trovador says he started realizing there were “no opportunities for someone who looks like me” in the area. He moved to Los Angeles on the advice of a cinematographer friend. He spent eight years performing regularly in California until COVID put his life on pause. Unable to perform in person or tattoo, Trovador used Zoom to teach sketch writing and improv classes for Second City and other theaters, as well as perform his own first online solo show through the University of Chicago Booth School of Business, before returning home to Orlando.
Now, Trovador is synthesizing all of those varied life experiences and “packaging it with a nice little bow” that conveys his journey through clowning, live painting, improv comedy and spoken word. This production is made possible in part by an individual artist grant awarded by United Arts of Central Florida, and by producer Clark Levi of Lightup Shoebox.
“I immediately recognized his talent and his personality and everything that he could bring,” Levi says of Trovador, who emceed his recent experimental collaboration The Audience Will Choose the Title of This Show at Timucua Arts Foundation. “I just felt like it was a fate moment that brought us together, and I had to take advantage of that to help him, because I really do believe in Chris’s talent.”
Because he was selected in the CAFF Canadian Fringe Festival lottery, Trovador will get to take Ink Addicted to both Prince Edward Island and Edmonton later this year. “Canada is somewhat intimidating, because I’m hoping that they’re gonna get my jokes,” he says. “Fingers crossed that they’ll understand my culture.” But he says he’s more relaxed about his first-ever international tour than he is about his imminent hometown appearance. “I have been gone for so long, and friends and family and people from high school haven’t seen me. So to put my name out there, that’s a little bit nerve-wracking.”
Whether you’re elaborately inked or entirely tattoo-free, Trovador insists that his show is not to alienate anyone or boast about the breadth of his talents, but simply to channel his irrepressible artistic impulse. “If I don’t perform, I get irritable, I get in my feelings,” he says. “I’m just expressing myself, and I’m here to share it with everyone who’s willing to listen.”
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This article appears in Mar 20-26, 2024.