By Steve Seepersaud
"Making silly stuff is my love letter to life, and boy am I enamored."
Aaron Gold '10 has always loved performing, writing, acting and recording videos. So, it should come as little surprise that he took to the stage during his time at ºÚÁϲ»´òìÈ. Gold scored the lead in the main stage production of One for the Road by Harold Pinter. On the side, he was doing improv and sketches. He was also a student speaker at Commencement. All of that led to an acting career he refers to as, "hopping onto your televisions and various screens wherever I can."
Gold recently acted in and produced the short film , a series of five semi-improvised short stories about mismatched couples that would be better off breaking up.
"They had pinned me to be one of the actors, but the more I saw how great this project was, the more I wanted to help make it seen by as many people as possible, and I chipped in here and there until I earned a producer credit," said Gold. "I'm over the moon with how it turned out, from the cinematography to the music to everyone's performances, especially of the actors in the final vignette of the short. That one's my favorite and I'm not even in it, so you know I mean it when I say it's excellent."
He created You Are Not Alone — a monthly show at the Magnet Theater in Manhattan — which is meant to be funny but has a serious underlying premise. This project followed a vacation with close friends who didn't notice how deeply depressed he was; Gold decided that keeping his mental health struggles to himself wasn't helping matters any.
"[The show] provides a space for storytellers, poets, stand-ups and musicians to share their experiences with mental health, which is then used to inspire hilarious (and tension-breaking) improv from our cast of improvisers," Gold said. "It has been running monthly for more than 10 years and I couldn't be prouder of the work we've done, raising money for groups like the National Alliance on Mental Illness."
He's focusing a good deal of time on his podcast-turned-show . The schtick is pretty simple: I don't like a particular something; change my mind about it!
"We're gearing up for an episode on camping, which will require me to be outdoors where all the bugs are. Gross! The unfortunate thing about [this show] is that whenever people on my team pitch something that I hate, we kind of have to do it. I'm really cornering the market on low-grade masochism."