Vik Pandya

By Jen Banowetz
August 2025 View more Spotlight

Building a career in comedy

Back in college at DePaul, Vik Pandya needed one more credit to graduate, so he took an improv class. “I didn’t really know what it was—someone told me it was easy—it was called Performance 290, so it didn’t even say ‘improv’ anywhere, but it ended up being an improv class, and I really liked it; it was really fun and super different,” he says. “I was a finance major so all my classes were business classes, and this was just such a departure, an artistic thing.”

The experience stuck with him. “After I started working my full-time job, I thought to myself I should try going out doing an open mic,” he says.

His first open-mic set at Schubas in Chicago was supposed to be three minutes. “I think I did 45 seconds,” he recalls. “I forgot everything I was going to say. I had stage fright. You don’t know until you’re up there what it’s going do to you physically and mentally. So after that I was kind of traumatized. I was like: Well, I shouldn’t have been talking smack earlier because it was very difficult. What I ended up doing was remembering that improv class. There’s gotta be a way to get better at this.”

So he took classes at Second City and started standup again (all while juggling a corporate career), then touring and headlining. Now it’s his full-time job, doing shows locally and coast to coast, as well as hosting Late Night Mic at the Comedy Bar in Chicago.

In August, Pandya (who grew up in Naperville and is an alum of Waubonsie Valley High School) will be doing two shows (8 p.m. Aug. 15 and 16) at CG’s in Bolingbrook, which just happens to be the first local club that gave him a headlining weekend back in his earlier days.

Q: Have you always been funny?
A: I’ve been funny. I think it was more so not even necessarily knowing it was funny, I just knew how to hold people’s attention and I knew I liked that. I knew I liked being able to command a room and have people listening to me. When I was younger, my parents used to say all the time, ‘You just make up stories so people will listen to them.’ So I’d be in the middle of the room telling a story that started with a kernel of truth and then I’d just really add all these details—that’s essentially what standup is—at least the way I do stand up, and I think a lot of people that’s why they Iike my comedy, they say it’s relatable because I start with a very relatable premise or something that actually happened to me, and that’s likely happened to someone else, and then you can start to get more fantastical and build on it, elaborate, but the impetus is always something truthful. I didn’t realize that when I was younger I was kind of doing that—that is how I related to people by making them laugh and making them listen to me.

Q: How do you describe your comedic style?
A: The main thing is that relatability piece, but I think I also say the things that people want to say, but they’re kind of scared to say because of repercussions. Like if you’re at work and someone does something dumb, and you really want to say something—well, this is my boss—I don’t work at your office, I can say it, and you can laugh at it, but it doesn’t have to come from you. I think that’s my sweet spot, being a little bit on the line in many ways but always being on the right side of the issue. I’ll toe the line quite a bit and I like that kind of dance of making people wonder what I’m saying but then overall you know I’m from a good place. One of my friends—I don’t know if you can use this—they said, ‘You’re a charming asshole,’ which I like that description a lot.

Q: Any advice for budding comics?
A: When I started getting into comedy, I started trying a bunch of stuff: I took an acting class. I took an improv class. I took a standup workshop. Let me try all these different creative things and see what I like and see how to build my skills, and they all feed into each other. I think that’s what my advice would be, to try something that scares you. And that’s a big thing in improv—they call it follow the fear, one of the improv principles. It sometimes doesn’t go anywhere but what often happens as you discover more about yourself, and you also find out something that you enjoy and like that you didn’t even know.

Photo: Vik Pandya