Patrick Hercamp says his life is like the feather that floats through the air at the beginning and end of the movie “Forrest Gump.”
The Seymour native has never known where life would take him next.
But with each opportunity, he has found something that makes him happy.
“Wherever the wind blows, that is kind of where I’ve been going,” said Hercamp, 36, who has lived in Los Angeles, California, for 10 years. “I’m going where it takes me.”
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Growing up, he said his plan was to go to Purdue University to become an agricultural engineer.
That changed when Seymour High School classmate Doug Burbank cast him in a play their senior year in 2002.
“I had never performed before, and at curtain call, I was like, ‘Oh, this is what I want to do,'” Hercamp said. “That’s all it took.”
His parents, however, weren’t too sure about him changing his postsecondary plans.
“When I talked to my mom and dad about it, it was sort of like, ‘Well, we’ve got six of you (kids). We can risk one of you going off and doing something like this,'” he said, smiling.
He went to Indiana University for a year and figured out his love for William Shakespeare and physical theater, like moving his body, contorting and playing the role of demons, monsters and zombies.
Hercamp then decided to take his first airplane trip to attend the University of Kent in Canterbury, England, earning a theater degree in 2008. The next year, he received his degree from IU.
While in England, he was cast in the student ensemble for the TV show “Who’s Line Is It Anyway?” That was his first time doing comedy.
Upon returning to LA in 2010, Hercamp said he was homeless and living in his car until he was cast as a vaudeville performer.
“That year, it was at Christmas, New Year’s and my birthday, I would buy a movie ticket to a cinema at noon — it was a 12-cinema theater — and I would get popcorn that had a refill and I would just go from cinema to cinema eating popcorn all day because I had no money, and I would sleep during the movies,” he said.
A few months later, Hercamp won the people’s choice award at the second-largest annual arts festival in the world, Adelaide Fringe in Australia.
Since then, he has written 12 comedy plays and one musical.
“I didn’t plan to do comedy, but people laughed at what I did, so I kept doing it,” Hercamp said.
Over the years, he has spent time living in five countries while on tour with the vaudeville comedy shows.
He and Ryan Adam Wells wrote “Cast Away: A Musical Parody,” and Hercamp was cast as Wilson the volleyball. That premiered in Canada.
Since he was used to being on the road for nine months of the year, Hercamp said he was devastated this past year when shows were canceled due to the COVID-19 pandemic.
“I didn’t know what to do with, one, my income, and second, my mental state because I write these shows to get these jokes out of my head,” he said.
He then started writing them down and cartooning. In September 2020, he released his first published book, “I Draw Like I am 5 and I Write Much Worser.”
“It’s sort of like ‘The Far Side’ meets ‘Where the Sidewalk Ends’ meets Dr. Seuss,” Hercamp said.
His second book, “There Once was a Book from Nantucket,” is written and currently is being edited.
His first book can be purchased online at amazon.com or idrawlikeiam5.com. T-shirts and other merchandise are available on the latter site, too.
“So far, I’ve sold like 60 copies in nine countries and I’ve made $23,” Hercamp said, smiling.
His next project is a one-man show based on his family called “Cursed.” It was supposed to premier in 2020, but the pandemic pushed that back.
After his father’s death, Hercamp was cleaning out the garage when he found a book with obituaries from the 1800s in it. He learned several ancestors died in unique ways, including one who was struck by lighting and another who had his arm pulled off by an oxcart and died of tuberculosis.
“It’s incredible,” he said of his family’s stories.
He will tell those stories in a comedic fashion and also share how his parents shaped his comedy and who he is as a person. Plus, he will talk about being born on Friday the 13th.
“Because it’s called ‘Cursed,’ of course it got canceled,” he said of the show being delayed a year, adding he will perform as soon as he’s allowed to. “I’m now probably going to turn it into a book if I can.”
He describes the show as half TED talks and half standup comedy.
“There’s comedy in life, so just putting all of that together is kind of how I’ve always had to live,” he said. “Even when I was homeless in LA, I was still laughing and making jokes about things. I had to.”
When he’s not writing a new show, auditioning for TV and film or working on other projects, Hercamp has found ways to keep occupied in his free time.
In the fall, he wound up being one of 12 contestants selected to appear on the TV game show “Let’s Make a Deal.”
The show normally has hundreds of people wearing costumes in the audience hoping to get picked by host Wayne Brady, but only a dozen have been selected to be in the studio due to the pandemic.
In October, Hercamp took the 15-minute trip from his apartment to the studio and got lucky because the line producer recognized him from his theater festival show in Texas. He was wearing the garb he normally wears during shows.
“I had nothing else to do, so I did it on a whim,” he said.
The show premiered in December. Hercamp first won a trip to Hawaii but later turned that down to go for the Big Deal of the Day, where he picked Curtain 3 and won a Subaru.
Since many things he has done in life have happened unexpectedly, Hercamp advises others to do what they love and don’t be scared.
“That’s the problem is people are terrified of doing things,” he said. “I was terrified of flying in a plane for the first time, and I flew to England, and that was one of the scariest moments of my life going somewhere without my family.”
In any career, Hercamp said people are either naturally gifted at it or have to keep trying until they do it well. He said he wasn’t naturally gifted at the start of his career, but he gained valuable skills in school and had the right support along the way to help him be successful.
“I listened, and that’s the biggest thing is just listening to the encouraging people,” he said. “If someone’s like, ‘Hey, you’re doing a good job. This will make you better,’ listen to them. … It’s just how I had to look at it.”
Even though comedians make people laugh, Hercamp said they are pretty depressed people, and he went through a downward spiral during the pandemic since he was used to making people laugh but couldn’t perform.
He found things to make himself laugh to get through the hard times. The feather landed, and Hercamp began writing his books and one-man show.
“Just make yourself happy. It’s really easy to do when you let it go,” he said. “For people that do the grind every day, if that makes you happy, yes, do it. But if your dream was to make furniture, go make furniture. Somebody will like it. It’s just you have to get it out in front of them.”
With comedy, he said some people think they can’t do it because they don’t think they are funny. He encourages them to go for it if it makes them happy.
“I’m like, ‘Yes, you are. Every person is funny. It’s whether or not you have the timing and the confidence to say it right,'” he said. “That’s it.”
Like Gump says in the movie, “Life is like a box of chocolates. You never know what you’re going to get.”
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Name: Patrick Hercamp
Age: 36
Hometown: Seymour
Residence: Los Angeles, California
Education: Seymour High School (2002); University of Kent in Canterbury, England (2008); Indiana University (2009)
Occupation: Vaudeville comedian
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