TikTok’s German Mother Laura Ramoso takes to the stage in Vancouver

While you may be unfamiliar with the name Laura Ramoso, you’ve probably come across her work on social media.

The Toronto resident has given the online world the head-noddingly hilarious — and often very familiar — characters of the judgy My German Mother, the often-flustered My Italian Father and the annoying The Girl Who Just Got Back From (insert name of country here).

These characters and others are part of Ramoso’s live stage show, which she is touring right now. A mixture of sketch, improv and standup, Ramoso’s Stand Up Straight Tour will be landing in Vancouver on Oct. 9 at the Commodore Ballroom at 6:30 p.m. and on Oct. 10 at the Queen Elizabeth Theatre at 7:30 p.m.

Few TikTok stars have the ability — or the material — to allow them to take to the stage and entertain a live audience. But Ramoso came to social media fame by real-life experience. A trained actor with a theatre degree from the University of Victoria, Ramoso was doing improv and strandup in the Toronto area when COVID-19 hit.

“I was paying my dues here and doing shows and everything, and then COVID hit,” said Ramoso. “I actually had no online presence before COVID hit.

“I’m not alone in this. I think a lot of people gravitated towards the online stuff because it was simply the only thing available. So, I started to make videos to express myself. It kind of exploded and now I get to marry the two, the online and the live.”

Those online videos have racked up for the 28-year-old more than a million followers on TikTok and Instagram each, plus more than 300,000 more on YouTube and Facebook.

Born in Italy to, yes, a German mother and an Italian father, Ramoso, due to her mother’s work as medical officer for the World Health Organization, was a global kid, spending time in Cameroon, Azerbaijan, China and Vietnam.

“I wanted the North American college experience that was in all the movies I watched, and my high school counsellor (in Hanoi) had a poster of UVic in her office,” Ramoso said when asked about her choice to attend the Vancouver Island university.

After UVic, Ramoso auditioned twice for the famed performing arts school Juilliard. After “bombing” her second audition in Chicago, she decided to cheer herself up by taking in a show at Second City, the ground zero of improv.

“It was like magic,” said Ramoso about the improv scene in Chicago. “I think it was mainly watching these masters of improv and sketch onstage. And when good improv is happening and it’s really, really good it’s mind-blowing because it can never happen again. It is so dependent on who’s in that room at that very moment. I think that’s what really attracts me to it is that it can’t be replicated. It can’t even be explained.”

Ramoso decided to move to Toronto where there is also a Second City. She performed with a troupe and did her own shows. Then COVID hit, and she went about learning to land one-minute max videos and create an online following.

“Though they are both comedy and sketch comedy, I will say that they are two completely different art forms,” said Ramoso. “With the videos, you don’t need to provide much context. It’s right there on the screen with a caption. Really, the idea is people have to understand what it is within two seconds, otherwise they will just go onto the next thing.

“Stage is a whole different beast,” said Ramoso, adding that stage sketches need a premise, requiring a beginning, middle and an end.

Ramoso, who has done plenty of live shows, including taking part in the Netflix is a Joke Festival last spring, says her live shows are still definitely populated with mostly fans of her social media work, but once they settle into the idea of listening, the pace changes and things open up for the performer.

“I think people are pleasantly surprised and they do have a really good time. I get a lot of people who have never been to a comedy show and they didn’t know what to expect. So that’s really exciting for me,” said Ramoso.

The comedian says it’s the small stuff that happens to everybody that informs her comedy.

“My comedy is not political or very much about what is happening in the news or current events, because it is the small stuff that happens to everybody that I find really appealing,” said Ramoso.

Topping that relatable list is Ramoso’s comedically heightened version of her parents.

“They see their parents or their family in those characters, one way or another,” said Ramoso about the appeal.

Fans love the German mom and Italian dad, but what do her German mother and Italian father think about being inspirations for their daughter’s comedy?

“When I first did a German mom video years ago, I had a conversation with my mom because the character is incredibly, heavily inspired by her, obviously. So we had to chat about how people are responding to this character in a very positive way,” said Ramoso. “They are on her side. We’re not laughing at her. We’re wanting her to be this way. Or we’re laughing with her and enjoying the way that she sees the world.

“My parents both really love the characters. And also, over time, there’s been a separation between the two. Obviously, my parents are three-dimensional, full human beings, and then these characters continue to explode in their two dimensionality. So there is a divide there.

“But they really love them. They send them to all their friends and then they’ll send me feedback.”

So, what would German mom think about having a daughter who became famous for TikTok videos?

“She’d probably be like, ‘And where is your business degree?’ ” said Ramoso, slipping into the stern, familiar German accent. “She’d want me to have a backup plan.”

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