About

Rocco Meo is a jittery flesh-covered comedian, writer, and performance artist based in Chicago who creates absurd, surreal, and empathetic works exploring the tension between reality and fantasy. His pieces challenge fitting in, connection, embarrassment, and the blurred line between performance and sincerity, using gross body humor, vaudevillian physicality, and anxious personas to humanize absurdity, confronting audiences with discomfort and kindness. Rooted in nostalgia, improvisation, and do-it-yourself collaboration with friends, he prioritizes friendship and jollification, having an obsessive need to be liked and considered normal. By blending absurdity with vulnerability, Rocco crafts performances reflecting imagination, delusion, anxiety, and the emotional struggles that define human existence.

Rocco was born in Indianapolis, Indiana. When he was young he made YouTube videos with his friends. It was a rewarding outlet for him to express himself. Nostalgia is important to him so he shoots on old digital cameras he kept from when we was young. He would make home videos with his parents, it was outlet of making art that has made sense to him.

He attended Perry Meridian High School. Having a background in theater he joined Gutty's Comedy Club's resident improv troupe his freshman year. Improvisation being a stimulus of his adroitness.

Rocco performed in community theater and high school theater, later writing and performing standup at comedy venues in Indianapolis.

He currently attends The Theatre School at DePaul University where he is pursuing a BFA in Comedy Arts with a minor in screenwriting where he has embraced his do it yourself style and learned how to put together a film crew. Since arriving Rocco has performed at comedy venues namely Second City, The Annoyance, iO Theater, The Lincoln Lodge, Playground Theater, Bughouse Theater, and The Cornservatory.

Prioritizing independent projects, digital mediums, and experimental comedy Rocco has produced multiple live comedy shows as well as digital comedy projects. He perfor Rocco Meo Wo-prov duo MeoSnow, a vaudeville style improv show taking the audiences ideas and filtering them through their crazy noggins to spit right back at the audience. He produced, wrote, and performed in Real Talk with Rocco Meo: Responsibility, where after being dogged on by his friend he looks to find something he can fall back on in case of his eminent demise in comedy. Putting together a dance crew to surprise the owner of a local sandwich shop. Rocco is currently producing the show Real Talk with Rocco Meo: Purpose, with a live show this January 16th, 8:00 PM at The Annoyance.