Rogier Bak

Though he is Dutch, Rogier has worked diligently over the years to make sure you could never tell. With his formative years all spent in the United States, he feels like a foreigner in his home country.

Tackling whatever medium he can get his hands on, from the stand-up stage to TikTok videos, podcasts to writing, he embraces the high-paced environment we find ourselves in. Having gone through some pivotal changes over the past year and a half, both in his personal life and in his perspective on the world, he has started to embrace the spirit of not caring what others say, moving at a fast pace, creating without doubting himself in order to keep moving at a fast pace.

Over the first few months of 2021, he amassed a pretty sizable following on social media with his videos on the Dutch language, culture, his perspective on American life, accents, and impressions.

Itching to get back on stage, he’s developing his first solo show in which he dives into his unique perspective of the Netherlands as a semi-outsider. Having spent his formative years in the United States, he was able to see his home country from the perspective of an immigrant. Upon returning to the Netherlands, the reality of just how much of an outsider he had become became palpably clear.

Born in Amsterdam, he grew up within a 30 minute radius of the city that would later become his home. Upon graduating high school, he moved to the US to attend community college and chase his dream of becoming a professional basketball player. It quickly became very clear that the life of a NBA superstar was not in the cards, prompting him to shift his focus to design.

Rogier moved around the US quite a bit, starting out in Illinois, then moving to Southern California, back to the Netherlands for six months, back to California (Santa Ana) for six months, then Michigan, and finally New York. Upon his arrival in New York City, he felt he had found his home. After three years, however, he moved back to Europe after being unable to secure a work visa.

Almost immediately, he began taking improv classes at the legendary Boom Chicago in Amsterdam, which led to him joining an improv troupe with several fellow improv students. Thought he group only lasted for a bout a year, it reignited his appetite for acting and being on stage (having acted some as a child). After six months of improv classes, he did his first stand-up open mic at Stand Up NY during which, to be honest, he didn’t suck. Now the second gig – that was a rough one.

After a few years of doing shows and trying to hit as many stages as possible across the Netherlands, New York, Los Angeles, and Melbourne, he started his own production company, Humorist Comedy, that focuses on English-language comedy shows in Amsterdam and The Hague (other cities are likely to follow) geared towards the international crowd in the major cities. Set in specifically unusual, though beautiful venues like a former bank vault and a legendary theater that used to be a tobacco factory, the shows attempt to fill the gap between bar shows and theater shows.

At the end of 2020, he began developing an audio-only comedy sketch series, The Skitstapes, releasing the first installment/album, The Skitstape Vol. 1: The Realist Skits I Ever Wrote, in January 2021. Volume 2 will be released shortly.