Erik Valera began his passion for improvisational theater as a young child growing up in Miami Beach under the tutelage of theater pioneer Ruth Foreman. He first took the stage in Miami Beach at the Pied Piper Children’s Theater in the mid 1980’s regularly performing his way out of paper bags before large audiences of critical New York transplants. As child actors are often slated to do, Erik went on to attend the school of hard knocks were he intuitively used his improvising skills to navigate the mean streets of Burbank, California before arriving in Chapel Hill in 2007. In 2009 he reignited his love for making things up and being in the moment by taking Improv and stand up comedy classes at DSI leading him to the DSI Improv Slam team, good fortune, and many spontaneous belly laughs.