Today we’d like to introduce you to Astrid Lange.
Hi Astrid, we’re thrilled to have a chance to learn your story today. So, before we get into specifics, maybe you can briefly walk us through how you got to where you are today.
I am currently in Niterói, part of Rio de Janeiro, in Brazil on a 10-month teaching fellowship through a program sponsored by the U.S. State Department and the Universidad Fluminense Federal. That is a sentence I never dreamed of typing! When I return to Houston, which is overall the place I have spent the most time in, I look forward to applying anything, everything, I’ve learned here. My areas of exploration center around identity, expression, and creating opportunities to flourish. I grew up between continents and cultures, with challenges in connecting, well, anything, at times. One example: at 29, I was diagnosed to have a softball-sized meningioma hanging out in my skull. It had been growing slowly over 8-10 years. What had I been thinking with for so long?
Recovering from that, dealing with other obstacles, yet still being entranced by the wonder of the world and finding humor along for the ride has led me to express myself creatively and support others in their journeys. After a few times staring death in the face, you figure out that you’re not ever going to be perfect and that it’s better to enjoy trying something imperfectly today; maybe you’ll get better tomorrow rather than be self-conscious and put it off.
The creative things I do include mentoring students with the Partnership for the Advancement and Integration of Refugees, bilingual improv comedy (started Houston’s! No Me Digas! troupe, performing in English and Spanish; catch us again in a few months!), comedy wrestling with Doomsday Wrestling as Roachella, writing stories for GrownUp Storytime Houston, teaching fitness dance, writing songs about life in Houston (“Car War” at open mics with various attempts at guitar chord riffs), and more. I am happy to say that I did 3 minutes of standup in Spanish at a comedy club in Quito, Ecuador. But there’s still more that I want to do and more collaborations.
I didn’t start off intending to be a teacher or even a teacher trainer, but I’ve been one for a while, both here in the US and in South Korea, Guatemala, Morocco, and Brazil. I use improv comedy techniques and my experience in bilingual education in my current post. Like Houston, everything’s a fusion that gets pretty wild.
Alright, so let’s dig a little deeper into the story – has it been an easy path overall, and if not, what were the challenges you’ve had to overcome?
I mentioned the meningioma. That took a couple of years to recover from, and I didn’t have anyone else I knew that was going through that. It’s hard to quantify how progress is made with that, but I think… I can think ok now. That same year, I had another malignant tumor. The meningioma was removed when I was 29. It was a molar pregnancy, stage 2, already burrowing itself into the wall of my uterus and ready to launch itself at other organs. I’d already had a D&C, going through a wall of protesters at the downtown Planned Parenthood, and while I was lucky to overcome all that, I still had to have a hysterectomy a few years later due to severe endometriosis.
I also have felt the violent side of Houston. When I was 26, I was on my way to a Montrose bar but was carjacked, kidnapped at gunpoint, sexually assaulted, and almost killed. The assailant kept my car and had just come from robbing a North Carolina jewelry store, killing one person there. He used my car in a robbery a few hours after he decided to let me go at a pawn shop in Bellaire, killing the pawn shop owner. I testified twice at his trial, and he was given the death penalty. However, in 2017 I was asked by the Houston DA’s office to re testify for the punishment phase over a technicality in the original proceedings that could have let him out. (The final decision was 4 consecutive life sentences, which he is now serving).
I didn’t handle a lot of this…well. Instead of hiding, it made me more bold, more risk-seeking, and I have learned how to cope with and manage that after a LOT of trial and error. I got into substance abuse, even drug dealing, as a way to feel like I had agency like I had a world to escape to. I got sober up in Conroe, in the worst part of town, at Bonnie’s House of Hope and ended up helping run the place.
But once I was there and finally got rid of the endometriosis, recovering from the brain tumor…I was able to get on a program with the Dept of Health and Human Services up there. They decided I’d be a great bilingual kindergarten teacher (to my shock and surprise!) and paid for my alternative certification program if I could hold down a job in the meantime, which I did! I was lucky to be hired then also at the City of Conroe’s Building Permits & Inspections Department.
I got a true second chance, and it’s been like fixing the motorcycle while flying down the highway ever since. It hasn’t been easy, but so much of my creative expression and sense of humor comes from that.
Thanks for sharing that. So, maybe next you can tell us a bit more about your work?
I answered that a bit in the first question, but I will say that all of the things I mentioned there have helped me feel more complete, more confident. The stories I have written for GrownUp Storytime are wild, true, and emotionally vulnerable. But to hear them read in front of others and accepted has been a tremendous experience. Being involved with Doomsday Wrestling and with teaching Zumba has allowed me to fully embody and express myself in ways that allow me to fully explore the space around me and just BE. I love being fluent in other languages and being exposed to so many here and around the world. Blending improv comedy with that (shout out to Station Theater, among others) has been amazing. In 2023 I received an M.A. from Texas A&M in Performance Studies that focuses on bilingual improv comedy here and around the world; apparently no one has ever studied it before, especially while doing it!
I keep exploring music. I’ve got a bunch of songs and enough for a short set, and I will get back to rehearsing with some friends when I return to Houston from Brazil. Working on learning the viola caipira and new rhythms here.
All of this blends into my educational work, with 15 years of leading different forms of bilingual instruction, K-12, and working with adult learners. I got my school principal licensure, along with my first master’s degree in Human Resource Development and Organization Change Management, because I like being able to play with all the pieces of big pictures, and also to prove that people like me who’ve gone through some stuff CAN do it.
That’s also what led to the creation of the Roachella character in Doomsday Wrestling, which is a blast. I can’t say enough good things about everyone in that group! I wanted to make a female character that, like me, is an underdog but hard to kill. The tagline Doomsday Wrestling came up with – “Half human…half cockroach…all ACTION!” is so funny because it’s true! And I’ve had women, especially, come up to me after a show to say how much they like that character, identify with her, even as she’s, as one friend put it, “yeeting her babies at everyone”. (I throw plastic cockroaches at everybody, including the audience).
Networking and finding a mentor can have such a positive impact on one’s life and career. Any advice?
Look for things that interest you. Then go see them. Observe. Keep going. Observe more, start to talk to people. If there’s an impro jam open to the community, go! Keep coming back. And don’t expect perfection from yourself (or others). We’re all fumbling through this. It’s ok to make mistakes. It’s ok to be an amateur.
You can be scared of something and still do it. Be careful where your head is at, though! If you’re able to acknowledge a “good” reason and your hidden “selfish” reason for anything you do and keep yourself accountable for both, that helps you and the people around you.
Be honest with people and treat people how you want to be treated. If someone doesn’t treat you well, don’t keep them close. That can be hard when they have influence over others, I know, but the last thing you want is a situation in which you hate yourself for compromising yourself.
That’s all the advice that helps me. I hope something in there will work for you.
Contact Info:
- Instagram: @nomedigas_HTX, @roachellaroachella, @granbatalladeflores, @wide_open_sky_punk
- Facebook: Astrid Astrid
Image Credits
Steve Patlan
Rita Loden
Frank DeOro
Tyler Anderson
