Julio Torres Steps in Front of the Camera

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The title of Julio Torres’s new HBO comedy special, My Favorite Shapes, is deceptively literal. In an hour-long performance, the 32-year-old comedian walks the audience through “shape” after shape (more on that later), each carrying a narrative that’s impossible to predict, completely esoteric, and entirely delightful. It also demonstrates Torres’s uncanny ability to transform even the most obscure thoughts into conceptual comedy bits without losing any humor or relatability. “I like expanding on one small thought,” Torres says, “and that one small thought could be a little joke, could be a little tweet, could be a little moment—but I like stretching something as far as it can go.” What’s more impressive is that he has managed to become a distinguished voice in comedy by staying unflinchingly true to himself, and My Favorite Shapes might be the best indication of that yet.

Torres is most well known for his recurring appearances on The Tonight Show and many are likely more familiar with sketches he’s written on Saturday Night Live (like the zeitgeist-capturing “Papyrus” sketch about the Avatar font) over the last couple of years, but it was an unlikely journey. He grew up in El Salvador and it was only towards the end of high school that his interest in television and movies grew to the point where he wanted to pursue them as a career. (“Weirdly enough I was very, very into Ally McBeal, I thought it was just the cleverest, funniest thing.”) More than anything else, he was taken hold by the idea of moving to New York. “I came [to New York] for a few weeks in the summer and I just became obsessed with it and I really wanted to live here,” he recalls. “I just really came to confirm something that I knew already, which is I wanted to be here.” The New School accepted him, but it would require a second application a couple of years later for them to offer a generous enough scholarship for him to finally make the move.

When he got to New York, he began writing, but stand-up wasn’t his goal. “Just to amuse myself I would write myself scripts and they were funny or humorous, but it was never like a cookie-cutter, going-for-the-joke type thing,” he explains. While he was trying to figure out how to become a writer in entertainment, the pressures of the city—and remaining in the city—began to mount: “I felt like I was running out of time because I had to get a work visa, it felt like I didn’t have the patience or the luxury for just starting a project and maybe seeing it come to fruition months after that.” Circumstances forced him to think a little quicker, which would prove to be a blessing in disguise. “I just needed something to be more immediate, more impatient, and the thought of stand-up just entered my head as a way of showcasing writing without needing to ask permission or without needing to pay for anything, without needing to collaborate with anyone,” he adds. “I Googled ‘New York open mic’ and then went the following day and just took it from there.”

The thought of suddenly performing for people and trying to make them laugh is daunting to most, but Torres looked at it with practicality. “I didn’t overthink it, I was just like, ‘Oh this is solving a problem,'” he explains. That attitude reflects in his stand-up, in which he recites his deliberate and thoughtful observations without much performative flair—never breaking from his deadpan delivery—instead relying on his subdued tone to land a joke. It works exceedingly well, and when SNL head writer Rob Klein caught wind of the act, it led to guest-writing for the show before officially joining the writing staff. Despite holding one of the most unnerving jobs for young comedic writers, Torres didn’t try to emulate the sketches he himself loved but rather trusted his unique comedic voice. “When I got there, it felt easier to just write what felt borrowed from my stand-up, a sort of very controlled, different thing, rather than even attempting to do what other people were doing,” he says. “That wouldn’t have been as successful or as fun for me.”

Now Torres is having his most prominent summer yet with My Favorite Shapes as well as the Fred Armisen-driven HBO series Los Espookys, which just finished its first season. The bilingual series offers Torres his most prominent acting role yet (he also is a writer and executive producer on the show), as a member of a group of friends who produce horror experiences as a business. “We have more time to explore people and characters, that’s so fun,” he says, “and building a world you revisit time and time again.” Where the critically-acclaimed series adds something new to Torres’s repertoire, My Favorite Shapes culminates the comedic persona he’s crafted thus far in its most complete version. He enters a pastel-colored, geometric set (designed by his mother and sister) wearing a matching silver jacket and pants, with bleach-blond hair and glitter glistening on his face and hands. It’s futuristic and dreamlike all at once, and the audience is in for an otherworldly journey. “I’m here to show you my favorite shapes,” he begins. “I have a lot of shapes, but not a lot of time, so we have to start immediately.” No further explanation of the concept is necessary, adding to its surreal charm.

“I guess I liked being alone playing with toys,” Torres recalls of his childhood. “I think the special echoes that a lot. I think I was at my happiest being left alone, coming up with my own stories.” In the show, as he presses his foot to a pedal, a conveyer belt begins moving until an object reaches him. It starts with a plexiglass square and moves onto the harp of time, Monseigneur Claude Frollo from The Huntchback of Notre Dame, and custom dioramas that add another layer of fantasy within the fantastical show. “If I see a little trinket that I like, I’ll get it,” he says. “Some of them were gifts, but suddenly around my apartment, I was like, ‘Oh I have a whole show here.’” Torres uses each object to great effect and the revelation of each one is often enough to generate a laugh. The show really becomes captivating, though, as he imbues narratives to each object, some one-liners, some stories, some fiction, and some fact, enabling viewers to get lost in his uniquely hilarious worldview. “It’s very earnest. I’m never trying to be weird,” he elaborates. “I don’t think that it’s cool to make something that’s deliberately obtuse. This is how I can articulate.”

My Favorite Shapes is, if nothing else, utterly joyous in its self-contained universe, but it’s also a modernistic take on observational humor. As Torres points out himself in the special, some people see him as “niche,” but beneath the concept, he’s expressing his sentiments on society and culture, as well as allowing viewers to get a glimpse of his own identity. Torres has had such a strong sense of that identity for so long that it was bound to manifest into something as original and idiosyncratic as My Favorite Shapes. “I think that I am more accessible than someone taking a quick glance would think, and I think that is why there’s a relatability,” he reasons. “I always want there to be a recognizable element, as abstract as it can get.”

My Favorite Shapes premieres tomorrow on HBO.