Marcus is a Bolivian-American comedy writer from Dallas, Texas. In fifth grade, he launched his comedy career by using a tragic setup, penning a sketch about a kid who unsuccessfully tries to teach his “pet rock” how to swim. Marcus was never known as the “funny guy” in class before then. Rather, he was the nerd who, when he lost his glasses, would show up wearing industrial-grade prescription sport goggles. So, the feeling of connecting with his classmates by making them laugh was pure bliss.

As Marcus looked for new ways to chase this feeling, he invented characters, cracked jokes, and even wrote comedy raps, including a rapping movie review of the film “Her” that won a nationally-syndicated radio contest (he changed the lyrics of a Drake song from “We started from the bottom, now we’re here” to “He dated his computer, it was weird”). In fact, Marcus committed to his bits so hard that he once barely finished a take-home exam because he spent the first hour of it recording a freestyle comedy rap.

Marcus later found himself on a conventional career path and became a lawyer, and while he enjoyed the ping-pong tournaments and free LaCroix at his law firm, he was less keen about the doc reviews and all-nighters. To stay awake, he chugged so much Diet Coke that his primary physician once diagnosed him as “Half-Man, Half-Aspartame.” Eventually, Marcus realized that he didn’t feel like his most authentic self there. So, he did what any attorney on partner track would do: leave it all behind for a life in musical theater. He got an M.F.A. by writing musical comedies at NYU and later took TV writing courses with the Upright Citizens Brigade.

Since then, as a musical writer, Marcus has co-written animated comedy shorts featuring characters from the video game “Genshin Impact” that have amassed over 20 million YouTube views and 4.5 million Spotify streams to date. As a TV writer, he writes scripts about quirky, nuanced Bolivian protagonists, ranging from a down-on-his-luck actor tired of being typecast as a “narco” to a bad-boy, narcissistic Juilliard professor. As these characters strive to embrace their most authentic selves, they mirror Marcus’s own professional and cultural journeys, while also reflecting his life-long, guiding principle of committing to the bit.