Austin’s first festival dedicated entirely to comedy by performers of color. Spanning two nights, the festival showcased improv, sketch, puppetry, and stand-up from diverse performers across Austin and beyond — including the organization’s own Lion Dance team. Built on the premise that comedy, one of the most accessible art forms, must consistently include points of view from communities of color.
People of Color Comedy Festival to Celebrate
Diversity in Austin’s Comedy Scene
May 24th and 25th Performances to Showcase Diverse Programming from Diverse Performers
AUSTIN, TX (March 22, 2019) – Lucky Chaos Productions in partnership with the Austin Convention Center announced plans to host Austin’s first-annual People of Color Comedy Festival (PoCCF) May 24th & 25th at the AISD Performing Arts Center.
PoCCF celebrates minority talent in comedy, offering a variety of artistic mediums as well as performers from several cultural backgrounds. The festival spans two nights and will feature different actsnightly. The festival showcases diverse programming from diverse performers including puppetry from Lucky Chaos Lion Dance, which showcases traditional lion dance puppetry through sketch comedy, as well as the best diverse improv and sketch comedy teams from Austin and beyond. Some of the acts include improvised telenovela from ¡ESCÁNDALO!; the sketch comedy stylings of Hot Pot Comedy, Austin’s only all-Asian sketch comedy group; and The Latino Comedy Project’s Adrian Villegas performing excerpts from his acclaimed one-man show, Barrio Daze. Bios and information about confirmed individual acts follow below.
Lucky Chaos Productions is known on Austin stages for their work supporting Asian Americans and other underrepresented voices through their 60-plus productions since 2012. Festival Director Leng Wong explains what she hopes the Austin festival can achieve for the local community, saying, “I want to expose audiences to a wider array of experiences to organically infuse information that gradually widens a person’s view of reality. It is critical that comedy, this very accessible and popular form of artistic expression, consistently include points of view from communities of color.”
Exposure to these varied perspectives continues to be hard to come by. Though racial and ethnic minorities represent 40 percent of the U.S. population, a 2016 UCLA study found that people of color remain statistically underrepresented in mainstream Hollywood media. Among scripted films and television series, lead roles for people of color are outnumbered by white performers three to one, and that gap widens when considering those in production and writing capacities.
The People of Color Comedy Fest is one of the few festivals in the country that focuses on performers of color which gives non-white audiences in particular a chance to enjoy entertainment that might otherwise not be seen outside of New York or Los Angeles. Comedian Yola Lu of Hot Pot Comedy explains what excited her sketch team about the festival, stressing PoCCF’s importance to audiences who might otherwise feel excluded from major comedy festivals. “[PoCCF] is important because it not only brings together the community of performers and brings them to audiences that may be looking for more diverse shows and programming where they can feel safe and have content they relate to.” Austin’s comedy scene has grown exponentially in recent years, providing greater opportunities to people of color, and Wong hopes the festival will serve to solidify and build upon that progress and provide it some staying power.
The festival runs May 24th and 25th, and tickets range from $15 to $60 and are available at https://peopleofcolorcomfest.eventbrite.com.
Confirmed acts
¡ESCÁNDALO! Improvised Bilingual Spanish-English Telenovela is back from their sold out run at the Hideout Theater, bringing audiences more melodrama, more back-stabbing, and most importantly, more longing glances in this over-the-top improvised tale.
Lucky Chaos Lion Dance reinterprets the traditional Chinese Lion Dance art form for modern storytelling. We break cultural barriers with our unique blend of puppetry, dance and silent theatre.
Sugar Water Purple (SWP) is Austin’s first and only all-black male improv troupe. SWP is made up of actors, improvisers, writers, musicians and stand-up comedians, and was named Austin’s Best New Improv Troupe in 2017. Come kick it with dem boyz as they laugh in the face of soul crushing oppression.
Hot Pot Comedy is an all-Asian sketch comedy group composed of some of the city’s funniest Asian-Americans. The group boasts comics from multiple comedy Austin theaters as well as many different Asian ethnicities. Hot Pot Comedy performs regularly at Fallout Comedy Theater, as well as comedy festivals around the country. We are diverse AF, y’all.
Shannon Dale Stott presents an experimental improvisational piece entitled, Stott’s Project. Shannon is a professional improvisor of both comedic and dramatic improvisation. She has taught and performed improv for over 12 years and hails from Richmond, Virginia where she called Comedysportz her improv home. Besides teaching workshops, and regularly performing in mainstage improv shows in town, Shannon also performs with her duo troupe, Twins. Twins’ innovative format, It’s Okay to Laugh, is a funny, and sometimes deep, mix of improvised scenes and discussions which showcases the life and perspectives of one black woman through the body of a white man.
Adrian Villegas presents excerpts from his critically-acclaimed solo comedy, Barrio Daze. Set against a tumultuous national election, Barrio Daze is a sprawling and irreverent one-man tour through a single day in the barrio that mixes cultural humor with pointed social commentary for a fast-paced, laugh-out-loud funny portrait of Latino life in America. Adrian is the Artistic Director of the Latino Comedy Project, an Emmy-nominated sketch troupe known for their pitch-perfect satire.