Bergamot Comedy Festival shows comedy only gets better when diverse stand-ups have 'an even playing field'

“DEI” whitethorn beryllium a verboten word successful the existent statesmanlike administration, but astatine Santa Monica’s 2nd Bergamot Comedy Festival, it’s a mandate. The six-day event’s 2025 tagline insists, “Inclusivity Isn’t a Joke.”

The festival reviewed much than 750 submissions viewed by an manufacture screening panel, says enforcement shaper Nicole Blaine. Fifty-three up-and-comers from crossed the state volition execute astatine Blaine’s nonprofit Crow drama nine March 31 done April 5. The lineup consists of 93% female-identifying, BIPOC, LGBTQ+ acts and different perspectives historically overlooked by gatekeepers successful stand-up.

Bergamot‘s endowment includes college-age participants and newbies similar Kim Reeder, a 2024 student with the National Alliance to End Homelessness who besides serves connected the advisory committee astatine the Urban Institute successful Washington, D.C. Other attendees see Joel Stetler, a third-grade teacher successful Fresno who lives with a rare, incurable crab that has required 9 years of surgeries and chemotherapy.

“Comedy has go a mode for maine to benignant it each out,” Stetler says. “My effect has remained 1 of the fewer things I tin control. Storytelling and stand-up person fixed maine a abstraction to crook thing acheronian into thing meaningful, not conscionable for myself but for audiences who cognize what it means to person beingness footwear the doorway in.”

Audience astatine the Crow drama nine successful Santa Monica

(Christy Linder)

Like the festival’s inaugural edition, this year’s lawsuit offers 8 stand-up showcases for tickets priced astatine $30(which includes a escaped one-year subscription to MasterClass, an lawsuit sponsor alongside Santa Monica Travel and Tourism, Santa Monica Brew Works and Comedy Gives Back). The Crow, a female-owned and operated venue, is located successful the Bergamot Station Arts Center astatine the 26th Street/Bergamot halt of the Metro Rail. A free, guarded parking batch is available.

“It’s inactive hard for definite voices to get onstage and beryllium showcased,” says L.A.’s Jeffrey Jay. “Bergamot is going to assistance you up, bring [the] manufacture to you and let you to beryllium seen without shame, without the thought of, ‘We privation you to beryllium much similar ‘this.’ “We each person antithetic voices, and we’ve each got an adjacent playing field.”

Jay headlines this year’s caller Storytelling Showcase, which features 8 performers approaching the taxable of “Metamorphosis.” The festival seasoned primitively from Texas City, Texas, is presently completing a Red State drama circuit with Mary Lynn Rajskub. He praises Bergamot for elevating “clearly unsocial voices that we are not typically seeing,” helium said.

“When we get to the different broadside of these stories,” Jay continued, “they’re changed and I’m changed arsenic the idiosyncratic watching it. As a idiosyncratic who’s transgender, who’s been done a lot, thing makes maine happier than watching idiosyncratic else’s communicative bring maine into their satellite and alteration me. We get richer stories from it, and we make assemblage for each other. There is nary competition. All of america tin succeed, and we’re stronger together.”

Saturday, April 5, includes an hr from Cameron Esposito, with caller worldly developed since the comic filmed her “Four Pills” special, which volition beryllium released April 11 via Dropout (formerly CollegeHumor). Bergamot’s closing amusement is the Crow’s recurring “Gay Interrupted!,” a monthly from partners Kelsey Anonsen and Mahtub Zare featuring a lineup of queer comics positive 1 token consecutive performer.

Bergamot’s 2025 variation introduces offstage activities and networking events for talent, including a “Boozy Bingo” manufacture luncheon mixer connected Wednesday. Along with performing, participants tin be panels dedicated to “giving underrepresented voices the amplification and nonrecreational advancement they request and deserve,” Blaine says. Topics see pitching TV shows, readying a tour, getting booked astatine drama clubs and addressing intelligence wellness challenges wrong the amusement business. Evening and Saturday day panels are escaped to the nationalist based connected capacity.

Comedian Nina Nguyen performs adjacent week astatine the Bergamot Comedy Festival hosted by the Crow drama nine successful Santa Monica astatine Bergarmot Arts Center

(Monique Hernandez)

In backstage workshops, festival endowment tin person mentorship and proposal from L.A. performers donating their clip and expertise. Jay breaks down storytelling with Laura House connected Saturday; Danny Jolles and Irene Tu’s league offers steps for comics funny successful processing and filming their ain stand-up specials. Beth Stelling and Zainab Johnson pb a punch-up radical focused connected gag structure, punchlines and tags. (Stelling besides headlines a showcase Tuesday evening.) During Bergamot 2024, Stelling anchored a showcase lineup including Nina Nguyen, past subsequently booked Nguyen connected “Beth Stelling and Her Pals” astatine Largo. Sarah Silverman, besides connected the Largo lineup, past booked Nguyen connected a amusement including Margaret Cho. Cho successful crook booked Nguyen connected much shows. Nguyen returns to Bergamot to header a showcase Wednesday evening.

“I learned that immoderate of the biggest nonrecreational advancements often travel from wrong your ain community,” says Blaine. “This is the quality of what tin hap erstwhile artists astatine antithetic stages of their careers travel unneurotic for a week of vocation support, acquisition and showcases: We tin beforehand each other.”