March 2026
This free monthly digest is but a humble filter for the relentless firehose of original comedy content in today's evolving media landscape. 😇
Hi, everyone who opens this email! Hope you’re having a great start to your week.
And if you’re not? That is understandable. If that is the case, I encourage especially you to check out some of the comedy linked below. I genuinely believe it will put you in a better mood. (And let us not forget: that, is what comedy is all about.)
Festivals
SXSW has announced it’s 2026 Comedy Festival lineup. The programming is curated around name recognizable (and largely digital) presenting comedy brands like Don’t Tell, Dropout, Funny or Die, Reductress, and more. Good news: there are noticeably more emerging voices than ever appearing in the festival this year, as SXSW’s new Director of Comedy Sam Schles says: “This year’s lineup celebrates where comedy is headed.” 😍
Netflix is a Joke Festival also announced a ton of added shows and headliners this past week — here is the list of artists. With the sheer quantity (and vast taste range) of comedians appearing in the week-long fest, one of the funniest jokes Netflix is telling right now is how everyone looks juxtaposed on the website. The below talent listings appear (to me, hilariously) side-by-side — that said, I’d like to submit these nine as my All-Comedy Hollywood Squares:
New York
RIP, CYSK. The weekly show will end in April, after 10 years.
The upcoming David Cross workout shows at Union Hall are sold out, but since it’s an eclectic list of some of New York’s best rising talent, here are the openers you can expect to see during the run: Karli Marulli, Gracie Hirsch, Maddy Kelly, Matt Koff, Tatiana Frank, Kate Willett, Ike Ufomadu, Jonathan van Halem, Dan Docimo, David Drake, Emily Wirth and Charlie Flynn.
Botnik Studios has been creating comedy that plays with AI technology (in a non-evil way) for nearly a decade, but I just heard about their new live project: Robot Karaoke. With bi-coastal monthly shows at Wonderville in New York and the Elysian in LA, I’m just curious: who wants to go with me and try this out?
Los Angeles
Speaking of LA theater1, the Elysian’s Spaghetti Fest has extended it’s application deadline to March 20th. Weirdo comedians who procrastinate: rejoice!
This year’s UCB house character showcases — AKA Betty Night — have been over-the-top, original and hard hitting. This group is clearly pushing the bounds of solo sketch, together, as a self-emboldening team of risk-taking peers. Each month’s show gets more confident in it’s outlandishness — a dynamic that historically results in the development of incredible talent. Jenson Titus and Chelsea Morgan are consistently standout.
One of the coolest live shows I got to check out in February was a presentation of a new musical called Three Months Later, written by Jess McKenna and Zach Reino (the duo behind Off-Book the Musical) with David Wain (who also directed). On top of it being a tight and timely original story, I have to say, I laaaaughed, you guys. Potentially harder than at any recent contemporary musical I’ve ever seen. With Kristen Bell attached as the lead and The Wolves of Glendale serving as the band (and narrators), this production is is a hard funny show (with an intelligent, beating heart) that simply must be en route to Broadway.
Happy Awards Season! Short of the Week announced their 2026 Short Awards Winners last week — “recognizing the most innovative and exciting short films released online over the past year.” (Not for nothing, their winning Comedy Short was featured in the October 2025 newsletter, so you can read about it there.) Worth noting is that this year’s best Dramatic Short, Far Away, is a tearjerker despite itself; created by a group of rising filmmakers better known for their comedy. Alyssa Limperis gives an understated and somber performance with a supporting turn from Caroline Cotter that will truly wreck you (mind you, these are two of the most convincingly and deeply silly performers at UCB since the 2010’s). Together with their truly promising director and writer Emily Murnane, they crafted an incredibly affecting story on what had to be little to no budget.
All-time newsletter favorite Skyler Higley launched a new show with DSP Studios, called The Help Me Be Black Podcast. The commenters all agree with his first guest, Niles Abston: this is the funniest premise for a podcast (potentially ever.)
Michael Longfellow quietly published the first episode in a new shortform series this morning: Order of the Void. The pitch: it’s what Subway Takes would look like if Julio Torres directed it, hosted by Longfellow doing a dang Wizard of Oz over a guest comedian who seems to be stuck in a… well, void.
Yedoye Travis’s Fatherless Behavior was independently produced over the last year and recently released on YouTube. It’s shot in a way that makes you feel like you are in Union Hall (so, good) and it’s equally challenging and funny to listen to Yedoye work through the ideas that culminate in his saying we ought to divest art from money entirely — just to thank the audience for paying to be there. (Big ideas with funny conclusions? My favorite.)
Standup Lucas O’Neil — whose debut special Emotional Man2 was released by 800 Pound Gorilla a few weeks ago — recently shared a brilliant sketch about what it feels like, as an artist, to feed your work to the internet:
The next few weeks are going to be positively littered with premium articles investigating current trends in how comedians are creating media, finding an audience, and making them laugh:
A conversation about the evolving model of self-financed indie TV, and where there might be upside in how the onus is currently on creators to prove concept by reaching their own audience.
Canadian comedians — who are they and what do they want? (JK — this is gonna be a list of Canadian comedians I’ve been obsessed with recently.)
A discussion about Nebula, a subscription-based streamer that is currently financing and platforming live comedy formats for digital.
If this kind of thing is for you: consider getting that premium subscription! (If it’s any incentive, this past week was my birthday…)
I can’t spell it “theatre,” I’m sorry. I just can’t.
Full disclosure: I was a producer on this special!