Interview: Indie Producer Lauren Mandel on the About to Bust Festival

If I lived in New York City, which I do, and if I loved comedy, which I do with caveats, there are two things I would see this weekend. The first, on Saturday at the Chocolate Factory, is About to Bust, a new comedy festival hosted by the comedian and actor Holmes. The second, on Sunday at Life World, is the comedian Jessy Morner-Ritt’s Female Documentarian, a live show in which she makes a new documentary in real time, with the audience’s help. 

Why these shows? One, because I’ve been a fan of Holmes ever since I watched them on the short-lived Paul Feig–helmed mockumentary series Welcome to Flatch. Two, because About to Bust has an interesting and varied lineup of some of the funniest comics working today—standups, improvisers, variety performers, the works—including Mary Beth Barone, Esther Fallick, and Asha Ward. Three, because Morner-Ritt is a friend whose work I’ve admired for almost a decade, and I’ve heard great things about her new show from various mutual friends in LA. Four, and finally, because both the festival and Life World are interested in creating a space for alternative, formally daring work from a wider diversity of artists than you’ll find in traditional spaces. Which is what the Humorism newsletter is all about.

With that in mind, I’m happy to share an interview with Lauren Mandel, founder of Disco Nap, the company behind About to Bust. Her producing career dates back to the halcyon days of the 2010s alt-comedy boom. At UCB, she worked on the popular show Night Late; as a writers' assistant at SNL from 2016 to 2019, she started putting together comedy shows for colleagues hungry for a creative outlet beyond the walls of 30 Rock. At Disco Nap, her collaborators include Julio Torres, Devon Walker, Caleb Hearon, and Matt Rogers and Bowen Yang. 

Below you will find my conversation with Mandel about the About to Bust festival, her own journey to becoming an independent comedy producer, and what she learned working at SNL. Tune back in later this week for my chat with Jessy Morner-Ritt about Female Documentarian.

Let's start at the beginning. Tell me the story of About to Bust—why this festival, why now?

Lauren Mandel: About to Bust is an idea that Holmes came to us with at Disco Nap. We had worked with them on a show we produced for Catherine Cohen, Kitty Cat Christmas. Holmes had just moved to New York, and after, we were like, what else can we do together? And Holmes had this idea, which was inspired by watching the Lilith Fair documentary. Funny enough, we also had that thought, and so did apparently Olivia Rodrigo, if you've looked at her Daisy Chain festival. I think it moved all of us. I was like, god, I wish this existed for comedy, and apparently we were aligned on that. So this was Holmes's vision, and we just wanted a day of summer joy featuring all the comedians that truly make us bust, whatever that word means to you.

Does the festival have an ethos? What makes it different from other festivals?

Yeah, I mean, I don't know if I've ever been to a festival in Brooklyn featuring a lineup of entirely women and non-binary people. We have one male comic on the lineup that we've let slide. We want them to close it down, have the last word. But truly these are the people that we think are the funniest right now in New York, in a space that's not a traditional comedy club. We're doing this in a space where we can curate a very joyous summer dance party flash-tat haven. 

Tell me a bit about your own background and how you started Disco Nap.

So I came up through the NBC Page Program, and after that I was hired at SNL. I was super involved at UCB. I was producing shows for anyone that would let me, specifically a show called Night Late. It was a late night talk show where every episode we invited a different celebrity to have a talk show that we would build around them and whatever they were passionate about. Whether that was Ziwe, who wanted a late night show all about Housewives, or we had Brooke Shields come, and she just wanted to show different sides of her personality, one of which included rapping.

Then we did a pilot presentation of that show for NBC. So after I left SNL, I was running a show back in 30 Rock. That is really what launched me into this independent producing path. And whether I was getting paid or not, I've always treated my producing job the same. I started reaching out while I was at SNL to all the comics that I was supporting as the writers’ assistant. And I wanted everyone to know, my title was writers’ assistant, but I did not want to be a writer. I just want to work with writers.

So a lot of them were like, "Well, I have a script you can read," or, "I've always wanted to do a standup show, but I don't know where." And so I started curating places where the comics I loved working with and loved watching could do a show on a Monday night, whether it was the Jane Hotel or the Freehand. So those ended up scaling as the stars of the talent that I was working with were rising.

Matt Rogers, actually, was the sidekick in that pilot that I did for NBC. So that was how I first knew Matt. But when Matt and Bowen got approached to do a show at Lincoln Center based on all of these nominees they had announced on their podcast, they came to me. At the time, I was producing the MTV Movie Awards, and so we really just built a format for what became the Las Culturistas Culture Awards. And after doing that for two years at Lincoln Center, I was like, "Ah! Now I have all these people that I've had to get to know and hire and build infrastructure and also make sure they're supported." And that was when I was like, "I have a company, because a lot of people are asking to work at it, and I need to make sure it's set up to protect the people that it works with." We did the Culture Awards for another year at Kings Theatre, and by that point I was off to the races with Disco Nap.

I think the second piece I ever wrote as a journalist was about a Sex and the City parody that Matt and Bowen and Julio and a bunch of other comics were doing at the Bell House. I like that you've made a space for so many of the artists who it seemed were the promise of the alt boom of the 2010s, and who have lately taken a cultural backseat to more… to be frank, Trump supporter comics.

I'm so proud of the stuff I get to work on. And I feel the same way. It's like I was in the audience watching those folks. The reason I started producing Catherine Cohen's show at Club Cumming is I was such a fan. I booked her to host Night Late, and then afterwards I was like, "Who produces your show? It looks like a lot of work." And she was like, "No one. It is a lot of work." I was like, "Can I do it?" So truly just being a fan and just supporting these shows so I could attend these shows is how I got into it. And now, it's taken me to a lot of different things, which I'm very proud of in my showrunning career in addition to my career as a founder of Disco Nap.

I have to ask about your work at SNL, which is famously a grueling place to work and also one of the few places where young, untested writers and the people around them get a lot of creative freedom and resources. I wonder what you learned there and what you've taken with you.

I was so lucky. I sat behind Don Roy King, who directed the show while I was there, for three years, every Thursday to Saturday. And I would be in that chair behind him as every single writer and cast member that was supervising a certain sketch got to come in and give notes on hair, makeup, wardrobe, lighting, graphics, timing, everything, camera shots. And I sat there watching these talents do their thing. The control room, by the way, is the heartbeat of the show. That's really where so many decisions are made on any show you work on.

It wasn't until I got to run my own pilot that I realized how much I'd taken in. And what I love about live television is you really can't overthink it. You can only prepare so much. And then it is instinct, and it's gut, and it's relying on what you already know. And having been able to bring so many of the people that I met from SNL onto that show, who really trusted me and believed in me, and then getting to put all of those things I learned to the test, that was when I realized how much I'd absorbed and taken in. It really was the best training ground, and I'm very lucky to still work with so many of those people, but also to have gone and done a lot of other things where I've been able to bring that certain skillset to other projects I work on.

And just to round it out: what's making you laugh lately, what are you looking forward to? Have you seen Cat's new show?

Yes, I just saw it on Saturday. That definitely made me bust. Cat's show was amazing and just so incredible to see. I've seen her working on this material for a few years. The topic of the show is that she had a stroke, and I remember when that actually happened—I think I might've been also trying to go to Fringe that summer. I'm so happy with what she has created and to see the production value that it deserves. I mean, Alex Timbers working with her on it. The lighting was spectacular, the set. Kelsey Randall did the wardrobe. And David Dabbon, who does the music, I worked with him on Culture Awards, I'm so proud of what she's built with that. It just got extended, which is so great, and I wish she could be at the festival.

Mary Beth Barone's special came out today. It looked beautiful, the creative direction on it was incredible. We're excited to have Mary Beth with us on Saturday for the festival. It should be fun.

And Holmes, Holmes always makes me bust. Even in our daily production meetings, somehow they always find a way to make me laugh.

About to Bust is on Saturday, August 1st at the Chocolate Factory in Brooklyn.