With the Belly Laughs Festival, an ambitious Asian American and Pacific Islander-centered comedy festival, the food is as important as the talent line-up. Every detail is intended to send a message of unabashed cultural pride.
“It’s like we grew up kind of shying away and hiding our Asian-ness,” said Viv Wang, a volunteer festival producer with Coalition of Asian Pacifics in Entertainment, or CAPE, who helped conceive the idea for the event. “It just made a lot of sense to have comedy and food — these two ways that people can connect and just celebrate being Asian and having a place to feel cool to be Asian.”
For one weekend, Belly Laughs is mounting an unprecedented gathering of 30 AAPI stand-up comics — from headliners to newer scene-stealers — in downtown Los Angeles. There will also be 20 food and beverage vendors set up in the spirit of a Taiwanese night market. The L.A. Live entertainment complex will be a playground where ticketholders can watch marquee names like Kumail Nanjiani and Margaret Cho, while simultaneously enjoying anything from biriyani to boba.
With federal immigration crackdowns nationwide, the participating comedians — most hailing from immigrant families — are being thoughtful about striking the right balance of politics and humor.
Festival to whet appetites for the funny and food
Organizers, including Nederlander Concerts and Gold House, are aiming to draw between 6,000 to 8,000 people over the two-day tentpole event. are still available. Comedians will be split between two stages. The entertainers lending their star power include several comics-turned-actors like Hasan Minhaj, Bobby Lee, Joel Kim Booster and Sherry Cola. A majority of the talent also identifies as LGBTQ+. It’s an impressive statement in an industry that has historically tried to put Asian comedians in boxes and often relegated them to
Asif Ali, one of the stars of the new Hulu series “Deli Boys,” has never taken part in any AAPI-focused event save an occasional comedy club night or as part of a mainstream festival. But Asian American comics were never the main event for an audience of thousands. So there was no hesitation on Ali’s part to join in the festival.
“Just to be a part of something like this was so cool,” said Ali, who performs Sunday. “To have it be of this scope and in LA and have it tied in with food — which I think is such a slam dunk — is great.”
Comedian and writer Hari Kondabolu called it “our Lollapalooza.”
“Like I don’t know if people understand ... I don’t know if this will happen every year, if it will happen again. But like this is a pretty cool moment in time to be a part of something like this,” Kondabolu said.
MAMA, a community group dedicated to promoting immigrants and their cultures through night markets, is the curator of the event’s food stalls. There will be no national restaurant chains. But an array of Asian cultures will be represented — Indonesian, Malaysian, Singaporean and Chinese among them.
“They’re completely different because they’re very conscientious and focused on immigrant-owned businesses, first gen businesses,” Wang said. “All of the food has a story.”
Organizers vow festival will not be impacted by feds
Putting on a new festival is never easy but the timing of current events has made it a “helluva year” to do it, said Wang. Los Angeles residents have been on edge since Immigration and Customs Enforcement raids erupted in and around downtown in June. Ensuing protests prompted curfews and event cancellations. in a largely immigrant neighborhood.
For those who might be worried about an ICE presence around the festival, organizers plan to “make sure that people will be kept safe,” said CAPE executive director Michelle Sugihara, noting L.A. Live is private property.
It’s a good bet that the political turmoil in Los Angeles and beyond will be fodder for the comedians. Ali, who took part in protests last month, doesn’t plan to shy away from it. While the federal government’s immigration policies are no laughing matter, he sees comedy as a way to keep attention on the issue.
“I think our job as comedians is to remind people that things that are happening are terrible,” Ali said. “You’re not laughing at something happening. You’re laughing at sort of the insanity of it all.”
Some people may struggle with going out and eating and laughing at a time of conflict around Los Angeles. But festival organizers and comedians insist that having a good time doesn’t mean forgetting about the issues.
“Now more than ever, being around people for whatever reason — whether it’s to protest, whether it’s to help, whether it’s to laugh or grieve ... I think it’s pretty safe to say it’s always better to be in the company of like-minded people,” Ali said. “People need to feel that they’re not alone.”
Why having an AAPI-focused festival matters
There have been times when Ali felt like an Asian American comic who references his culture even briefly gets branded “that guy who just talks about being Asian.” Something like Belly Laughs shows how reductive that thinking is, he said.
It’s also comforting for comedians like him to see how many peers have found success.
“When you are in spaces where you aren’t the majority or even a larger-sized minority, I think it’s important for people to know that they are normal,” Ali said. “The effect of festivals like this is that it makes all those comics who feel like that, who feel that pressure — myself included — to look around and to see a whole lineup of people and to watch their sets and listen to their material.”
The festival is a long overdue celebration of how today’s AAPI comics are not dealing with the stereotyping and limits as their predecessors, Sugihara said. The Belly Laughs roster reflects that spectrum. Take Cho, 56, who Asian American comedians consider “Mother,” alongside comedians in their 20s.
“For us, it is about the whole lifecycle of an entertainment career,” Sugihara said. “That’s whether you’re emerging or you’re a veteran, and all of us can be a community together and help each other.”
The hope is that there will be a demand to do this next year as a complement to the biennial Netflix Is A Joke Fest. Sugihara has already heard from people in other states such as Hawaii who want to duplicate Belly Laughs.
