Los Angeles has the largest Armenian community outside of Armenia, so it follows that it also has the densest concentration of Armenian comedy anywhere in the diaspora. Some of it happens in clubs in North Hollywood and Glendale. Some of it happens in theaters in Armenian, in front of audiences who laugh at jokes that would not translate. A lot of it now happens on a phone screen.
Here are five Armenian comedians working in and around Los Angeles right now, what each one actually does, and where to find them.
1. Jack Jr
Jack Assadourian Jr. was born and raised in Glendale to an Armenian father and a Mexican mother, and that combination is the engine of most of his act. His parents own the HaHa Comedy Club in North Hollywood, so he has been around working comedians since he was a kid and has been producing shows there since 2013.
Live, he is a crowd work comedian. He talks to the room, and his shows regularly turn into on stage matchmaking between strangers in the audience. He also runs monthly Armenian and Mexican comedy dinner shows at The Brandy in Glendale, which is exactly the kind of room where both halves of his material land at once.
He has played sold out sets at the Netflix Is a Joke Festival, appeared on Amazon Prime Video's Laugh After Dark, taped a special at the Alex Theatre in Glendale, hosts the Comedy Club Confessions podcast, and has toured Armenia with sold out shows in Yerevan.
Follow: Instagram · jackjrcomic.com
2. Antic
Arman Margarian, who performs as Antic, is the comedian your cousins send you. His short videos run on precise observation of Armenian family life, weddings, and the small frictions between Armenians from different countries, and individual clips routinely pull tens of thousands of views.
What sets him apart is range of language. He moves between Western and Eastern Armenian, which almost nobody in Armenian comedy does, and it lets one video land with a Beirut Armenian household and a Yerevan household at the same time. He also does character work, including a much loved Iranian Armenian mother.
Beyond the phone screen he performs live, both solo and with the Los Angeles Armenian sketch collective Demq, and he has taken shows to Armenian communities well outside California, from Florida to Australia. He also hosts a long form interview podcast.
Follow: Instagram
3. Mary Basmadjian
Mary Basmadjian has been working the Los Angeles comedy circuit for over a decade, and she is probably the most widely recognized Armenian woman in stand-up right now. She grew up in Hollywood and Pasadena and plays rooms like Flappers Comedy Club and the El Portal Theatre.
Most people find her through Vartoush Tota, the character she built and never really put down. Vartoush is the Armenian auntie, in full, speaking colloquial Eastern Armenian, delivering opinions nobody asked for. The character works because the specifics are exact, which is also why it travels so well through the community.
Her special Funny Armenian Girl came out in 2024 through Comedy Dynamics and streams on Amazon Prime Video and Apple TV. She has since launched a one woman show and co hosts the Medz Mamas Podcast, which is built around the generation of women who came before.
Follow: Instagram · TikTok · marybasmadjiancomedy.com
4. Vahe Berberian
Vahe Berberian is the elder statesman of Armenian comedy in Los Angeles, and the one who does not fit neatly into the word comedian. He was born in Beirut in 1955 to a family of genocide survivors, moved to the United States in 1977, and has been based in Los Angeles ever since.
His form is the solo comedic monologue, performed in Armenian, usually about ninety minutes of him alone on a stage taking apart ordinary moments in relationships, family, and diaspora life until they are funny. He has written and performed seven of them: Yevaylen, Nayev, Dagaveen, Sagayn, Yete, Ooremn and Payts. Clips from them pull six figure view counts on YouTube.
He is also a novelist, a playwright, and a painter who has exhibited at more than thirty venues, and he co wrote, co directed and starred in the 2016 film Three Weeks in Yerevan. If you only know Armenian comedy through short videos, this is the other end of the spectrum.
Follow: Instagram
5. Lory Tatoulian
Lory Tatoulian is a sketch and character comedian, and she is the person most responsible for putting Armenian sketch comedy on an actual stage. She performs and teaches at The Groundlings in Los Angeles, the theater that trained a large share of American sketch comedy.
Her best known work is The Big Bad Armo Show, a live sketch revue that holds a funhouse mirror up to the Armenian American community. It has toured nationally and played Off Broadway at Symphony Space in New York. Her character Sossi Hayrabedian, a Pasadena hairdresser working in Western Armenian dialect, has been singled out by LA Weekly for leaving audiences in tears.
She has also written for animated features at Warner Bros. and Sony, received a National Endowment for the Arts grant, and been featured on NPR and PBS and in the Los Angeles Times.
Follow: Instagram · lorytatoulian.com
Also Worth Following
James Adomian is an Armenian American stand up and impressionist based in Los Angeles, best known for political character work, a long run as George W. Bush on The Late Late Show, and roles on Our Cartoon President and Harley Quinn. His Armenian heritage is a quieter part of his public persona, but the comedy credits are the deepest on this page.
Armen Weitzman is an LA raised improviser and comedic actor of Armenian and Jewish descent, a regular at the Upright Citizens Brigade, with credits including Another Period, Silicon Valley, GLOW and Veep.
Where to Actually See Them
If you want to catch Armenian comedy live in Los Angeles, the reliable places to look are HaHa Comedy Club in North Hollywood, Flappers Comedy Club in Burbank, The Groundlings in Hollywood, the El Portal Theatre in North Hollywood, and the Alex Theatre in Glendale. Most of these comedians announce dates on Instagram first, so following them is the fastest way to know when something is happening.
Armenian shows also pop up around community events and fundraisers, which do not always get listed on the venues' own calendars. We track those on the SupportArmenian events calendar.
Know an Armenian comedian in Los Angeles we should be watching? Tell us and we will take a look.