AP Photo/George Walker IV Bert Kreischer introduces a performance by Shaboozey and Stephen Wilson Jr. during the 59th Annual Country Music Association Awards on Wednesday, Nov. 19, 2025, at Bridgestone Arena in Nashville, Tenn.

First hosted back in 1991 as the Lucille Ball Festival of New Comedy, the festival has changed a lot over the years. An early emphasis on live comedy gave way to remembrances of Lucille Ball on her birthday before a renewed focus on live comedy performances that has brought some of the most famous stand-up comedians in the country to Jamestown. This year is no different, with Bert Kreischer, Seth Meyers and Jerry Seinfeld headlining this 35th anniversary Lucille Ball Comedy Festival.

“I will say that to have a current late night host in Seth Meyers, coming to town is significant,” Gunderson told The Post-Journal this week. “(He’s) someone who is commanding airwaves night after night in a major audience. To have Bert Kreischer, one of the top selling standups in the world who also not only is hitting it out of the park with each standup special but also has now his own scripted series that’s a hit and a guy who has been called by Forbes one of the best storytellers of his generation, That’ s major statement. … And then to kick it all off with (Jerry Seinfeld), one of the best to ever play the game, the Babe Ruth of comedy, in one way and a guy who headlined our groundbreaking in 2015, it just feels like a really special year.”

Seinfeld’s performance is at 7 p.m. Thursday, Aug. 6, in the Northwest Arena. Kreischer will perform shows at 7 and 9:30 p.m. Saturday, Aug. 8, in the Northwest Arena and Meyers will perform at 5 p.m. Sunday, Aug. 9, in the Northwest Arena. The Stand-Up Showcase will take place at 7 p.m. Friday, Aug. 7, at the Reg Lenna Center for the Arts.

Seinfeld, returning for his second appearance in Jamestown, is among those who have returned to headline the Lucille Ball Comedy Festival. Gunderson noted there is no shortage of venues looking to host Seinfeld, and Seinfeld’s choice to return to Jamestown speaks volumes. And, other comics have said attending a Seinfeld performance is like attending a master class in comedy.

Journey Gunderson, executive director of the National Comedy Center, noted Bert Kreischer, one of this year’s Lucille Ball Comedy Festival headliners, as an example of a comedian who took a new path to comic stardom than many of those who came before him.

“The fact that he’s choosing on his calendar to come to Jamestown, N.Y., I think speaks to his love and shared reverence for the art form,” Gunderson said. “I think he shared that very much with our organization … He is a student of the craft who really appreciates the entirety of the art form and I think his return to Jamestown speaks to that synergetic reverence for this great art form that is deserving of this treatment, this reverence.”

Additional artists scheduled to appear include comedian, writer, producer and Emmy Award-winner Carol Leifer, whose credits include Seinfeld, Curb Your Enthusiasm, Saturday Night Live, Modern Family, and Hacks, plus America’s Got Talent finalist Gina Brillon (Jimmy Kimmel Live!, Late Night with Seth Meyers, NBC’s Stand up for Diversity Showcase), Ian Lara (The Tonight Show, Comedy Central, HBO MAX), Jenny Zigrino (CONAN, Comedy Central, MTV, Netflix is a Joke, HBO), and Drew Dunn (The Tonight Show, Dry Bar, Don’t Tell Comedy, Just For Laughs Comedy Festival), with more talent to be announced in the coming weeks at ComedyCenter.org/festival.

The festival will feature more than 50 live events over four days, including late-night comedy, block parties, live music and more – all part of a multi-day celebration of comedy’s contemporary voices and rising talent. The full festival lineup will be announced in the coming weeks at ComedyCenter.org/festival.

“I feel really grateful where we sit today in 2026,” Gunderson said this week. “Looking back on many years of really successful comedy festivals, this year (is) the most arena shows we’ve done in a festival and being able to couple the live comedy experience with traversing the only national archive and official museum for comedy. It feels incredible to be here knowing how daunting it felt and how far we would have to go back in 2011.”

GOING BACK IN TIME

Jerry Seinfeld attends the SNL50: The Homecoming Concert at Radio City Music Hall on Friday, Feb. 14, 2025, in New York. (Photo by Evan Agostini/Invision/AP)

It wasn’t always this way. The first Lucille Ball Festival of New Comedy took place in late May 1991 with comedians performing at several venues throughout the city, including the Cherry Lounge, the Marvin House, the former Holiday Inn on Fourth Street, among others. In addition to live performances – including Lewis Black, who has returned to the area for more recent iterations of the Lucille Ball Comedy Festival and is a member of the National Comedy Center board – there were comedy films and plays screened and performed in Jamestown during the initial festival. The initial festival was produced by New York City-based American Vaudeville Inc., a group that included on its board June Havoc, Tom Smothers and Art Carney.

In addition to Black, early performers who came to Jamestown included the Smothers Brothers, Ray Romano, Ellen DeGeneres and George Wallace.

An estimated 3,500 out-of-town visitors attended the festival based on sign-ins for a Fenton Historical Society Lucille Ball exhibit, the I Love Lucy television set exhibit at City Hall and charge card invoices.

“We definitely need to provide more Lucille Ball,” said Toni Vesotski, who coordinated the initial Lucille Ball Festival of New Comedy in a July 1991 article recapping the festival. “Even though this is a festival of new comedy, because we’re using Lucy’s name, many people came here to see more Lucy. Next year, we’ll give it to them.”

Over time, the festivals became all about Lucille Ball – costume contests, trivia, appearances by those who knew or worked with Lucille Ball.

Seth Meyers attends the PEN America Literary Gala at The American Museum of Natural History on Thursday, May 14, 2026, in New York. (Photo by Andy Kropa/Invision/AP)

‘A WILD RIDE’

That 2011 festival coincided with what would have been Lucille Ball’s 100th birthday. By the 20th anniversary of the Comedy Festival, Gunderson, shortly after being hired as the new executive director of the Lucille Ball-Desi Arnaz Center, and the center’s board decided to return to the festival’s live performance roots.

“It marked a shift back to Lucille Ball and her family’s original intention for the festival and Jamestown, which was that it be a destination for all comedy,” Gunderson said. “At the time in 2011 when we booked Joan Rivers that felt like a pivot from what had been happening in the years just prior, which had been more tailored specifically to I Love Lucy fans and had become less of a comedy festival than its early days had been. … That year, 2011, which was my first, was a big one for so many reasons including using it as a platform moment to say to the world that our intention was to build a National Comedy Center in Jamestown, N.Y., and we were setting forth to do so in a really focused way.”

In addition to Joan Rivers, that 2011 festival included a headline performance by Paula Poundstone, who had also performed in Jamestown during the early days of the Lucille Ball Festival of New Comedy, and many up-and-coming comics. There were still events for I Love Lucy fans, too, including a chance for visitors to participate in the “Be A Lucy” attempt to break a Guinness World Record; appearances by leading Lucy, Ricky, Fred and Ethel impersonators and photo opportunities with them on “I Love Lucy” show sets; a silent auction of collectibles (including some of Lucy’s and husband Desi Arnaz’s personal possessions); and appearances by guests with close ties to the show. The 2012 festival brought Billy Gardell, who was at that time starring on Mike and Molly on CBS, to Jamestown with performances including Lucie Arnaz, Tony Deyo, Story Pirates and others. Opening ceremonies were hosted by comedienne Tammy Pescatelli with events including a Lucy costume contest, a Lucy Loop race and the largest I Love Lucy trivia contest ever held.

“Every year the festival has had something special that also made all of it feel like we were climbing one more rung on the ladder. Every year it felt like we were building upon what we had done the year before,” Gunderson said.

Bert Kreischer

Fast forward to 2015, and the yearly festival took another step forward. Nick Offerman, Melissa Rivers, Kelly Carlin and the Story Pirates kids-comedy show joined Jerry Seinfeld as featured performers for the 2015 festival. Melissa River, the children of Harold Ramis and Kelly Carlin, daughters of Joan Rivers and George Carlin respectively, took part in a Comedy Roundtable on July 31 hosted by Regis Philbin, prior to Offerman’s show. The discussion will feature an in-depth look at the careers of comedic greats, as well as the impact of their contributions to modern culture. Kelly Carlin brought her one woman show, Carlin Home Companion: Growing Up With George, to Jamestown while the stand up showcase featured rising comedians including Beth Stelling, Pete Lee and Pat McGann.

The festival also included a panel discussion of the entire creative team from David Letterman’s Late Night show in the immediate aftermath of Letterman’s retirement. The 2015 festival also marked the groundbreaking of the National Comedy Center.

“It felt like everything was growing and coming together in this great blend of the best of contemporary comedy, just straight performance of it and appreciating the art form but also reflecting on it, these legacy programs where these programs felt like they embodied what the National Comedy Center museum would eventually do in showing reverence for this art form and these artists. Every year of the festival since 2011 started to feel more and more like it embodied what we wanted the museum institution and national archive to do. It was a living breathing version of the brick and mortar attraction we were conceiving along the way,” Gunderson said.

WITH APOLOGIES TO CONAN O’BRIEN …

IN THE YEAR 2036

The Lucille Ball Comedy Festival doesn’t look to be slowing down any time soon. This year, Gunderson called particular attention to two performances by Kreischer, a comic who didn’t need traditional forms of exposure to generate an audience. Kreischer is an opportunity to let loose and take part in a high-energy, party-esque atmosphere.

“I think we all could use some of that right now,” Gunderson said. “I encourage people to check out, again, a guy who has been called the greatest story teller of a generation and a person people frequently say, you walk out of the show saying, ‘I just spent the evening with the funniest guy I ever met.’ It’s an invitation to come and have an absolute blast, bring your friends and family and just cut loose.”

An artist like Kreischer may not have been filling arenas in 2016, Gunderson said, because he hadn’t previously been on television. Seinfeld appeared on television often through stand-up specials and regular appearances on Johnny Carson’s late night show before his Seinfeld show hit the airwaves. Seth Meyers has been a regular in late night writers’ rooms prior to his stint as the Weekend Update anchor on Saturday Night Live and later as a late-night television show host. Kreischer took a different path – and it may provide a glimpse into the future of Lucille Ball Comedy Festivals.

There was a time when comedy was limited to stage and screen. As the National Comedy Center highlights with its exhibit on comedians’ use of social media, the internet has provided a way for comedy to reach the masses without the middleman of traditional media.

“Bert Kreischer is a symbol of the way this festival and institution will continue to evolve right align with the art form in that he has built his audience through content platforms and podcasting and great storytelling,” Gunderson said. “It’s almost like the new guard and a new generation in this art form. I hope our lineups and our programming continue to showcase the comedic voices that are finding voices however they may be finding it 10 years from now. It might be in ways we can’t even identify today or in ways that don’t exist today the way the media is changing. It’s fascinating. One thing we know for certain is that funny voices have a way of finding an audience somehow … It’s fun to imagine what that could look like 10 years from now. It’s also hard to imagine what that’s going to look like 10 years from now.”