National Comedy Center Puts Off Festival till 2021, Announces Museum Will Reopen This Summer
National Comedy Center Announces Rescheduling of 30th Annual Lucille Ball Comedy Festival to August 2021
Today the National Comedy Center announced that this year’s Lucille Ball Comedy Festival will be postponed until next year, August 2021. This year’s festival was to be the 30th annual, making 2020 the first year since 1991 without a Lucille Ball Comedy Festival in Jamestown.
The festival was originally scheduled for August 5-9, 2020, and will be rescheduled for the same weekend in 2021: August 4-8, 2021, in order to ensure the health and safety of festival attendees, staff and volunteers. This precautionary measure was taken in consideration of CDC, federal, state and regional guidelines for the presentation of large group events.
This year’s scheduled headliner, Jeff Foxworthy has been rescheduled for Friday, August 6, 2021 and the Legends of SNL: David Spade, Kevin Nealon and Rob Schneider performance has been rescheduled for Saturday, August 7, 2021. All other events have also been rescheduled for the corresponding day and time in 2021. A schedule of events is available at ComedyCenter.org/Festival. More festival events will be added in the coming months.
If you’ve already purchased your tickets you have a few options. If you do nothing, your tickets will automatically roll over to the 2021 festival. Those who want a full refund have through July 15 to request a full refund for tickets, or you have the option to donate the value of your tickets to the non-profit National Comedy Center as a tax-deductible contribution during this critical time. You can also exchange the value of their tickets for a National Comedy Center gift card to be used for admission, membership, future event tickets or merchandise.
Ticket holders can select their preferred option via the Comedy Center’s Ticketing form at ComedyCenter.org/TicketForm.
Festival and National Comedy Center Director Journey Gunderson made the announcement today. “It is with tremendous sadness that we make the difficult decision to reschedule our Lucille Ball Comedy Festival – for the first time in our nearly 30 year history,” she said. “We are grateful for the patience, understanding and continued support of our festival attendees, sponsors, volunteers and staff, and our Jamestown and Chautauqua County community during this challenging time.”
“We do not make this decision lightly, understanding that our annual festival draws attendees from over 40 U.S. states and not only has a direct effect on the revenue of our non-profit cultural institution but also affects the business of local hotels, restaurants, attractions and event venues, and retailers throughout our community. We look forward to presenting an outstanding comedy festival experience here in Jamestown in August 2021, as we officially celebrate the festival’s 30th anniversary.”
Those wishing to purchase new tickets for 2021 festival events, including Jeff Foxworthy and Legends of SNL, without holding existing tickets for 2020, can do so by visiting ComedyCenter.org/Festival beginning Monday, June 15th.
Although the festival will not be taking place this summer in Jamestown as originally planned, the National Comedy Center will continue bringing comedy fans together virtually by presenting a series of online programs and streaming comedy events throughout the summer, including programming to be streamed during the original comedy festival weekend. These events will debut on the Comedy Center’s new online content platform, National Comedy Center Anywhere. Look for more details on the Comedy Center website and social media platforms in the coming weeks.
As a further precaution during the COVID-19 crisis, the National Comedy Center will be cancelling its “Comedy Under the Stars” free outdoor movie night series for 2020, which was to feature ten film comedies presented for the local community and museum visitors on the Comedy Center’s jumbo video screens on select Fridays throughout the summer and early fall. The Comedy Center plans to reschedule this series for 2021.
The National Comedy Center does plan to re-open its state-of-the-art comedy museum and Lucille Ball Desi Arnaz Museum this summer with enhanced health, cleaning, disinfecting and social distancing protocols — reimagining museum health and safety with the same spirit, commitment and leading-edge technology with which it reinvented the museum visitor experience — once Western New York is given the green light to re-open cultural institutions and museums (Phase 4).
The 2019 Lucille Ball Comedy Festival featured comedians Sebastian Maniscalco and John Mulaney, and was the largest festival in its history. In 2018, the festival celebrated the grand opening of the National Comedy Center and featured Amy Schumer, Lily Tomlin and a panel of original “Saturday Night Live” performers and writers including Dan Aykroyd, Laraine Newman and Alan Zweibel.
Since 1991, the festival has featured comedy’s greatest stars and rising young comedians, including Jerry Seinfeld, Ellen DeGeneres, Trevor Noah, Lily Tomlin, Jay Leno, Amy Schumer, Brian Regan, Lewis Black, W. Kamau Bell, Jim Gaffigan, Paula Poundstone, Dan Aykroyd, Joan Rivers, Bob Newhart, the Smothers Brothers and more than one hundred other comedic artists.
