Fortune Feimster On ‘Live Laugh Love,’ Power Of Improv And Finding Joy

For comedian Fortune Feimster, the city of Chicago looms large.

While born in North Carolina, Feimster met her wife Jax in the Windy City in 2016, later filming her second stand-up special Good Fortune at Chicago Shakespeare Theatre.

It’s indicative of a broad appeal for a comedian using comedy to bring people together during divisive times.

In her current “Live Laugh Love” tour, a massive run which found her making the jump to larger theaters in 2023 and 2024, including a sold out February performance at Chicago Theatre, Feimster drills down on three human necessities, crafting hilariously relatable stories increasingly mined from her personal life.

“This whole experience has me kind of emotional,” said Feimster backstage following the Chicago Theatre set. “Because Chicago is one of the cities I’ve really put a lot of time into. And it is a city that really embraced me early on in my career. I started at Zanies downtown and then doing the Rosemont and St. Charles area,” she said, noting comedy clubs in both the city and surrounding suburbs. “I’ve done Pride stuff here. And every time I’d come back, there’d be more people. So, I just felt like Chicago really got me and really got my humor. And then when I met my wife here, that was just like a cherry on top,” said Feimster.

“That show was such a milestone for me. I still think about it and smile,” she added during a separate phone conversation following the performance. “It makes me think about the journey to that theater and all of the club shows and making little to no money for so many years - building a fanbase and building an act. It was just one of those very cool full circle moments that made me really proud of where I’m at and how far I’ve come. And the hard work that was put in to get there.”

Chicago is known for its improvisational comedy, a city where the work of The Second City still looms large. In 1981, writer and teacher Del Close co-founded ImprovOlympic (iO Chicago), putting his spin upon an improv tradition he studied under Viola Spolin, whose ideas would influence famed Los Angeles-based comedy troupe/school the Groundlings.

Feimster worked on sketch comedy at the Groundlings, where the improv insights she gained continue to guide her as a writer, comic and actress. During her time there, she created a comedy troupe called Gas Money, renting out L.A. theaters for performances with classmates, a life experience during which she’d learn valuable early lessons about the importance watching the business side closely.

Eyeing a season two alongside Arnold Schwarzenegger as a CIA agent in the Netflix action comedy FUBAR, Feimster has been busy, co-hosting the Handsome podcast with comedians Tig Notaro and Mae Martin, with her “Live Laugh Love” tour set to wrap up August 10 in West Virginia.

I spoke with Feimster about the concept behind “Live Laugh Love,” the storytelling at the heart of her latest set and finding joy both on stage and in life. Highlights from a pair of conversations, lightly edited for length and clarity, follow below.

Jim Ryan: “Live Laugh Love.” Those are three pretty universal concepts. How do those three words sort of sum up this tour for you?

Fortune Feimster: It really does encapsulate it. I love the live, laugh, love sentiment. Just because what I’m trying to bring is that joyful feeling of life. That was always the sign that we’d kind of groan when we saw it in our mom’s kitchen or living room. But now I feel like the mantra of it? That’s like exactly what we want: I want to live, I want to laugh, I want to love. Those are the three essential things.

There’s so many negative things out there right now. We’re at four years since the pandemic started and so much has changed since then. People are struggling still with jobs and money. There’s wars. There’s so many negative things out there that I just kind of wanted to bring that sentiment back - even though we laugh about those signs.

But it’s good to be alive. You want to love. You want to have love. You want to feel love. You want to laugh! And feeling that energy in the room, especially at a huge theater like the Chicago Theatre - there’s just no better feeling than 3,600 people laughing together and feeling good and feeling positive.

And that’s the sentiment that I’ve been wanting to bring to this whole tour - and what I hope to bring when I put out this next special.

Ryan: So, this is the first time that you’ve performed at Chicago Theatre… but you’ve seen Carol Burnett here?

Feimster: I did see Carol Burnett here. Jax, my wife, brought me here about eight years ago, when Jax was still living in Chicago, to see Carol live in person. I’m such a huge fan of hers.

She’s a big influence on my comedy. I used to watch reruns of her show with my grandmother. I just always saw how much my grandmother would laugh watching her. My grandmother was pretty buttoned up. So, that always really struck me. Carol was always really someone I treasured as a consummate professional and performer - so silly, so funny, so smart. I remember sitting in the audience just being enamored with Carol and looking around the theater and being like, “One day, I’m gonna be here.”

So, this theater has always sort of been like a north star. That was always my big goal. So, to be here and it’s sold out? I mean, it’s pretty magical.

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Ryan: Well, I know you did the Groundlings. And, obviously, when people think about Chicago and comedy they think about improv. And I know Del Close is associated with the Groundlings. What kind of defines Chicago and comedy for you?

Feimster: I just feel like this city, because of that history - with Second City and a lot of those original SNL performers coming from Canada but also from here - it just always had that vibe of like this is the place you go to see amazing performers. Chris Farley coming out of here, Tina Fey, Amy Poehler. Some of the greats. So, this city, the people here, they always just seem to really get comedy. And they also seem to appreciate silliness.

In my comedy, I’m trying to tell jokes and stories that have heart and meaning… But I also like to be silly. I like to tell silly things.

Ryan: You sort of opened the Chicago show riffing on the weather and what not. But you localized it a bit. How important is it to sort of localize each show like that?

Feimster: You definitely want to connect with the audience. And you want it to feel special to them. They came out and are supporting you. I don’t get to spend a ton of time anymore in these cities - not like I used to when I was doing a couple of nights at the local club. But I always try to support local businesses. I love finding local coffee shops and restaurants and sandwich shops. I always ask people online to give me their recommendations. Because I want to experience part of the city and meet local people. It definitely makes you feel more connected to wherever it is that you’re performing.

Ryan: I re-watched your Netflix specials this week. And storytelling seems to be more and more of a thing in your comedy. I feel like for a long time that was an underrated element of stand-up comedy. How important is it to you?

Feimster: I think that stand-up has evolved into a place where it is now where people want to hear more about you and more about your story - what is it that makes you you. That didn’t used to be the case in stand-up. It was a lot more observational. I tried to do that. And it was OK. But I think with Sweet & Salty, my first hour, I discovered how much I love telling stories. And I saw how people reacted to it. People would tell me how much they related to a story about my mom or my childhood. It just hit a different place with people than my observational stuff did. So, when I went to write the set that ultimately became Good Fortune, I was going even more into that story. “I hope people like an eight minute ride because…” You know what I mean?

But the theaters allow you to do that. They allow you to take that time and really go on a journey with every story. Now, if I were to go into a club right now, I’d have to get to the punchlines a little faster. But I just like that feeling of taking people on a little bit of a journey. This hour is going to have a beginning, middle and end and things are going to come around full circle. And you’re going to know a lot more about me than you did an hour ago.

And it picks up kind of like the other ones did. Sweet & Salty was very much about growing up, figuring out who I was and sort of entering into adulthood. Good Fortune started with, “OK. Now I’m an adult. I’ve met my wife and I’ve gotten married. Who am I at this age?” “Live Laugh Love” is very much like, “Alright, I’m an adult! OK! We went on our honeymoon and now I’m dealing with the intricacies of marriage and how it relates.” I talk about my mom a lot and how she dealt with me being that adult and fully leaving the nest.

I just kind of like that timeline thing - where it’s like, I’m telling you exactly where I’m at at this point in my life.

Ryan: You mentioned how much more personal the storytelling became with Good Fortune and the current “Live Laugh Love” set. I would imagine that mining your own life in that kind of detail, you learn something. What do you feel like you learned through that process of telling those stories and putting this show together?

Feimster: I definitely realized I’m ridiculous at some point! I mean, there are a couple of stories I tell in this hour where I’m the dunce - I’m the one that’s messed up! So, I don’t mind telling the truth. “I was being kind of selfish in this story!” I’m sort of pulling back that layer even more.

But that’s probably having been looking at it more through the lens of my wife. We talk a lot about stories. And she’s a producer on all of these specials as well. There are things I wasn’t going to talk about. There was a time when we got in a fight that I talk about. And I was just assuming, “Well, I guess I won’t talk about the fight… That’s probably not gonna be, like, fun for her.” And she was the one that said, “What about that time we got in a fight on the train?” So, I guess it’s just more being real.

I don’t know. Even though I’m an actor, that’s the one thing: it’s hard to be anybody else but myself up there. I kind of go out on stage like, “This is who I am.” And I think it’s one of those things where it either resonates with people or it doesn’t. The hope is that it does more than it doesn’t! But I also want to be telling stories that people can relate to. Not just one person. I want all different people to see different things in themselves in these stories.

Ryan: Obviously, those experiences are resonating with people. You’ve made the jump to these bigger rooms and I saw tonight the visceral reactions that people do have to your stories - because they relate to them. What’s it like seeing that and experiencing that on a nightly basis?

Feimster: It’s hard to describe. The one thing I’ve been trying to do with my specials is I say to them every time, “How do we take the live show and bottle it up and put it in a special?” Because there’s something in the room that’s not tangible. And when I walk out on stage, it’s a feeling that I really can’t describe. This connection with the audience feels so strong and so positive and joyful that it takes me back almost every time I walk out there.

So, it’s nice when you feel that love in the room. Hopefully, people leave feeling better than when they got there.

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Ryan: We mentioned the Groundlings. How does having that improv background continue to inform everything you do, be it stand-up, writing, acting or anything else?

Feimster: That training is definitely the backbone of most everything that I do.

I did theater in college and I had never done that before - and I had terrible stage fright. I would be so light and then I would get on stage and feel this wave of anxiety and panic - I think from the lack of training and experience.

When I moved to Los Angeles and started taking these Groundlings improv classes, it totally got rid of that panic and that anxiety. My stage fright went away almost overnight. Just feeling more comfortable up there and learning how to dig myself out of any sort of hole per se.

There was always this fear of forgetting lines - what would I do if that happened? Well, improv gave me that confidence to know that if you get into that panic sort of situation on stage where you don’t know what to say or you don’t know what’s next, you’ll figure it out. You’ll dig deep in that well of comedy and silliness and you’ll find a way to be OK.

So, it definitely informs a lot of my acting, my comedy, my silliness, my commitment to ridiculous jokes - it all goes back to that training. Because it was seven years of my life in these classes that were not easy and pushed you to be a better writer and a better performer.

I did a year and a half in the Sunday company where we’d put on a new show every Sunday night. You’d be told what was going on the show Friday night. You’re learning lines. You’re buying costumes on Saturday and blocking it Sunday. It’s hardcore training.

Ryan: I was reading about your Gas Money improv troupe, that eventually you guys were renting theaters…

Feimster: When I started at the Groundlings, there were not nearly as many opportunities to perform. They only had one theater. Now, they’ve bought another building and expanded a lot. But, if you weren’t in the company, there were not many chances to get on stage. The school is very competitive and very popular. And the wait list at times for a class could be a year long. That’s how in demand it was. I remember starting at the school and thinking, “Well, how can I possibly get better if I’m not doing the thing we’re learning?” Now, they have all kinds of opportunities.

But I was in a couple of improv classes and I said to a couple of people that I really enjoyed being in the classes with, “Do you guys want to start our own group?” It started very bare bones. We asked a couple of bars around town, “Hey, on a Sunday afternoon, can we do an improv show in your bar and our friends will pay like five bucks? They’ll buy drinks!” And they were like, “Sure, why not?” So, it started very grassroots. We were all broke. And, really, we just wanted experience performing. And that evolved into us writing sketches.

And, yeah, there were a couple of small theaters in town that we would rent and put on a big sketch show and invite friends and industry. And I think a lot of us really grew as performers from that: putting on our own shows and writing. When I did get higher up in those levels at the Groundlings, some of those people I was in classes with had never even done a show before. But we had all of this experience under our belts. So, I suppose it was a very helpful thing to do.

Ryan: So, if you’re renting out theaters, and you’re almost sort of four-walling these venues, does that sort of force you at an earlier point to keep a little bit closer eye on the business side?

Feimster: I definitely think it opened my mind and my knowledge of the business side of comedy. Because as you grow in this business, and you start doing more of these bigger theaters, you do realize that even though it’s a creative business, it is still a business. And there’s a lot of things to it that require you to make good financial decisions and good business decisions.

That definitely helped - having to go to different theaters and talk to whoever runs them and get pricing and negotiate. It’s not just showing up and putting on costumes at that point. You’re having to think of it in terms of, “How can we pay for this? How much do tickets need to be in order to cover our costs?” You definitely start to have that mindset - which has definitely helped me in this part of my business. Because I’m always having to make financial decisions.

My Handsome podcast that I’m doing right now with Tig Notaro and Mae Martin, they both were like, “Wow, you’re really good with business decisions.” And I was very proud for them to see that. Because it’s not a part of the business that people see very much amongst your friends.

And I did not come from a business background. My mom was a teacher. My dad worked at a trucking company. I don’t come from people that are in that business world. So, it’s part of my job that I’m most proud of, that I’ve learned how to do and evolved with as my career has evolved.

Ryan: There seems to be a real broadness to your appeal: red state/blue state, male/female, gay/straight, etc. Is comedy kind of something that, in divisive and polarizing times like these, can sort of bring people together?

Feimster: I think so. I hope that we still have common ground in different spots with comedy being one of those places that bridges those gaps. I definitely think that if anything is going to bridge gaps, comedy is a good way to do that. Because if you can make somebody laugh - if they have preconceived notions about you or their defenses are up - if you can make somebody laugh, that definitely puts people more at ease.

At the end of the day, I became a comedian with the goal of making people happy and making people feel good and making people laugh - that was the only goal when I started. Before I really thought of this as a business - before the business part even came into play - that was it. I just wanted to make people happy and laugh.

And I try to carry that with me now. It doesn’t matter what our backgrounds are: if we come from different places or have different lifestyles, I still have the hope that I can make you laugh. I’m not going to be able to do that for everyone! Comedy is subjective! Some people aren’t going to find me funny and I totally understand that.

But, hopefully, I can make more people laugh than not. That’s what I want people to experience is joy.