(PHILADELPHIA, PA) -- As Philadelphia enters peak summer swamp season, Variety Pack once again offers audiences a cool, chaotic refuge from the heat with five days of genre-breaking live comedy, free popcorn, and yes, free air conditioning.
Running July 9–13, 2026, Variety Pack Vol. 3 features fifteen genre-defying acts ranging from clown shows to a polyamorous dating game show, networking events disguised as comedy shows, and multimedia stoner reinterpretations of Dickens classics. The festival celebrates artists working in the messy, hilarious space between stand-up, sketch, improv, theatre, and performance art.
Created by writer, producer, and performer Chaz T. Martin alongside bestselling author and television writer R. Eric Thomas, Variety Pack has quickly become a gathering place for artists making comedy that is theatrical, experimental, emotionally honest, deeply stupid, or sometimes all four at once.
"One of the things the first two Variety Packs proved is that there's a huge Philly audience that's hungry for a wide range of comedic shows," says Thomas. "It also proved that this town is overflowing with hilarious weirdos, freaks, and (actual) clowns who love attention. Putting the two groups together again is a kind of a love story, if you think about it. Who says the romcom is dead?"
Martin, whose play Class C was recently produced by Azuka Theatre, launched the festival after realizing there was no real home in Philadelphia for comedy work living between traditional theatrical and comedy spaces.
This year's lineup includes:
* Let's Fight, in which Martin and Thomas battle to defend the honor of the festival lineup through "meaningless tests of wit, strength, and endurance"
* Incredible Dreams: Apps Only, a surreal and edible comedy experience exploring the world of appetizers through live performance
* Girl Mic Presents: I <3 Philadelphia, a sketch comedy love letter to Philly culture featuring Gritty, food delivery robots, and synth-pop Bruce Springsteen references
* The Faggotto Bros. Present...SEANCE!, a wildly irreverent theatrical séance from Fringe and Barrymore award-winning performers Dan Kitrosser and Kyle Metzger
* Submission, an interactive theatrical comedy exploring the moral compromises of reality television fame
* VILE, Francesca Montanile Lyons' award-winning solo show exploring depression, rape culture, and modernity through clown and bouffon performance
* Networking: The Show, a networking event for freelance creatives disguised as live comedy
* Am I The A$$hole / Episode 3, a two half-hour double bill, an improvised mashup of Reddit drama and true-crime podcast satire
* A Stoner Christmas Carol, John Miller Giltner's existential multimedia retelling of Dickens through the haze of a Christmas Day smoke session
* poly poly oxen free, the cult-favorite live polyamory dating show previously featured in The New York Times and The Gothamist in The Drake's larger Proscenium Theatre
The festival also includes family programming, comedy showcases, audience participation events, and workshops for independent artists and creators.
All festival tickets are $15 with no door-price increase, and children's tickets to Kidprov! are just $5. This year also introduces the new Ten Dollar Club, a $60 annual membership offering audiences $10 tickets to all future Variety Pack productions for life. Tickets are available for purchase online. Louis Bluver Theatre at The Drake is located at 302 S. Hicks Street in Philadelphia, PA.
Audience members can also participate in Got You Tickets, the festival's reimagined pay-it-forward ticketing initiative designed to help more people attend live performance regardless of financial barriers.
In addition to its black-box programming, Variety Pack is expanding into larger theatrical presentations with Variety Pack Presents, a new proscenium series featuring $25 performances in a 121-seat venue.
Variety Pack's continued growth reflects a larger shift happening across Philadelphia's comedy scene, where performers are increasingly blending theatricality, vulnerability, absurdism, multimedia experimentation, and audience interaction into work that defies traditional genre labels.
Or, as Variety Pack might put it: the weird kids found each other.
Thursday, July 9, 2026
7:00pm — Let’s Fight. Chaz T. Martin and R. Eric Thomas, producers of Variety Pack Comedy Festival, go head-to-head in a series of truly meaningless tests of wit, strength, and endurance to defend the honor of each show in the Vol. 3 lineup. Kick off Vol. 3 by satisfying your bloodlust!!!
8:30pm — Incredible Dreams: Apps Only. Is dinner too much food on one plate? Yes. Yes it is. Join Matt, Jacquie, Rose & Andrew for an evening of the best part of dinning, the appetizers! Incredible Dreamz: Apps Only, will give you what you need and didn't know you wanted. Apps imagined, real, surreal, edible, and performed. Come and feed your mind through your eyes and ears and yes, even your mouth.
10:00pm - Joe Bell Pilot Screening. Philly comic and animator Joe Bell brings his original pilot to Variety Pack! Join them for a late nite screening.
Friday, July 10, 2026
7:00pm — Girl Mic Presents: I <3 Philadelphia. You've seen VH1's I Love the 80's, I Love the 90's, and more — get ready for Girl Mic's I LOVE PHILADELPHIA! We're bringing you sketch comedy, video shorts, and talking heads weighing in on classic (and not-so-classic) Philadelphia culture. Think Charli XCX performing a synth version of "Streets of Philadelphia," if Gritty was a patient in The Pitt, your favorite local Philly comedians trashing food delivery robots, and MORE!
8:30pm — Submission. Jacob, a lifelong reality TV show fan, submitted to be a contestant for a new groundbreaking reality program ... and got a callback! Now, he must convince a live studio audience that he is unique, engaging, and marketable. An impromptu call by one of the head producers halfway through the show raises the stakes and pushes Jacob to question what values and morals are worth giving up in exchange for living his dream.
10:00pm - R U Smarter than a BFA Grad? Test your wits and liberal arts knowledge in a new game show! It’s “Are You Smarter Than a Fifth Grader?” with a blue haired actor who works as a barista part time instead of a ten year old. 3 audience participants will be selected to “enroll” and compete against a real life BFA holder.
Saturday, July 11, 2026
12:00pm — WORKSHOP: You’re Fundraising Wrong. There's the right way to raise money and a lot of wrong ways, and Maura is here to set the record straight. As a fundraising consultant, Maura has led strategy to raise more than $200M. And as a circus acrobat, Maura was a founding member of a Philly-based aerial theater company who self-produced shows for a decade. Whether you're a 501(c)(3), under fiscal sponsorship, or thinking about crowdfunding your next show, you'll walk away best-in-class practices to fundraise right.
2:30pm — Kidprov! Kristin Finger (ComedySportz) and Kelsey Hebert (SideQuest Theatre) lead a team of improvisers ask the KID audiences for inspiration for a series of improv games all leading up to fully improvised scenes! No swearing, no violence, no cooties. (But that doesn't mean no fun for grown-ups!)Kids Tickets are only $5! This show is best for audiences between 7-12 years old and their adults!
4:00pm — Networking: The Show. Do you hate networking events? Of course you do! They're terrible! And yet you need to do it because capitalism never sleeps. Luckily, there's Networking: the Show. Bring your business cards and be ready to answer some rapid-fire questions about what you do or what you're working on and let hosts Chaz and Eric guide you through speed dating for freelance creatives. This show includes a 15-minute social hour so you can exchange those business cards and make those connections!
7:00pm — Amateur Hour. A sketch comedy showcase featuring the writing and performance of technically non-professional writers and actors!
8:30pm — Am I The A$$hole Episode 3. Don, Kris, and Dave read a post the audience chooses from the popular subreddit—and improvise the entire story behind it. In Episode 3, Sarah and Andy turn off the stage lights and transform a darkened theater into an improvised true-crime podcast. Two wildly different formats, one hysterical, fully improvised hour.
10:00pm — A *Stoner Christmas Carol. A *stoner Christmas Carol is a lot like the original Christmas Carol but better and about me, John Miller Giltner, very specifically. I.E, I am creating a modern retelling of the Charles Dickens’ classic where a local artist who is alone (and stoned) on Christmas day is visited by the three famous ghosts to learn why they shouldn’t give up on life. Its existential dread meets goofball hijinks in this multi-media, midlife crisis, stoner comedy.
Sunday, July 12, 2026
1:00pm — Brunch Comedy. A morning talk show hosted by Chaz T. Martin and R. Eric Thomas! Featuring all your favorite morning show segments like recipes, celebrity plugs for their movie no one is seeing, book club recommendations, and maybe even a breaking news story!
Perfect for fans of going to bed early and still having most of the day left after a Sunday afternoon activity!
2:30pm — VILE. Are you sad? Me too, bestie. Welcome to VILE, a wild award-winning solo show from Francesca Montanile Lyons that blends clown and bouffon in an exploration of muddling through depression, swimming in rape culture, and drowning in modernity. Expect absurdity, tenderness, the kind of laughter that’s tinged with nausea, and nausea that’s tinged with relief.
Monday, July 13, 2026
7:00pm — poly poly oxen free. In the PROCENIUM THEATRE at The Drake. A live polyamory dating show, as seen in The Gothamist and the NY Times! Each show features The Catch who already has at least one love and is looking for more. The Poly Pool of eligible contestants must complete a series of challenges to woo The Catch. Will love be found in the Poly Pool? Will The Catch make a match or two? Will we all just hook up after the show anyway?
Chaz T. Martin (they/them) is a Philadelphia-based writer, producer, and performer. Their play Class C was recently produced by Azuka Theatre and was previously an O'Neill Semifinalist. Their short film Chemistry earned multiple writing awards at film festivals across the country, and their screenplay Melissa was a finalist for Tribeca Film Institute's Through Her Lens program.
R. Eric Thomas is a television writer (Dickinson, Better Things), playwright, and national bestselling author of Here For It, or, How to Save Your Soul in America, Kings of B'More, and Congratulations, The Best Is Over! He is also the nationally syndicated advice columnist behind Asking Eric and the longtime host of Philadelphia's Moth StorySLAMs.
