Festival Programming Jobs in California (NOW HIRING)

## About the initiative

Mabuhay Gardens is a storied cultural venue with a legendary history. The building has hosted performances by legends including Louis Armstrong, Allen Ginsberg, Lawrence Ferlinghetti, Dead Kennedys, Iggy Pop, The Sex Pistols, The Ramones, The Specials, Metallica, Guns N' Roses, Herbie Hancock, R.E.M., Robin Williams, Whoopi Goldberg, Soundgarden, Bad Religion, Dave Chappelle, and many others. Via CrowdDoing, we are regenerating the Mab as a hybrid cultural ecosystem: live music, dance, comedy, rentals, popup culinary lab, off-peak wellness partnerships, art-walk activations, and solarpunk / regenerative-culture programming.

Comedy festivals need late-night rooms, showcase venues, and comfortable hospitality space for touring comedians between sets — needs that often outstrip what a festival's primary venues can offer. We're looking for a contributor who can build genuine partnerships with comedy festival organizers, bookers, and production teams, understanding the particular rhythms of festival comedy well enough to propose something genuinely useful.

## The puzzle

There's a real puzzle worth understanding here: comedy bookers have been burned before, and figuring out exactly what makes them trust a new room is more specific and more interesting than a generic introduction. Comedy festivals run on tight, high-pressure schedules where a bad room or a mismatched booker relationship can sink a showcase. Comedy bookers are also protective — they've been burned before by venues that don't understand late-night audiences or the specific needs of touring comedians. The puzzle is building enough credibility and genuine understanding of the comedy festival world that organizers trust the Mab with a showcase slot or hospitality role.

## What you'll do

You'll tend a defined slice of the comedy-festival partnerships work — enough to build real relationships in your first month, without carrying the whole venture.

- **Festival and booker mapping** — Build a working map of comedy festivals, their bookers, and production teams whose late-night showcase or hospitality needs could be a genuine fit for the Mab.

- **Listening first** — Reach out to comedy festival organizers and bookers with real curiosity about what makes a showcase room work for them, and what's failed with other venues in the past.

- **Social listening for collaboration moments** — Watch the social media accounts, newsletters, and public communications of comedy festivals and adjacent comedy scenes to spot upcoming lineups and moments where the Mab could naturally weave in as a collaborator rather than a stranger.

- **Fit design** — Help shape concepts grounded in what festivals actually need: a late-night showcase slot, an alternative room for overflow bookings, a hospitality space for comedians between sets.

- **AI-assisted enrichment** — Use LLM tools to research each festival's lineup history, booking patterns, and past venue partnerships so every conversation is specific and credible.

- **Introduction to the producing team** — Bring well-understood relationships to the Mabuhay producing team with full context on what the festival needs and expects, and stay available as a trusted point of contact.

- **Relationship memory** — Keep short weekly notes on what each booker or organizer cares about, what worked and what didn't, and where the relationship stands — building the institutional memory that makes next year's conversation easier.

## Who this role is for

We're looking for someone who can contribute meaningfully from week one — not a senior comedy booker, not an assistant. Somebody with real, demonstrable skill in **at least two** of the following, and curiosity about the rest:

- Comedy festival production, booking coordination, or comedian hospitality

- Partnership-building with comedy or entertainment organizations grounded in mutual respect

- Deep familiarity with the comedy festival circuit and how bookers evaluate rooms

- Warm, researched relationship-building that respects a booker's time and the pressure of festival scheduling

- Lightweight relationship-tracking discipline (spreadsheets, Notion, Airtable, or similar)

- Comfort with AI-assisted research and relationship-writing workflows (any current LLM tool)

- Genuine curiosity about what actually makes a room work for touring comedians and late-night audiences

- Comfort watching social media, community feeds, and newsletters with a listening ear rather than a promotional one

You'll thrive here if you understand the specific demands of late-night comedy programming, respect comedians' and bookers' time, and can build credibility with people who've seen plenty of venues overpromise.

## Why do this

- **The problem matters.** Comedy festivals often lack enough well-run rooms to match demand for showcase slots and hospitality space. Building real, trustworthy partnerships closes a genuine gap.

- **The stakes are real.** The relationships you build will shape actual showcases, for actual touring comedians, on actual festival dates. This is not a simulation.

- **The craft is careful, and it will test your follow-through.** You'll be stretched to earn credibility with bookers who default to skepticism, which means every detail you get right matters and every one you miss costs you. Building that level of reliability on purpose, rather than hoping it shows through, is a genuine developmental edge.

- **The room is legendary.** You're helping regenerate a venue where legends across music, comedy, poetry, and cultural experimentation performed.

- **You'll work alongside people who care, across a much wider map than this room.** You'll collaborate asynchronously with CrowdDoing's global network of volunteers — people working on disaster risk reduction, deep green compute, and community resilience — through shared written updates, shared docs, and async check-ins. You will likely never meet most of them in person, and you'll still learn from how they think. That cross-pollination between wildly different fields is not a side benefit of this role. It's the point.

## Time commitment & structure

- Flexible, part-time, mostly asynchronous

- Ongoing commitment, renewable

- Onboarding via CrowdDoing's standard volunteer orientation

## How to apply

Send a short note (5–8 sentences is plenty) covering:

1. Which 2–3 areas above you can contribute in immediately, with one specific example of past work (a comedy festival relationship you built, a showcase you helped produce, a booker relationship you sustained)

2. One comedy festival, booker, or production team you'd want to build a relationship with for Mabuhay Gardens in your first month, and why the fit would be genuine

3. Your available hours per week and time zone

No cover letter theater. Show us how you build trust with people who book rooms for a living.

---

*CrowdDoing is an equal-opportunity volunteer organization. We welcome contributors of every background, geography, and career stage. This is an unpaid volunteer role and service-learning opportunity.*