New York-based comedian, actress, author, and filmmaker Lauren LoGiudice proudly wears the badge of an oddball. She refuses to be placed into a box or restricted by expectations. Perhaps the only descriptor she would use about herself is “misfit” and she loves bringing eccentric people together for an unconventional night of comedy with the Misfit Variety Show.
The show, which features stand-up, storytelling, character work, and much more and was developed over several years, has become a comedic celebration of uniqueness. On Thursday, April 11, LoGiudice is bringing this critically-acclaimed experience to The Lincoln Lodge in Chicago for a 7 p.m. performance featuring the Hot Clown Company, Rogue Schmidt, Rudy Mendoza, and LoGiudice herself.
“There are a lot of people out there who don’t feel like they belong,” said LoGiudice by phone last month. “They feel like they’re outside the box. They feel like their life experience has made them really weird and they don’t know what to do with that. We created the Misfit Variety Show to welcome people in those kind of gray area spaces into one space and we have a night of performers celebrating all of that.”
Each edition of the Misfit Variety Show features a unique line-up with LoGiudice serving as host. She also does stand-up and brings out one of her most hilarious characters, Aunt Carmella, to work the crowd during an audience participation segment.
“The audience members are given slips of paper on which they can write down some embarrassing misfit moments or moments when they felt really alienated from the world or moments from really crazy family stories. Things of that nature,” explained LoGiudice. “And then, I have a character named Aunt Carmella and she will read them. It’s one of people’s favorite parts of the show because Carmella is a no nonsense auntie from Boca Raton, Florida who’s originally from Brooklyn. She’s just riffing on everyone’s stuff. Good or bad – She is just that person who you want to riff on you.”
This show will be the very first time LoGiudice is performing in Chicago and she is excited to share the stage with a talented lineup of local acts.
“I’m really excited. Hot Clown is an incredible clown troupe out of Chicago and I love that they’re doing stuff on the cutting edge and they are really diving deep into different aspects of the human experience, that other people aren’t, in an absurd way. I think that it’s really important that we have an absurd element to the show. We always have a performer who’s very much outside of the box. I think we have that performer first and it really sets the tone for the show,” she said, continuing, “Then we have Rogue Schmitt, an incredible comedian from Chicago and she’s gonna be cooking up a story for us. I love getting different people to create stories for this event, to dig deep and find some interesting points that they would like to share that they might not get the chance to share otherwise.”
LoGiudice added, “I also have Rudy Mendoza who is going to do some stand-up for us. He’s an incredible person and talks a lot about his experience.”
While the Lincoln Lodge show marks LoGiudice’s first time performing in Chicago, she actually has a lot of ties to the city as her podcast, Misfits Makin’ It, is on the Chicago-based Radio Misfits Podcast Network and she has previously published with local imprints. She also was a frequent guest on WCGO’s Playtime with Bill Turck and Kerri Kendall, though she didn’t exactly appear as herself.
“I was on Bill and Kerri’s show on WCGO every Sunday as Melania [Trump] all through the pandemic. We were doing Melania Trump updates from the White House so I was on Chicago radio,” said LoGiudice explaining that she never intended to spend so much time doing the impersonation and she knew it was time to call it quits when she stopped finding any humor in the situation.
“The Melania project took off. I was very hesitant. The thing called me and things kept happening to make me do it. So, I ended up doing it more and more, doing stand-up as her for three years. We had the variety show, a book, and a tour planned that we never went to because of Covid,” she said. “After January 6, it all became not funny. And that’s the day I say Melania died.”
After spending so much time with a character she somewhat reluctantly took on, LoGiudice made sure everything felt perfect for her next project, which would better suit her soul. Looking back on her work, she decided to put together Misfits: A Comedy Album, featuring songs she wrote for a variety of characters in her repertoire. That experience served as the catalyst to what has become LoGiudice’s career of celebrating all things misfit.
“I had written all of these songs in my characters over the years, so I was like, ‘Why don’t I put a bow on everything I’ve done before to see what I was going to do next.’ I came up with it because all my characters are weird – ‘I’ll just do Misfits: A Comedy Album’ – and so I started putting together all those songs, producing them, and putting that out there,” she said. “It’s like the new project finds you. I didn’t know this misfit thing was going to become a thing. I was going to do this album, and then we’ll see. It just became more apparent that this is what weaves through everything I do. Talking to the person who’s left out. Talking to the experiences of not fitting in. That’s what was calling me.”
Whether or not you feel that misfit calling, LoGiudice believes that the Misfit Variety Show is a great experience for all kinds of people, even those who she lovingly refers to as “normies.”
“I feel like the show is good for misfits, anyone who’s ever felt like a misfit in any way and other people who are curious about hanging a little bit different, who want to hang loose,” she said. “Maybe you’re a normie, as I call them, and you’re maybe like, ‘Hey, I want to check this world out.’ You’re very welcome. It’s a safe space for everyone.”
The Misfit Variety Show is set to appear at The Lincoln Lodge in Chicago on April 11. Click here to pick-up tickets and keep up with new and future tour dates at Laurenlogiudice.com.