Preview: One Night & One Hour, a discussion about comedy with Jaboukie Young-White

This Friday, October 23rd at 7 pm, Jaboukie Young-White will be talking to the Skidmore community over zoom in an event co-hosted by the Arts Administration program and the Zankel Music Center. The event will be moderated by Playbill’s social media manager, and “Call and Response” podcast host Felicia Fitzpatrick.

Young-White is a comedian from Chicago and correspondent on The Daily Show with Trevor Noah. He appeared in the Sony feature Rough Night, as well as the Netflix feature Set It Up, and can be seen on the current season of HBO’s Crashing. He has also been a staff writer on Netflix’s American Vandal and Big Mouth. Young-White is a talented comedian, and was selected as a “Comic to Watch” at New York Comedy Festival, was one of Vulture/New York Magazine’s “Comedians You Should and Will Know,” was selected as an “Up Next” comedian for Comedy Central’s Clusterfest, and named one of Rolling Stone’s 25 Under 25. He has performed stand up on The Tonight Show starring Jimmy Fallon, and appeared on Comedy Central Stand-Up Presents.

Our Art Administration class is Leading Crisis and Change, which focuses on COVID-19 and BLM. Our core objectives are aimed towards further educating and questioning how we can take action towards change and relief on both micro/individual and macro/community forms. We’ve been able to do so by engaging in conversations with people working in all forums of the arts and entertainment industry to learn more about their careers. We have also been unpacking how they’re making conscious and impactful investments toward stances of equity within their positions of privilege that they may hold. 

We came across Young-White through a polled group selection of artists we were interested in. After looking at his work and social media platforms, we unanimously chose him for this event because of his overall qualities of being universally relatable through his charismatic personality and humor, as well as his social media presence; he has such an authentic voice of perspective on current events. We also importantly wanted to amplify and uplift voices of individuals who value their core identities in a way that would otherwise be silenced and give space to acknowledge such.

The event will be a moderated dialogue with the amazing moderator Felicia Fitzpatrick.The discussion will be centered around ten to twelve questions sent in from the Skidmore Community, focusing not only on Young-White’s  career path, but also current events of 2020; the two will unpack politics and the upcoming election, the Black Lives Matter Movement, and COVID-19 impact. Our overall goal is to provide a space in which everyone can find a moment of relief and joy amongst all that is occurring not only in this unnatural semester, but also this never-ending year.