Lauren Jamison: The Formidable Queen of Hearts

In Lewis Carroll’s Alice’s Adven­tures in Won­der­land, the Queen of Hearts is a short-tem­pered, behead­ing-obsessed character. 

Here in the real world, Lau­ren Jami­son is nei­ther of those things, though we are unable to con­firm at press time whether she owns a cro­quet court equipped with hedge­hogs and flamin­gos. Jami­son self-anoint­ed her­self a for­mi­da­ble Queen of Hearts not because she shares nefar­i­ous traits with the lit­er­ary char­ac­ter, but rather because by por­tray­ing the Queen of Hearts for an improv event at Wan­der­lust, she made a for­mi­da­ble impres­sion on the venue’s own­er. So much so, that the own­er approached Jami­son to host a com­e­dy show at Wanderlust’s east side loca­tion. And the rest is Yuk it Up history.

Jamison’s ener­gy and excite­ment lev­els are con­ta­gious, and it’s not sur­pris­ing to hear she was a the­ater kid – she seems like she loves to ham it up. Raised in Hous­ton, Texas, Jamison’s par­ents relo­cat­ed to San Diego while she was in high school cre­at­ing a series of events that led to a lot of par­ty­ing and rule-break­ing in high school, all through col­lege in Dal­las, and after her return to San Diego. She was still inter­est­ed in act­ing and was land­ing audi­tions, but Jami­son made a deci­sion to take a six week com­e­dy class with the usu­al cap­stone of a stu­dent com­e­dy showcase. 

The venue was San Diego’s Com­e­dy Palace (now known as Mic Drop) and Jamison’s loy­al­ty to the club endures through today with sev­er­al men­tions dur­ing the pod­cast. That class and show­case also cement­ed her love for comedy.

Dur­ing the pan­dem­ic, sev­er­al of Jamison’s fel­low com­ic friends in Cal­i­for­nia, includ­ing Dylan Sul­li­van, decid­ed to make the move to Austin. Being ful­ly com­mit­ted to standup by 2020, she made the move as well, fig­ur­ing the buzz of Austin was big­ger than the com­e­dy scene in her orig­i­nal home­town of Houston. 

While not dis­cussed exten­sive­ly, Jami­son makes no secret of leav­ing the par­ty­ing lifestyle behind. We hear this from time to time from comics, but when Jami­son says ​“Standup, in a way, saved me”, it’s hard to imag­ine any­thing bad befalling our queen of hearts. We’re just grate­ful that she chose sobri­ety over a pur­suit more akin to Carroll’s evil queen of hearts.

Much as in Carroll’s clas­sic tale, we think Jami­son may be just as for­mi­da­ble as Alice. If you need a refresh­er, by the end of the adven­ture, Alice stands tri­al but grows in con­fi­dence and dis­miss­es the charges levied against her by the Queen of Hearts. Jamison’s con­fi­dence has cer­tain­ly grown in her 5 years as a standup com­ic. But some things she still grap­ples with – she des­per­ate­ly wish­es some­one would teach a sem­i­nar (at an afford­able price, mind you) on how to pro­mote your­self on social media, one area of life as a standup com­ic she finds weird.

The myr­i­ad and fan­tas­ti­cal dreams of Alice in Won­der­land bear a par­al­lel to com­e­dy, in that com­e­dy has no real path and some­times the adven­tures are like dreams. Luck­i­ly, Jami­son wasn’t dream­ing when she got the call from Only Fans to record for their lat­est edi­tion of the OFTV Com­e­dy Spe­cials fea­tur­ing Austin comics. As of the time of this pod­cast a release date had not been set for her spe­cial, but we imag­ine it will be ear­ly 2024.

In her short five years as a standup com­ic, Jami­son is very wise about this career. She knows there’s no clear­ly-laid out path, you just do what makes sense at the time and you avoid com­par­ing your­self to oth­ers. ​“Don’t com­pare, and that’s hard when it’s in your face.” With the vari­ety of adven­tures that Jami­son has been on recent­ly, it seems implau­si­ble that Jami­son would find any­one to com­pare her­self to. She seems unique­ly Lauren. 

While she dreams of per­form­ing on Broad­way one day, Jami­son enjoys hav­ing both feet in the act­ing and com­e­dy worlds. Not only did she recent­ly record her OFTV Com­e­dy Spe­cial, she had recent­ly land­ed an act­ing role in a short film being shot the day after our pod­cast record­ing. This on top of con­tin­u­ing to pro­duce and host her Yuk It Up month­ly com­e­dy show­case at Wan­der­lust and the new­ly launched month­ly Stand-up at Sans Bar showcase. 

Lewis Car­roll took read­ers on quite an adven­ture with his char­ac­ter Alice and it seems that Jami­son has been able to par­lay her role as Queen of Hearts into so many adven­tures of her own design. We don’t know how Jamison’s sto­ry will unfold, but in the per­fect­ly unpre­dictable way that Alice nav­i­gat­ed through Won­der­land, we sus­pect that Jami­son will one day reflect on what a won­der­ful dream her life has been.

Fol­low Lauren 

• Web­site — lau​ren​jamison​com​e​dy​.com
• Link­tree — link​tr​.ee/​l​a​u​r​e​n​j​a​mison
• Insta­gram
  
  • Lau­ren — @thelaurenjamison
  • Yuk It Up Com­e­dy — @yukitupcomedy
• Face­book — face​book​.com/​t​h​e​l​a​u​r​e​n​j​a​mison
• Tik­Tok — @thelaurenjamison
• Youtube — youtube​.com/​L​a​u​r​e​n​J​a​mison
• Only­Fans — only​fans​.com/​l​a​u​r​e​n​j​a​mison
• Do512 — do512​.com/​l​a​u​r​e​n​-​j​a​mison

Lau­ren can be seen and heard:

• Host­ing and pro­duc­ing Yuk it Up Com­e­dy (fol­low them on Insta­gram for sched­ule & location)
• The Jew­cy Pod­cast — avail­able on Spo­ti­fy
• OFTV Com­e­dy Spe­cial — Com­ing soon!! Sub­scribe to Only Fans for free for com­e­dy bits & live streams