Biography
Winsome comic's comic Jann Karam - whose blithe and incisive standup work has long brightened national television screens and top-tier comedy stages - found her comedy career footing while attending Arizona State University and regularly turning up on open mic nights at Macayo's Mexican Food Restaurant in Scottsdale. She was paid one chimichanga per joke. After developing her act (and gaining 13 pounds), she moved to New York City, where she began working as a professional comedian. Her numerous TV credits--stand up performances and series acting roles--include repeat appearances on both The Tonight Show and The Late Show with David Letterman, HBO's legendary 13th Annual Young Comedians' Show, How to Live with Your Parents (for the Rest of Your Life), Comics Unleashed, The Arsenio Hall Show, Norm, Mad About You, Politically Incorrect, Dr. Katz, and many others. She was a regular sketch player in the last incarnation of The Carol Burnett Show and, in the now classic Seinfeld episode "The Switch," Jann played Sandy (the one who never laughed)-rated #1 all-time inamorata by UPROXX in the 2014 feature, "A Very Important and Scientific Ranking of Jerry's Girlfriends on 'Seinfeld.'" Jann's critically acclaimed theatrical solo play, Reclining Nude on La Cienega https://bit.ly/2RsjOuL, was recently produced and recorded for broadcast by legendary comedy icon and Laugh-In creator George Schlatter. As a filmmaker, her inimitably mischievous perspective is quite naturally enhanced in Under the Big Muu-Muu, Jann's half-hour short that quirkily explores the universal agonies of seeking motherly approval. https://bit.ly/2Gc3Ti6 The Castle Rock Entertainment produced 35mm film earned multiple laurels on the festival circuit, as well as the deep admiration of the famously unsentimental Jerry Seinfeld: "Funny and original. If you have a mother, when you get to the end, you can't not cry." As a stand-up comedian ("a woman blessed with looks, talent and the gift of restraint," declared the LA Times early on), Jann headlines nationwide and also regularly tours with SNL alumnus Dana Carvey. Additionally, she's released two successful comedy albums-Live at the Blue Loon and Same Guy, Different Shirt. She recently taped her own documentary special, tentatively titled Beyond the Set, a jarringly intimate behind-the-scenes look at the emotional thrill-ride of stand-up comedy through her unique lens. In addition to theatre studies at Arizona State University (Jann graduated cum laude), she studied Improv at Chicago's Second City with Del Close and was a longtime student of renowned acting teacher, Sanford Meisner (himself) in both New York and Los Angeles. Jann's latest single-camera half-hour pilot script, Me & Tata is about a sweet, naive grandmotherly Syrian immigrant, Tata (based on her own Syrian-born grandmother), who, by sheer luck, makes her way to Los Angeles and inadvertently becomes the new roommate of Jann- single, half-Syrian, half Lebanese, all-American-- a struggling stand-up comedian/actor/fitness teacher/caterer who lives modestly but with compassion and awareness (and two cats) in Koreatown http://www.jannkaram.com
