Jasmine Burton, a highly decorated UVA volleyball player and 2017 graduate, is killing it on the comedy circuit. (Photo by Matt Riley, University Communications)
Jasmine Burton loves crowd work.
“To me, it’s like the gift that keeps on giving,” she said, speaking of the ad-libbed verbal volleys she exchanges with audience members in comedy clubs.
It’s a zesty, tit-for-tat talent that comes naturally for the former University of Virginia volleyball player. “It energizes me. I love speaking to the audience,” she said. “I love that piece in comedy.”
Judging by her social media numbers, so do tens of thousands of other people. One of the reasons Burton likes to post her crowd work on social media is because it’s spontaneous. “You only have so many bits, right?” she said. If she posted those, people would know a lot of her jokes before they came to her shows.
Burton’s animated affect is a natural on stage and her humor is infectious, which caught the eye of a Washington Post reporter.
“I’m best known for my high-energy, witty punchlines, and infusion of the law and my life experiences into my comedy,” she said in the write-up, “Meet 10 Funniest Comedians Working in D.C. Right Now.”
The 2017 graduate also infuses her comedy with political humor, a flavor that is decidedly D.C.
Take her joke about her friends. “I love my friends. My friends are absolute delinquents, though. They remind me of George Bush. Like, every day, they show me that some children did, in fact, get left behind.”
“There's a lot of political humor that you can do here that you can’t do in other states just because of our proximity to the capital,” she explained. “So many people in the audience work on the Hill. They’re consultants. They’re lobbyists. They’re lawyers.”
In 2022, an ad for an open mic night caught the 6-foot woman’s eye. Burton has always had a knack for making her friends laugh and is a “huge extrovert.”
She had also decided she was going to stop drinking.
“There wasn’t any huge overarching reason for why I decided to do it,” she said. “But sometimes I think you build bad habits and I realized that sometimes those things were taking me away from the things that I cared about.”
She also realized she needed something new to fill her evening hours, so she signed up for the open mic at Rock Bottom. On that lighted stage, she rediscovered the adrenaline rush that came when, as ACC Rookie of the Year, she was playing Division I volleyball at UVA. Found again was the energy she got from crowds while she sipped cocktails in nightclubs.
The irony was that she was back in a club, where nearly everyone else was drinking.
“I have a joke about this,” she said. “About how performing in comedy clubs forces me to be around my ex, my ex being alcohol.” The interesting thing, Burton said, is that there are a lot of sober comedians in D.C. “I didn’t know there was someone similar to me until I started doing comedy.”
After earning her undergraduate degree from UVA’s Batten School of Leadership and Public Policy, Burton went straight to law school at Howard University. Today she works as a lobbyist.
“A lot of it is for nonprofit organizations that are working to respond to abortion policy following Roe v. Wade, reducing recidivism rates in prisons and making sure that people have access to broadband wireless,” she explained.
Batten, Burton said, was the perfect proving ground for her work today.
“I think Batten has had so many benefits in my life,” she said. “Batten grads work at some of the most amazing places and I’ve been able to be extremely connected with some very powerful people because of the Batten degree.” The CEO of the firm she works for, Burton pointed out, is close friends with Ian Solomon, the dean of the Batten School.
Burton’s comedy life has taken off since that first, three-minute open mic at the brewery in Maryland in 2022. Within months she was headlining in major clubs in the D.C. area. “I went from doing three minutes to now headlining, where I’m doing 30 to 40 minutes at various clubs across the country,” she said.
Burton’s goal is to be a legal correspondent of her own television program, modeled on shows like “The Daily Show,” hosted variously by Jon Stewart and Trevor Noah. “All of these people started in comedy,” she pointed out.
Burton said she wants to motivate people to get out and vote, telling them about their rights – of course, with a hefty side of comedy.
“I’ve always been interested in teaching on a mass scale, especially because I feel like in law school, I only receive that amazing education because I was paying $50,000-some-odd dollars a year,” she said. “So, how can I bring that education to people who potentially don't have access to it? I’ve always felt like television is an excellent means to do that.”
University News Senior Associate Office of University Communications
jak4g@virginia.edu (434) 243-9935
October 11, 2024
