jacquetta szathmari

Jacquetta Szathmari is a New York based comedy writer, performer, and contrarian who persists in using the Oxford comma and refused to write this in the first person. A native of extremely rural Maryland, her observations on race/class relations and the failures of modern society are presented from a unique perspective with a rapier wit that will cut a bitch. Szathmari’s comedy has been called “crackingly smart, funny, philosophical, and often politically incorrect” by the LA Weekly. Others have called it “just down right offensive” and wanted to know who the hell she thought she was; and those were fans. Her solo shows “That Old Black Magic” and “That’s funny. You didn’t sound black on the phone.” have captured the hearts and wallets of NYC and LA audiences. “That’s Funny…” was a Backstage Critic’s Pick and a ‘10 Hollywood Fringe Festival Best Comedy Nominee.

Ever the talker, you can hear her go on and on about the coming robopacalyspe, penises, Jason Bateman, and the like as co-host of the weekly podcast Hey You Know It . If you like to read, you can avail yourself of her interviews in the New York Times Best Seller “How to Be Black” by Baratunde Thurston and “Don’t Bring Home a White Boy” by Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Karen Hunter. Szathmari has hosted shows and slung jokes like hash in comedy clubs all over NYC and even studied and performed at the PIT and UCB. She produced the monthly all female variety show “Balls Out Comedy” at the Bowery Poetry Club (RIP) and she’ll do it again.

In her left hand Szathmari holds a degree in Medieval Studies and Theatre from Sarah Lawrence College and a MSTESOL from City College. In her right she holds a membership card for the Libertarian Party because she wants more freedom than she can handle. Concurrent to her career in entertainment, she taught ESL for about a decade in Budapest, D.C., and New York at a number of highbrow bastions of private education including The New School and Columbia University. A natural wordsmith (not her words) who likes to pay the rent, she has put down ink for outlets ranging from “Mad Money with Jim Cramer” to major fashion brands she can’t even afford to wear.