Born in Palo Alto, California, Mike Player is the creator of America’s First and Continuing Queer Comedy Festival, Outlaugh!, as well as a performer with and the creator of The Gay Mafia improv/sketch comedy group. He performed comedy improvisation at Lincoln Center, stand-up comedy at The Laugh Factory in LA, as well as Standup New York and the Manhattan Punchline in the Big Apple. He is the "grand nephew" of Clarence Birdseye, the inventor of frozen peas, in addition to being born with the eerily ironic surname "Gay." Mike Gay.
He wrote and performed (at Highways in Santa Monica) a one-man performance piece entitled Mr. Gay, based on growing up in The Gay Family. Mike trained as an actor at The Strasberg Institute. His most memorable dramatic stage role was in Becoming Walt Whitman (at the Powerhouse Theater), as Walt’s sickly younger brother Andrew, who screamed at the homoeroticized Walt from the base of a staircase and then coughed up blood. On television he appeared on ABC’s Home Show in a dramatic recreation of an aluminum siding scam.
Mike debuted as a stand-up comedian at the age of 18. He performed in major clubs for six years before segueing into improvisation and sketch comedy writing.
During Mike’s salad days, he worked in a phonesex office in New York, and one year made enough money to travel to Egypt and sail the Nile. He worked briefly as an eager backup singer appearing at New York’s famed Pyramid Club as a member of "Bruno Beats and the Boys" He experimented with skydiving, scuba diving, and wind surfing.
Mike founded the Shock of the Funny Comedy Theater Company in New York and directed and performed with them for five years.
He is a graduate of The Warner Brothers Comedy Writers Workshop. His writing partner in the workshop was Shock of the Funny co-star, Oscar Nunez (NBC’s The Office, Com Central’s Halfway Home). They have worked together on and off throughout the years.
Mike was a returning champion on the game show, Majority Rules. He made it all the way to The Giant Check! He promptly packed up his winnings and his husband, Joel, in 1998 and traveled the world for six months: The South China Sea, India, The Amazon Jungle.
Joel and Mike have been together for 22 years. Joel is an activist-writer-and out queer English Teacher in South LA.
Mike is ep/creator of Outlaugh! the movie which premiered in LA’s Outfest Film Festival in 2006 and has screened at film festivals across the country, and internationally.
Mike is also ep/creator of "The Outlaugh Festival on Wisecrack" TV series on MTV’s LOGO network airing since January, 2007.
Website
mikeplayer.net
Influences
Jackie Gleason, Rik Mayall, Rimbaud, Dee Marcus Improv Comedy Workshop (LA) 79-82
Albums
Mike Player's Interests
General
Saving all the children of the world over and over again until they beg me to stop it.
Moderate Adventure travel ie. no tours but hot water. Plan to go to Antarctica on my 50th (to keep me from spoiling).
Astronomy (not your daily forecast kind). Ask Michelle Paradise what this means. If you can't name all the planets in our own solar system, I am always shocked.
Quantum Physics - Love Stephen Baxter
Certain forms of Cher (I am gay...)
Sociopolitical environment of Scandinavia - Why can't the primitives that run our country get it?
Global Warming -- I hate Van Nuys in the Summer -- can you imagine in ten years?...
Future global conflicts will be over fresh water.
The way Bush resembles a monkey...
Television
Look, I hate to say this, but Lost In Space. If you are a grown woman (or man, holy moly!) that likes to dress up as Penny in that green outfit from Season 3 -- depending on my meds, I may be very interested to have coffee with you.
Lost, Bottom, Battlestar on scifi, Judge Judy, Daily Show, The Office, Outer Limits (remake), Maude (jumping rope without a bra - line), Fear Factor (early episodes), Charlie Rose
Books
Without Conscience by Robert D. Hare, The Intimate World of Abraham Lincoln by C.A. Tripp,
The Velvet Rage by Alan Downs,
...most anything from Carl Hiaasen,
Impro by Keith Johnstone,
The Confessions by Jean-Jaques Rousseau,
Roughing It by Mark Twain
...prose poems by Charles Baudelaire
Theater of the Oppressed by Augusto Boal,
The Interesting Narrative of the Life of Olaudah Equiano by Olaudah Equiano,
Love Alice by Audrey Meadows, Charles M. Shultz,
A Good Man is Hard to Find by Flannery O..Connor
Gay Mafia Improv Demo Reel (8:20) Includes Mike doing "Day In The Life" Interview
Brauny Man - Sketch from Outlaugh! The Movie (1:30) Featuring Mike Player and Mark Rakow
Gay Mafia Sketch Demo Reel (9:40) Begins with "I'm A Big Friggin Idiot" written and directed by Mike, and featuring Mike, Starr Ahrens, and Mark Rakow. Halfway through is a taste of "Killer Lesbians From Vaginalis 12!" - one of Mike's sketches. Later, Mike appears briefly as "Caretaker Marge," the Swat Team Lesbian with her elderly father.
Short Montage of The Gay Mafia in performance at Outlaugh 2005. (0:48)
MESSIN' AROUND WITH GAY MARRIAGE! in an Episode of the Sketch Serial "Sergio's Place" written and directed by Mike. We did 34 episodes total, a new one each week within the regular Gay Mafia shows. This one is 18. We did this at Club 66 in Hollywood where 3 weeks and 3 episodes later we were thrown out for proceeding with the marriage of the Navy Seals. (7:30)
Outlaugh 2009 Promotional Video (5:30) Tells story of Outlaugh and Promotes '09 in Lake Tahoe. The Outlaugh Comedy Festival is created and executive produced by Mike Player.
Hi Mike -- I like your new pictures! It prompted me to look at all your pictures here. Then I felt compelled to send the 70's one to Leanne Littlestone. We all love you. Debby
It's a talk show much like you see on late night tv, except it's really QUEER. IAN HARVIE HOSTS: JANE LYNCH, MARGARET CHO, GARRISON STARR and EDISON APPLE and more! ----------------------------------------------------- Gratitude to anyone who reposts this. LYMI, Ian
hope to see you there!
