Looks like fans of both comedy and sweeping social change may have a new favorite streaming series: Abolish Everything!
Creator Chandler Dean, a Houston grown improviser and speechwriter transplanted to NYC, has brought his hit alt variety show from the stage to the screen thanks to the creatives at the streaming service Nebula.
As he tells the story, Dean developed the idea for the series during the times of pandemic. “I created Abolish Everything as a submission to a now defunct non-profit comedy theater, called the Squirrel Comedy Theatre founded by some former UCB folks after their theater was closed for a few years due to COVID. They were building a new model, and it was really exciting and I wanted a chance to be a part of that.
“In coming up with a show, I wanted to create a show I would really want to be booked on if I were not already the person booking it. So it combines a few factors that I have found to be strengths of mine over the years. It involves giving highly written and impassioned monologue about a subject you want to see abolished. I have a few year history of working as a speechwriter and I have written humor for sites like McSweeney’s, all of which involve constructing an argument of some kind, and in some cases a comedic argument. I’ve also always admired the late night shows and political late night shows that have that kind of structure, so that’s one side of it.”
Dean continues, sharing his vision of how he could make an impression as an onscreen talent. “The other side is I like riffing,” he says “but think I’m bad at acting —which makes me OK at improv! [And] we have these figures, the ‘Political Establishment’, a panel of improvisers who want to maintain the status quo. So they get to show up, listen to the arguments and pop off with a couple of jokes, then move on. I thought that would also be very fun for performers of my sensibility.
“That started at Squirrel Comedy Theatre, [and] after about a year or so of that, we moved on to Caveat, which is one of my favorite venues in New York. The show really started to snowball from there, pick up word of mouth and get a more and more consistent audience until we started with Nebula in January [of this year].”
Taking himself back to the origins, the phrase “abolish” seems to have been buzzing around his subconscious for the nearly a decade. “I think I have video of my YouTube channel where I earnestly call to abolish the Department of Homeland Security from like 2017,” he says, laughing. “And I stand by this, not even ironically. So I do think the unapologetic left wing sensibility of the response to the first Trump administration definitely got the idea of we need to abolish this, we need to abolish that. I think the movement to abolish ICE is another one that was really in the political zeitgeist. I think the idea of combining that fervor (which in my opinion is just and righteous) with something incredibly silly and stupid which doesn’t bum people out when you talk about it —is kinda the magic formula of the show.”
The effort of staffing a rotating series of guests on this complex comedy series is not lost on Dean, who has been toiling away in the New York comedy scene since his freshman year at Fordham over a decade ago.
“I moved here for college and jumped right into taking classes at UCB and writing humor and things like that. So just from doing that and hosting other shows, and just trying to be as active as possible in the comedy scene in the city, I wager I have met thousands of comedians at this point. Many people that I have booked for the show are people I have met before or seen perform live. Otherwise sometimes it is on reputation. So for this first season on Nebula, a huge number of the people who are doing it are people who already did the stage version of the show and really killed it.”
Dean has a solid handle on the consolidating media landscape for young comics, as well, which seems to have tapered off, as the video digital disruption era of the Internet seems to be buckling to the Too Much TV mentality of post-Strikes Hollywood.
“I am really excited about the opportunity that doing this show provides for those thousands of comedians I mentioned. I think the shrinking of digital media and for the lack of a better term, the comedy middle class opportunities has been really tough for comedians trying to break through. Increasingly unless a gatekeeper from one of these massive institutions like discovers you and plucks you from obscurity, the only way for someone to find a career in comedy is basically built it by brute force and find the audience and make something that’s all your own.
“Then maybe you can have a decent career touring and make yourself a one-man band. And what I think the opportunity is here if it is successful, or even if we only have a short run, I am so thrilled by the chance I have to give other performers to show their best selves in a high quality setting for an audience that really gets this kind of intellectual/silly/stupid comedy.”
(And for what it’s worth, Dean shouts out Daily Show agitator Lewis Black as his dream booking for season 2!)
Crediting him roots, Dean recalls those Houston artists who first set him on his course to success in the comedy business. “I went to a couple of performing schools, the High School of Performing and Visual Arts, and before that what is now Meyerland Middle School, and I would say that my theater teacher Stephanie Wittels was an extraordinary force in my life.”
Continuing on the impact of Stephanie Wittels, who herself has made good through her massive Lemonada Media podcasting company, which sold this year in a massive eight figure deal. “She really dug into what could have been simply distracting side comments in class, and instead helped me harness it into something productive by giving me the opportunity to do funny roles in theater, but also letting me know about her brother Harris Wittels, the late-great, who was also from Houston and went on to become one of the most beloved comedy writers that comedy writers know, who wrote for The Sarah Silverman Program and Parks and Recreation and was a regular on Comedy Bang Bang and was a performer at UCB.
“That was the first time I heard of someone with the exact same background as me, I think he also went to that middle school and high school, and basically laid out the path on how someone like that could be successful in this field.”
While recalling the one time Dean met the late-great comedy writer causes a bit of embarrassment, he claims that the incident taught him a major lesson. “Harris Wittels came and visited by middle school while Miss Wittels was teaching there, and he took questions from the kids,” he remembers. “And all the questions were of course, like, ‘Do you know Dane Cook?’ but he was very friendly. And to this day, it’s a tragic tale, but I remember someone mentioned that I did comedy to Harris in the room.
“And I was goaded into getting on the black box stage to do something, and I didn’t have anything, because of course, I was 13. I remember stewing afterwards: ‘Why didn’t I have a tight five ready to go?’ So I honor Harris by being prepared for everything now.”
Abolish Everything has been renewed for a second season, and releases on irregular Sundays on the streaming service Nebula. go.nebula.tv/abolish
