At 24 years old, D.J. Mausner is already an award-winning stand-up, sketch, and improv comedian. Mixing her bleak observations and surreal, intricately described fears, she uses characters and anecdotes of extreme anxiety to remind the audience that life is indeed a brief death. Fun!
In 2017 she performed in both the Just For Laughs Festival in Montreal and JFL42 in Toronto, winning the Homegrown Comics Competition and appearing in the New Faces Characters Showcase, as well as co-headlining her own show. Her 2019 solo sketch performance in the Toronto Sketch Comedy Festival earned her a four N review, with reviewers saying “[t]his is razor sharp, disturbing, relevant and cathartic satire from one of the most exciting young comics I’ve seen in years”, and resulting in her addition to the Best of the Fest showcase.
D.J.’s harrowing sincerity has also landed her spots in POP Montreal, OFF-JFL, the Women in Comedy Festival, Bad Dog Theatre’s Summer Blockbuster Week, and The Del Close Marathon, and led her to headline at Ladyfest, the Mprov Festival, and The Chicago Women’s Funny Festival.
She won the Just For Laughs Award for Best Comedy at the 2016 Montreal Fringe Festival with ATM: The Musical, which she co-wrote and musically directed, as well as the Best New Troupe Award at Montreal Sketchfest with her sketch troupe Cousins. Months later, she co-wrote and directed Shitty Bouquet, a play dubbed “disgusting and great, not necessarily in that order.” In 2018, she and her improv partner David Kaufman were nominated for best comedy at the Montreal Fringe Festival for their fully improvised fringe show, Fringe: Improvised.
You may have heard D.J. on The Todd Shapiro Show on Sirius XM, Inside Jokes with Sandra Cahrusi on Global, Daybreak on CBC Montreal, The Beaverton Weekly Report Podcast with guests Kyle Kinane and Ali Siddiq, Killed to Death, The Brunch Club’s Hot Goss Podgosst, or The Riff.
Comics D.J. has opened for John Hastings, Hari Kondabolu Johnny Pemberton, Brian Posehn, and DeAnne Smith. She has improvised with Armando Diaz and Kevin McDonald.
In 2018 D.J. turned down a taping at Just For Laughs citing that the festival had not done enough to address the 20+ sexual assault allegations made against it’s founder, Gilbert Rozon. Her protest resulted in the festival redoing its sexual assault and harassment complaint procedure, requiring all faculty to undergo training regarding sexual assault and harassment in the workplace, and the festival releasing a statement of support to the survivors who had come forward against Rozon- all on D.J.’s suggestion. Her tweets denouncing the festival were featured in the opening month of New York’s National Comedy Centre Museum in the social media section.
She currently resides in Toronto where she has contributed to Gary and his Demons, written for This Hour Has 22 Minutes and Baroness Von Sketch Show, and acts as an understudy for The Second City Touring Company. She co-hosts and produces the podcast Experts, and thinks that actually, it is cool to care.