Who’s Yola?

Yola Jean Lu is a comedian, actress and filmmaker currently based out of New York.

Close friends will tell you that Yola’s origin story begun after she was cut from her High School dance team. Yola would argue that it started after she told her boyfriend that she wanted to try stand up, and he responded, “please don’t, people already think you’re weird.” She broke up with him shortly after that.

Once described as “one of the freshest, most unique voices in modern film and storytelling,” Yola loves to take on hard subject matter and make it funny and watchable. Yola has a comedy special called, “Help! My Vagina is Trying to Kill Me!” that had it’s debut at the 2024 Edinburgh Fringe and received glowing audience reviews. A snippet of the show then went on to win the 2025 Frontera Fest’s “Best of Fest,” and was later offered a 5 week, 15 show main stage run produced by Hyde Park Theatre.

Yola is also the writer, producer and star of short film, Patsy (2023), which was selected in festivals such as Austin Film Festival, Tacoma Film Festival, Waco Indie, that went on to win awards such as “Best Texas Short” and “Best Actress.” Her most recent film Dirty Dishes (2025), is currently in festival submissions.

She has also cofounded comedy groups such as “Disoriented Comedy,” a mostly female, Asian stand up comedy tour and “Y’all We Asian,” Austin’s first all Asian improv team, which sold out every mainstage run and monthly show for the first 3 years.

Yola and her teams have performed in festivals such as SF Sketchfest, Bumbershoot, Austin Sketchfest, Dallas Comedy Festival, DCM, Out of Bounds and more.