Doomsday Shelter Comedy:

Where We Begin

I didn’t choose comedy.

Comedy reached out across the ether and pulled me alongside.

I am not a natural-born comedian; I was not made to do this.

It was never my life-long dream.

Now it is my life-support system.

The steady, beating pulse keeping me alive.

I work at it, constantly, and I keep the ceiling out of reach.

Now it is both my profession and my place.

My hideaway, my Bat-Cave, my Fortress of Solitude.

My Doomsday Shelter: a live comedy company and mental health advocacy group, born from the ashes of whatever unholy fire tore a hole in my soul.

Your Doomsday Shelter: a place to find refuge when the bombs start falling, when the fire burns too bright to light your way and the smoke grows too thick to see the dawn.

One cold winter night in 2019, I sat in the darkness, doom-scrolling, my laptop illuminating a face swollen from medication, eyes dark-circled and puffy from days, weeks, months, years of crying and not sleeping.

The universe granted me two laughs that night, two laughs from two all-time greats, two little stimulus shots to my cerebral cortex.

Dave Chappelle asking who the fuck cares what Ja Rule thinks.

Bill Burr saying the world's hardest job? Not motherhood. Roofing in July as a redhead.

I smiled, sitting there alone in the dark.

I'm not sure what I did next, but given my track record during this time, I probably just went back to bed and stayed there for a long time.

But a seed had been planted.

Picture the end of a movie; we are sure the villain is dead, only to see his fingers wiggle before we smash-cut to black, roll credits.

The prospects of a sequel, maybe a trilogy, or a series constantly reinventing itself.

That was me.

Not living, not yet.

Not alive, not quite dead, either.

Doomsday Shelter Comedy is for everyone.

And if you  have ever sat alone in the dark, crushed beneath the impossible burden of some terrible thing...

We hear you, we see you.

We feel you, we know you.

You might think there is no coming back from where you are.

There was no coming back from where I went.

And yet somehow, I did.

There is always a way back, and there is always a reason to find it and fight for it.

I am not a medical professional; I am just a guy who knows his way around the cold dark space between his ears.

May you always take shelter in laughter, and all of its beautiful, wild enormity.

May it always pull you back from the edge where your darkness meets your light and dares you to jump.

At the very least, may it always grant you a reprieve from your pain, just enough time to fill your lungs with fresh goodness and energize a stampede back to the land of the living, a breath of life in a doomsday shelter made just for you.

Laughter is a gift to be cherished, revered, given, and received.

When you laugh, you are not just alive; you are living.

We are Doomsday Shelter Comedy for Mental Health; we are just getting started and we will not rest until every lost soul goes funny side up.

Jason Fylan-Mares

October, 2025