Last month, a long-running institution of Orlando entertainment lost its beloved matriarch, but the show — and her family — must go on. For nearly 16 years, the “cousins” that comprise Mama’s Comedy Show have been performing improv games to raise bail money for their imprisoned materfamilias, who was embodied by performer Ed Budd’s mother, Nina. She passed away in June at age 78, but her theatrical family’s legacy lives on in Papa’s Cirque du So Lame (cirquedusolame.com), a satirical variety show opening Saturday for a five-week summer run on International Drive.
Mama’s Comedy Show is the brainchild of Todd Feren, a Jacksonville native who’s been producing theater since he was in kindergarten.
“My mom says that probably today, I would have been diagnosed with ADD or something and medicated,” jokes Feren. “I would just go off in my own room and make up stories and stuff like that, so it worked out.” Mama’s originally grew out of Doodie Humor, Feren’s scripted sketch comedy troupe with Michael Aiello (of Universal’s Halloween Horror Nights fame), which was a hit of the Orlando Fringe Festival during the aughts. “Up until then, I was writing 100 percent of our shows, and I just wanted some level of interaction or input from other people,” Feren says.
That collaborative urge led Feren to assemble friends — including Budd, Tony Giordano and his former wife, Michele Simms — for regular improv comedy shows, first at Sleuths Mystery Dinner Shows and now at Ten10 Brewing Co.
Feren says he brought together “all the funniest people that I knew, because I figured that’s your best shot. You get the funniest people you know, and if they make me laugh, hopefully they’ll make the rest of the people laugh.”
Needing a photograph to serve as the face of Mama’s, Budd suggested his mother, and Feren quickly concurred. “I met her and instantly went, ‘Oh yeah, this woman could be in jail,'” Feren recalls. “She’s such a strong presence, and not afraid to be loud and share her opinion with anyone.” For her part, Budd says, his mom “didn’t really know what we were talking about, but I explained to her that she would be like [what] Mickey Mouse [is] to Disney, she would be to Mama’s Comedy Show. She said ‘yes’ before she really even understood what we were doing.”
The loss of Nina Budd left a mark on all members of the Mama’s family, but none more so than her son, a veteran theater educator at Olympia High School. “My mom’s influence on my acting career was huge,” says Budd. “She would be the one who would constantly run lines with me if I was in a play. It didn’t matter what she was doing — if she was ironing clothes, if she was doing some home project that she wanted to do for herself — it didn’t matter.”
Although she became enamored with the stage herself, performing in a few community productions, she was never fond of the four-letter words that Mama’s (but not Papa’s) casts regularly deploy. “She was so happy when we would do a clean show for a resort or for a private function, but she also understood that comedy is subjective. She didn’t want us to stop doing the blue comedy; she just made it clear that it was not her preference, but her love for us was greater than her distaste for blue humor.”
The success of Mama’s attracted attention from the owners of another dinner theater, Pirates Dinner Adventure, and Feren soon found himself spending a decade directing and managing an adult-oriented vaudeville for them. When a 2017 hurricane ripped the roof off the venue, Feren spun off Mama’s concept into Papa’s Cirque du So Lame as a one-night-only fundraiser for displaced specialty performers. Papa’s briefly returned online during COVID, but this weekend will mark its live debut as a commercial production.
Much like Mama’s incarceration, Feren explains the conceit of Papa’s conspicuous absence from his own show: He “went out for milk in December of ’89, and we’re 100 percent sure he’s coming back [so] we’ve left the house exactly as he left it.” That gives the show license to be a love letter to Reagan-era fashion, music and pop culture, making it “an ’80s roller coaster … ride of nostalgia and comedy” filled with retro-inspired choreography by Brittany Stovall.
Although Feren describes the show as “very comedy-forward,” the cirque-style specialty acts involved are no joke and include world-class hula-hooper Anna Jack and aerial acrobat Albena “Benji” Aleksandrova, as well as plate-spinners, contortionists and magicians. They’ll all be demonstrating their skills against custom animated backdrops on the giant LED video wall in Afrotainment’s high-tech television studio at 7220 International Drive, which transforms after hours into a live performance venue.
“It’s 200 seats, but it’s also so cozy, [because] nobody’s far away from the stage,” says Feren, who is hopeful the run will be successful enough to return seasonally. If it does, be forewarned, because he threatens, “If all goes well, we’re coming back for Christmas, where you better believe Whamageddon is going to be a thing!”
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This article appears in Jul 2-8, 2025.