Each year in Baton Rouge, the world of Louisiana politics steps outside the Capitol and onto a different kind of stage—one built for satire. Friday, March 27, the 75th annual Gridiron was held at the American Legion Hall on S. Wooddale Blvd., continuing a decades-long tradition of turning the state’s political moments into comedy.

The production is organized by the Capital Correspondents Association, a nonprofit group of journalists reporting from press row at the Capitol. While their daily work involves covering legislation, interviewing lawmakers and tracking the state’s most pressing issues, The Gridiron offers reporters a chance to step into the spotlight and poke fun at the very world they cover.

“We’re not trained actors or musicians,” said the association’s president, Charles Lussier. “We’re just journalists.”

Each skit is rooted in a year’s worth of reporting—inside jokes, political tensions and headline-making moments reworked into comedy. The process begins long before the curtain rises. Ideas are collected throughout the year, but in January, the group begins meeting regularly to turn those ideas into scripts. The writing sessions are informal, often hosted in members’ homes or in spaces offered by supporters.

“We’ll cook some food, bring some wine, and we’ll start writing scripts,” Lussier said.

From there, the production moves through editing sessions, casting and rehearsals, all handled by the same group of journalists volunteering their time. The result is a series of sketches that feel both familiar and unexpected, blending sharp political humor with a willingness to lean into the absurd.

“This isn’t Hamilton on Broadway,” Lussier said. “I get up there and say, ‘I’m John Kennedy.’ I don’t look anything like John Kennedy. You’ve got to willingly suspend your disbelief pretty harshly.” That self-awareness helps the performance succeed, with humor rooted in familiarity rather than perfection.

Beyond entertainment, The Gridiron serves a larger purpose. As a nonprofit, the Capital Correspondents Association uses the annual event to raise money for journalism scholarships. Each year, students from Louisiana State University, the University of Louisiana at Lafayette, Southern University and Southeastern Louisiana University can apply. This year, two students from LSU’s Manship School of Mass Communication, Courtney Bell and Alexis DeCastro, were selected, each receiving $1,000 funded through ticket sales and donations collected throughout the year.

Maintaining the production, however, has not been without challenges. One of the biggest hurdles is simply getting people in the room. “The tough thing is we’ve got to sell tickets,” Lussier said. In the past, The Gridiron was a staple event for those working in and around the Capitol, drawing a crowd of politicians, staffers and journalists. At one point, it was common for the governor to attend and even deliver a comedic rebuttal. Former Gov. Edwin Edwards was particularly known for embracing the tradition with sharp wit, while more recently, Gov. John Bel Edwards was a regular attendee.

Today, that level of participation has shifted. While some public officials, including Agriculture and Forestry Commissioner Mike Strain and Secretary of State Nancy Landry, still attend, the audience is smaller and less consistent than it once was. Lussier points to a broader cultural change.

“I think we’re more polarized as a country, and that’s infected politics in Louisiana,” he said. “People used to be more collegial at the Capitol… it wasn’t as big of a deal.”

The decline in attendance is also tied to changes in the media industry itself. The Capitol press corps has shrunk significantly over the years, with fewer journalists available to participate in the show. While The Advocate now has only three or four reporters regularly covering the Capitol, there were once six or eight, Lussier said, noting that outlets such as The Town Talk, The Shreveport Times and The Lafayette Daily Advertiser previously had their own reporters based there. As news organizations have downsized or shifted toward broadcast and digital formats, the pool of reporters involved in The Gridiron has become smaller. In some cases, former journalists—now retired or working in communications—return to help keep the tradition alive.

Despite these challenges, The Gridiron endures because, as Lussier put it, “it’s a labor of love.” For the journalists who write, produce and perform it, the show represents something that doesn’t quite exist anywhere else—a live, collaborative form of political satire shaped by the very people who spend the year covering it.

“There’s not really anything quite like us,” Lussier said.

The result is more than just a night of comedy—it’s a chance to laugh at the headlines everyone has been following all year.