If you’re not yet excited about this year’s SXSW, which starts in just over a week from now in Austin, then get a load of these comedy offerings happening between March 9-18, 2018. 2018 SXSW Comedy Festival Participants Adam Lustick • Adam Pally • Aparna Nancherla • Baron Vaughn • Beth Stelling • Betsy Sodaro […]
Continue ReadingThe Onion is celebrating its 30th anniversary with a big comedy and arts festival this year. Set to take place in various Chicago venues from Wednesday, May 30th through Sunday, June 3rd, the festival will feature Onion and ClickHole editors and alumni, comedians like David Cross, Bob Odenkirk, Tom Scharpling, Chris Gethard, Scott Thompson, and […]
Continue ReadingIn past years, I’ve assembled a chronological list of comedy festivals across America and the world. Seeing festivals come and go and shift their schedules, this year, I’ve organized all of the comedy festivals by location instead of by date. And I’ve given them a permanent home on my LIVE! shows page on The Comic’s […]
Continue ReadingA wave of comedians from Poland, Hungary, Latvia and Romania are helping to tackle stereotypes about EU immigrants in the UK
It’s not easy being a Polish comedian in Brexit Britain. “I haven’t heard anyone actually say the words, ‘Go back to your country,’” says Mike Topolski, a standup and actor originally from Wrocław in western Poland who moved here seven years ago and is now proudly engaged to “a Geordie lass”. “But I did a gig a couple of months ago in south London and the jokes were not well received at all. I was the only foreigner there and it felt like it was a Brexit crowd. They were just staring at me and I could see them thinking: ‘How are you still here? Should we build a wall or what?’” His signature opener? “Yes, a comedian. But also builder, plumber, electrician and gardener.”
Topolski is one of more than 80 comics in the lineup of the UK’s first Eastern European comedy festival (EEComFest), which opens on Wednesday with 19 shows at venues across London. It features acts from 15 countries, from Bosnia and Moldova to Malta and Slovenia. The festival’s mission statement jokes that this is “another try from immigrants to get control over the United Kingdom and end the British way of life. It will be in London, as it’s the UK city with the biggest immigration problem.” But clearly the aim is the opposite: to use humour to try to improve mutual understanding. It’s like Eurovision, only intentionally funny.
If I say I’m 31 and I live with my parents, in Romania, that is very funny. It’s too late to be living with your parents
Related: Comedy without borders: Eddie Izzard and the language of standup
Continue ReadingComedy Central’s Clusterfest returns to San Francisco this year, and today the lineup for the 3-day event was announced. Headliners for the festival include Jon Stewart, Amy Schumer, Trevor Noah, and The Lonely Island, and the lineup includes a ton of comedians, podcasts, musicians, and other special events, including: Tiffany Haddish, Jim Jefferies, Third Eye […]
Continue ReadingMark your calendars for he second installment of Comedy Central’s weekend of “comedy music and comedy” as Colossal Clusterfest is… MORE
Comedy Central’s Colossal Clusterfest set to return to San Francisco this June appeared first on The Laugh Button.
The seventh annual Moontower Comedy Festival takes place in Austin in April, and today they revealed the full lineup of comedians slated to perform. The festival runs from Wednesday, April 18th through Saturday the 21st, and headliners include Tig Notaro, Tiffany Haddish, Weird Al Yankovic, Nikki Glaser, Mike Birbiglia, Ali Siddiq, Janeane Garofalo, Colin Quinn, […]
Continue ReadingAs the annual SF Sketchfest closes the books on another successful January celebrating comedy by the Bay, Comedy Central has announced it, too, will continue its own comedy festival as an annual tradition this June. Clusterfest will return June 1-3, 2018. Pre-sale tickets available this Feb. 1. I was there last June for the first […]
Continue ReadingThe Edinburgh Festival Fringe, which is happening August 3rd through the 27th in 2018, is the largest performing arts festival in the world. Every year, thousands of performers go to the Edinburgh Fringe Festival to showcase their work, build a UK following, make valuable connections, sell their shows to producers, and seek out local and […]
Continue ReadingThe Sundance Film Festival has announced its slate of world premieres for January 2018, and among them are two notable new comedy projects. Futile and Stupid Gesture, David Wain’s biopic of Doug Kenney, co-creator of The National Lampoon, as well as the screenwriter of Animal House and Caddyshack, stars Will Forte as Kenney (pictured above […]
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