Comedian Matt Eyer’s love for comedy is simple: “I’m fat, I’m hairy, I’m old and if I didn’t develop a good sense of humor I would probably kill myself.”
Lucky for him, he’s funny enough to be a part of the first Columbus Comedy Festival happening this weekend.
Nick Dekker, a theater lecturer at Ohio State, and several other Columbus comics devised the festival in response to “a desire to unify the Columbus comedy scene,” Dekker said.
There will be a variety of comedic performances at the show, including improvisational comedy, stand-up, comedy games and movies. The Festival will be at Wild Goose Creative, a multidisciplinary non-profit arts organization that Dekker helped found.
“Our space seems pretty well-suited to comedy because it’s a small, intimate space,” Dekker said.
WGC is no stranger to comedy. Dekker has hosted sketch comedies, improv shows and even a monthly comedy night every fourth Thursday with the show “Blank Blank, Party Time, Excellent”.
“The purpose of the show is to show the other side of comedy aside from stand-up, and to get the comedians in town to open up their minds a little bit and try working on other mediums,” said Nathan Smart, one of the organizers of “Blank Blank.” The interactive show is a part of the Comedy Festival line up.
Comedy Revolver is another act that previously performed at WGC and will be at the Festival. Rye Silverman, one of the act’s creators, explained Comedy Revolver as “a blend of stand-up and improv.”
“We have four comics and four mics, and the comics each ‘revolve’ from performing stand-up to sitting on a panel and interrupting the comic onstage and heckling or riffing with them,” Silverman said.
“All my jokes are one or two sentences long,” said Eyer, co-creator of Comedy Revolver. “I don’t have big elaborate setups. I don’t have the attention span for them, I guess.”
The Festival will also be filled with performances by eight Columbus improv troupes, including the OSU group 8th Floor Improv. And improv means more than most expect.
“Improv is so much bigger than ‘Whose Line is it Anyway?'” Smart said.
“Whose Line is it Anyway?” is a TV show with well-known improv comics like Wayne Brady playing various improv games, skits and making up songs.
There are 2 different forms of improv: long form and short form. Long form involves the players getting a suggestion from the audience and improvising a 20-45 minute play, sometimes a musical, off of that one idea. “Whose Line is it Anyway?” is a good example of short-form improv, also called “comedy sports.”
There are even serious forms of improv that focus on character development, that won’t likely be found at the Comedy Festival.
The festival also features workshops Saturday morning and afternoon dealing with sketch writing, short-form improv, stand-up comedy and résumé building.
“If you’re a stand-up comic trying to start up, it’s really hard,” Dekker said. “We want to showcase what people can do and help new people who have an interest in it.”
“I think there’s an amazing glut of talent in Columbus,” Eyer said.
To the Festival organizers, this is about more than just a handful of comics.
“I feel comedy is definitely going to take off locally [in Columbus] very very soon,” said Zach Baird, the Festival’s open mic host. “My dream is to get funnier and watch Columbus get funnier with me … I want [Columbus] to someday be the place where people come to be comedians.”
Silverman shares that desire. “I’m just hoping [the Festival] will raise the awareness of how much comedy talent we have here and make people want to see more of it. I’d love for Columbus to be a ‘comedy town.'”
To be in the open mic Saturday night, contact Baird at [email protected].
The Festival will take place Feb. 25 through 27 at Wild Goose Creative at 2491 Summit St., one block from a bus stop on the CABS East Residential bus line. Registration fees are $10 for each night of the festival, plus $5 for each workshop. For more information visit wildgoosecreative.com or call (614) 859-9453.
