Evan Rabalais vs. the 96 Hour Comedy Festival

Evan Rabal­ais attempt­ing to break the record for world’s longest stand-up com­e­dy show checks out. Between play­ing hours-long Dun­geons & Drag­ons cam­paigns and craft­ing sto­ries opposed to just one-lin­ers for his standup, he’s no stranger to long-form entertainment. 

Like­wise as pro­duc­er of Fallout’s Crit­i­cal Hit–a table­top improv show – Rabal­ais is famil­iar with the strate­gic and some­times stress­ful aspects of com­e­dy show pro­duc­tion. With his next adven­ture, 96 Hour Com­e­dy Fest (May 24^th-28^th, 2023), he’s about to embark on his most dif­fi­cult (albeit excit­ing) quest yet by com­bin­ing the two.

96 Hour Com­e­dy Fest will be four straight days of around-the-clock stand up com­e­dy in an attempt to break the Guin­ness Book World Record for world’s longest stand-up com­e­dy show. The record would be a great acco­lade for the festival’s venue, Fall­out The­atre, and could fur­ther solid­i­fy Austin’s place on the com­e­dy map. 

But with all the logis­tics, plan­ning, paper­work, and well, math, some­one might won­der why Rabal­ais would per­son­al­ly take on the task. Turns out, this is not his first rodeo. He got to per­form at 3AM for an entire hour at the Nashville fes­ti­val in 2016 that cur­rent­ly holds the record (of a whop­ping 80 hours and 5 min­utes). He shares with Valerie Lopez that the fun, weird expe­ri­ence inspired him to attempt his own record here in Austin. ​“I want­ed to do this because it’s weird. It’s inter­est­ing. It’s fun for me to try and think of the math of this pro­duc­tion. And on top of all that, like at the end of the day, if it’s suc­cess­ful, my name is in the Guin­ness World Record book.”

But fol­low­ing Guinness’s strict rules of hav­ing non­stop stage rota­tions for a full 96 hours won’t be easy. Hav­ing to metic­u­lous­ly man­age the 15+ minute set times of at least 150 come­di­ans gives a whole new mean­ing to comedic tim­ing. But Rabal­ais’s tenac­i­ty and knack for long-form fun and strate­gic think­ing will be giv­ing Austin a super unique oppor­tu­ni­ty to be a part of com­e­dy his­to­ry. ​“Orga­ni­za­tion is dif­fi­cult, but it excites me. Real­ly try­ing to orga­nize a show like that real­ly tick­les my brain in a pos­i­tive way.”

Rabal­ais can’t do it alone. For this type of event, it will quite lit­er­al­ly take a vil­lage, but sub­mis­sions for 96 Hour Com­e­dy Fest haven’t been rolling in quite as quick­ly as he would like. ​“Hey comics! Sign up! Please for the love of God,” Rabal­ais hilar­i­ous­ly plead­ed with Valerie in this week’s episode. 

While Guin­ness does require each com­ic pro­vide some paper­work (proof of at least one year of stand up expe­ri­ence and your 20 most recent paid gigs) the cost to sub­mit is 100% free, unlike many oth­er fes­ti­vals. And with so many hours of time to fill, comics will be guar­an­teed some great stage time. Not to men­tion, it’s going to be super fun. ​“If you enjoy being around comics all day, every day, and just doing weird shit at all hours of the day, that’s what this is,” Rabal­ais shared.

So if that sounds like fun to you, this is your call to sub­mit to the fes­ti­val! Over a four-day peri­od, Rabal­ais needs hosts, and 150 (but ide­al­ly 200) come­di­ans to sub­mit and per­form one after anoth­er, for at least fif­teen min­utes, with­out a sin­gle entire minute of silence, in order to obtain the record. 

If you’re not able to help by per­form­ing, you can still help out by vol­un­teer­ing as a record-keep­er (Ohhh, fan­cy!). Or, if you’re just in it for the gig­gles, you can help by mere­ly being an audi­ence mem­ber (one of the 10 min­i­mum that need to be in the room at all times).

It sounds like a lot of rules, but by fol­low­ing them, the 96 Hour Com­e­dy Fes­ti­val is also break­ing the rules of con­ven­tion­al com­e­dy fes­ti­vals, thus break­ing new ground for Austin’s com­e­dy scene. He’s bring­ing us some­thing real­ly awe­some and it shows in his pas­sion for it. ​“I can do a lot of real­ly cool things, a lot of good things – all I need is the oppor­tu­ni­ty.” Austin com­e­dy scene, give Evan Rabal­ais and your­self that opportunity: 

• Sub­mit to be a performer
• Sub­mit to be volunteer

Whether it’s at 3PM or 3AM, we hope to see you at 96 Hour Com­e­dy Fest May 24 – 28, 2023 at Fall­out Theatre!

Fol­low Evan

• Link­tree — link​tr​.ee/​e​v​a​n​r​a​b​uhlay
  
• Twit­ter — @evanrabuhlay
• Insta­gram — @evanrabuhlay
• Tik­Tok — @evanrabuhlay
  
• Youtube — youtube​.com/​@​e​v​a​n​r​a​b​uhlay

Evan can be seen and heard:

• Crit­i­cal Hit - First Wednes­day of every month at the Fall­out Theater
• 96 Hour Com­e­dy Fest — May 24^th-28^th, 2023 at the Fall­out Theater