Why You Should Go to Austin Sketch Fest

Sam Mal­colm is an improv and sketch com­e­dy vet­er­an, and he is excit­ed. He should be since this week marks the 5^th Annu­al Austin Sketch Fest. I know what you’re think­ing, ​“great, anoth­er fes­ti­val.” I get it, but remem­ber we live in Austin and this fest is a lit­tle dif­fer­ent than all the oth­ers and worth your attention.

Nation­al Recognition

Five years ago, Michael Jas­troch (own­er of Cold­towne The­ater), Lance Gilstrap, and Nick Ramirez, decid­ed that sketch com­e­dy rep­re­sen­ta­tion was lack­lus­ter in our fair city (it’s true that stand-up and improv get a lot of atten­tion). They want­ed to show­case the tal­ents of peo­ple per­form­ing their beloved comedic genre, and Austin Sketch Fest was born.

For the last three years, Sam Mal­colm has tak­en over the duties of orga­niz­ing and book­ing the small fes­ti­val and things are going well. Since its incep­tion, Sketch Fest has received an increas­ing num­ber of sub­mis­sions from acts across the coun­try. Sketch groups from places like New York, and Chica­go have noticed the hard work Austin Sketch Fest orga­niz­ers have put into the event and they want to be a part of it. The recog­ni­tion has caused and upswing in per­former submissions.

Sam and his part­ners strive to keep the scope of the fes­ti­val rel­a­tive­ly the same as it was in the begin­ning — rough­ly one week long, and one venue per night. This, in com­bi­na­tion with increased sub­mis­sions from per­form­ers to join the fes­ti­val, has allowed them to be able to put the high­est qual­i­ty of live writ­ten com­e­dy per­for­mances in front of the audience.

Two Venues, Five Nights

When I asked him about the venues, this is what he told me, ​“We don’t want to spread our­selves too thin or make our audi­ences choose between shows. Instead, we want to craft a sched­ule so the fans will know they will see some­thing amaz­ing.” The venues shar­ing the host duties this year are Cold­Towne The­ater and Spi­der House Ball­room. With as many men­tions Spi­der House Ball­room has got­ten since the start of this site, I believe it’s due a fea­ture — but I digress. Each night, the cho­sen venue puts on two shows that mix sketch and stand up com­e­dy. This allows event goers to not have to wor­ry about dri­ving across town to one venue or the oth­er on the same day.

The sched­ule is chock full of sketch and stand up tal­ent. Groups like My Mans, STAG Com­e­dy, and Your Ter­rif­ic Neigh­bors, share the stage with the likes of Mag­gie Maye, Chris Tellez, and Bryan Gaar (of Twit­ter fame). As an added bonus there will be an erot­ic fan fic­tion com­pe­ti­tion. Here’s how it works: Ten per­former will be read­ing pieces of erot­ic fan fic­tion. Five of the them are writ­ten while the oth­er five have write them on the fly based on audi­ence sug­ges­tions. Sam was excit­ed about the com­pe­ti­tion stat­ing that ​“It’s raunchy, crazy and some per­form­ers take things to a dif­fer­ent lev­el by actu­al­ly expand­ing the uni­verse they’re writ­ing in.”

Let’s sum it up: Erot­ic Fan Fic­tion writ­ten and per­formed by come­di­ans, nation­al­ly rec­og­nized sketch com­e­dy groups, and two venues that aren’t down­town. Why should­n’t you go?

Details

Austin Sketch Fest runs all week until Sun­day night. All sched­ule infor­ma­tion, Fes­ti­val pass­es and indi­vid­ual tick­ets are avail­able at the Austin Sketch Fest web­site.

Vis­it Cold­Towne The­ater’s and Spi­der House Ball­room’s web­sites for oth­er cal­en­dar events and information.

Feel free to fol­low me on Twit­ter as well.