The Milwaukee Comedy Festival (MCF)was last weekend, and now I’m tasked with reviewing it. I am here to tell you about the acts, and why you should go next time it comes around and why you should support more comedy in Milwaukee.
The MCF spanned 4 days, (5 if you include the kickoff event,) and featured 26 separate acts. After the MCF was over, I began thinking about how I was possibly going to cover all of those acts. I kept procrastinating in starting the article thinking that it would come to me, so I started binge watching The X-Files on Netflix hoping that inspiration would strike.
(As a side note, I prefer the “Monster of the Week” episodes to the “Myth Arc,” and have always been particularly fond of “Home,” “Jose Chung’s From Outer Space,” and “Clyde Bruckman’s Final Repose,” but that’s not why you are reading this article.)
I came to the final realization that covering every single act would not only make this article exceedingly long, but also exceedingly boring, so I’m not going to do that. Instead, I’m going to tell you what the experience was like for me, and tell you exactly why this is not only an event worth seeing, but is an event of great cultural significance for Milwaukee. From the charming absurdity of Chairs, to the incredible production of T.I.M-The Improvised Musical, to the eye opening Morgan Freeman Presents the Magic Negro and Other Blackness, to the self-deprecating Christopher Schmidt… the list goes on and on, and every single one of them was inspired.
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This was my first year attending the festival, and as an outsider who was there the entire time, I felt like I was immersed in something special. Most of all, I had the opportunity to see just how welcoming and supportive the comedy community is. Just about every performer attended every other performance and congratulated their contemporaries after. As a reviewer, it’s my responsibility to remain objective, but I would be lying to you if I didn’t tell you that I consider myself blessed to be able to experience the festival in all of its glory.
We are incredibly lucky to have the Milwaukee Comedy Festival in our city. Milwaukee used to be known as a city that builds things, and now maybe that’s true again, except maybe instead of being a town that manufactures products, we are a town that produces some of the most brilliant comedic minds in the country.
The goal of this blog is and will always be to support the comedy community so that hopefully more people will see comedy in the city. I hope that I’ve been successful so far.
OH COME ON, SCULLY!!! Every single time an alien is on screen, she falls over, or is late into the room, or get’s knocked out… this is absurd.
