The Milwaukee Comedy Festival continues to grow in this, its 4th year. Opening this coming Thursday at the Off-Broadway Theatre, this year’s festival runs for four days, featuring over 120 performers in 30 comedy acts from all over the country, with at least one coming in from Canada.
Tonight
This year’s festival begins with a Wednesday night pre-show. Tonight at the Alchemist Theatre starting at 7:30pm. No specific groups are mentioned here, but look for Milwaukee sketch and improv groups to be celebrating the coming festival.
Thursday, August 6th
This year’s festival opens with performances by local comedy long-form improv group Meanwhile and Stripper’s Picnic, from Chicago. Before either of them take the stage, however, the Festival officially opens at 7:30 pm with a performance by the Zombeatles. It’s a kind of . . . well, I hesitate to call it sophisticated, but it’s a very intricate parody of the Beatles that . . . as near as I can tell is a zombie Beatles cover band, featuring songs like “I Wanna Eat Your Hand,” “A Hard Day’s Night of the Living Dead,” and "Ate Brains A Week." It’ hard to tell what they’ll be doing here, but it should be interesting . . . also featuring a performance by Milwaukee-based long-form group LeeRick.
Friday, August 7th
Friday features two shows:
At 7:30 pm: An (almost) all female sketch/improv show featuring four groups:
Size 8 very, very clever comedy from Chicago.
followed by
Broadminded The popular Milwaukee sketch group.
followed by
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One Two Three A three person Chicago group that is only 2/3 female, but otherwise an all-female show, which sounds really interesting . . .
And at 10pm--A trio of Chicago groups (including Off Off Broadzway which has the distinction of being an all-female comedy group that uses a neo-burlesque format)
preceded by the Minneapolis-based group Police Cop Detective P.I.
Thursday also marks a first for the festival, as both shows will open with stand-up . . . Tyler Kroll of Milwaukee Sketch group The Gentlemen’s Hour opens for the early show and Beth Lewinski of Meanwhile opens the late show . . .
The festival continues on Saturday with a very, very long day of comedy and concludes Sunday with Teen Comedy day. More on the last two days of the festival tomorrow . . .
For more info on the Festival, visit Milwaukee Comedy Fest’s Website.
