SketchFest

TROOP! brought the funny with its secret time-freezing pens.

"This is a really great community of people from across the country that I probably wouldn't have met at the Chicago SketchFest, which is just too big. This was intimate and really gave a sense that we have cohorts in every part of the country, which is really comforting. They're colleagues—it's nice to meet people who do exactly what you do somewhere else, and are at the same level as you, or above you or have less experience or more. And I think that's great because in your hometown everyone you know is your friend—it's just not the same thing."
Heather Sims

Gelf: Was there anything particularly special that you're going to take away from the festival?
A: "You mean, besides the smell of meat in the hallway?"
Laura Grey

"One of the best things about going to festivals like this is that you get to play for your peers. When Seattle started up this round of sketch-comedy festivals six years ago, we'd been around for three years. But that was the first time we ever got to play for our peers—we didn't even know we had peers. ... In our own hometown we have a pretty decent following, but we'll have nights where we'll destroy people and the next night—nothing. It'll be like 50 people in the audience and we'll think 'How can we not be making 50 people laugh when we made 50 people laugh last night?' I think it's the same reason people go up to the check-out stand at the same time—it's just herd mentality. You just have to do the show that you do, and people are going to like it or not and you can't take it personally.""
Ted Douglass

"One of my favorite shows was Flaming Box of Stuff;they were incredible. From the opening with the laser-pointer heartbeat to the plane to the story that they had. It was like watching a play. It also made, not only myself, but a couple other people around me, tear up. We got weepy. It was gorgeous what they did, and they're always standup people and always incredible at what they do. … Also, Meat is incredible at what they do. They just are. They're not gender-specific … they play all kinds of different things and different kinds of people, and they let go of the vanity, which is awesome for women in sketch to do because it's hard. And Britt [Erickson] from Troop!—same thing. We all let go of our vanity and dive in and do characters instead of just gender-specific characters. ... Something we've been talking about for a while is maybe writing a full-length comedic play."
Jordana Barnes

"It's good to see the differences—you see other people's strong points, and your strong points. I think everyone did that. I saw a lot of people talking in corners after other people's sets, saying 'We need to have to either work on this, or this sets us apart from other people.' "
Becca Greene

Flaming Box of Stuff meshed humor and melancholy in a blue-collar beer factory. Ice-cold Olympias for everyone.

In less than five minutes, the Cupid Players shot up their audience with love arrows.

"Sometimes comedy gets a little self-satisfied in New York, and it becomes a little bit 'We're awesome, look at us and how great we are,' and it becomes about self-love, as opposed to: 'We want to share this with you. We think this is great, and we hope you like it.' The level of specificity and energy and risk that these people have is so hot. And I think that it's been wonderful to see how all these audiences that have come to the UCB have been able to see that level of commitment in sketch. Because the level of improv and standup comedy [at the UCB] is very high, but in terms of sketch there are groups that have been around but haven't been hugely seen the way that they have been at this festival."
Livia Scott

"I heard from some of the Seattle people that because they don't have an improv scene there, a lot of their stuff comes from the theater; whereas, I feel like a lot of the people who do sketch [at the UCB] come from improv. And you could see the difference in a lot of the groups that are improv-based as opposed to theater-based."
Joe Wengert

"I saw a lot of shows that opened my eyes to different styles and strategies that we should be trying—it's amazing. Changed my life. I saw a show Friday night by a group from Seattle called Flaming Box of Stuff. The main thing that I learned is that the other groups seemed to use more theater, like they do visual things that work on a stage that wouldn't work on film, wouldn't work on print. And there are things that aren't in the script—visuals, simple, clever sets. And stage pictures that we don't even think about. Then I saw Ten West from L.A., and they get so much mileage out of just their faces and old Harold LLoyd-style falling down. But our group is very verbal and premise-based, and we like that stuff, but why not add in theater again? It's just that we're not actors—we're comedy geeks."
Will Hines