7:00 – Becky & Noelle
With a small silo of unusual musical instruments and an avant-guard sensibility, this third two-woman group of the fest finds a way to satirize performance art while simultaneously BEING performance art.
7:30 – kevINda
At the top of the show, this two-person African American group from Chicago explained that they perform “Racially and politically charged humor.” And that they do. While in a genre of comedy where “white guys do this/black guys do this” has become the standard cliche, kevINda manages to address issues of race in politics in a way that’s still accessible to both the satirizing and the satirized. Though their punchline/lights-out style of scenes is often predictable, it’s just as often effective.
8:00 – KARLA
“I wanna put that show in my pocket and carry it around forever” – Britt from TROOP!
This show was the talk of the fest. While they didn’t altogether abandon the sketcher’s impulse for “wacky premises,” this two-woman troupe from LA favored much smarter scenes examining relationships and human interaction, using sparkling characters, use of staging as a comic device and shifts in power dynamics to create scenes that were both hilarious and carried a message. The ending scene was the high-point of the festival, using a child-like story to create an air of magic and love that immediately brought the audience to standing ovation.
9:00 – Summer of Tears
This troupe has seen it’s popularity grow exponentially over the past year, having even performed at last year’s Aspen Comedy Festival. They’re an attractive young group, know it, and have no problem with using it to their advantage. Their scenes frequently have a “sexy” edge and they bring a hip energy to the stage (they dance to high-energy pop songs over every transition) that seemed to quickly win the audience to their side.
10:00 – Elephant Larry
This show was so packed they almost didn’t let the other performers come in to watch it. They took the stage like rock stars. Unpretentious and straight-forward, EL performs quirky and strange scenes with clever use of sketch cliches. In an art form where premises risk getting stale, they perform even television parodies and game show sketches with an inventiveness which, if any of us knew any better, we should probably consider obscene.
11:00 – TROOP!
Watching TROOP! is like watching an old friend – not just because they ARE old friends, but because their catalog of familiar sketches and tight, nuanced performances make them your instant buddies at any festival they perform.
12:00 – SketchFest NYC Craptacular
Any SketchFest worth its salt has a good PUSH rip-off. That’s right, Seattle’s shamelessly taking credit for this one. Most cities have one – Portland has the Scramble-Bramble, Chicago has the Sketchubator, and New York has the Craptacular. This late-night cabaret allows performers to premiere experimental bits or works they might otherwise not perform in a regular set. As the title suggests, these are usually pretty bad. We were sorely disappointed, however, when many of the scenes turned out to be pretty good. Some of the noteworthy scenes were a bizarrely touching piece from The Third Floor about an awkward boy’s love affair with a manatee, and a song by Seattle-turned-New York musician Reggie Watts that received an enthusiastic standing ovation. A standing-O at a Craptacular? Unprecedented!
