Bridgetown Comedy Festival 2014 / Portland, Oregon

PRESS RELEASE

PORTLAND, OR — The seventh annual Bridgetown Comedy Festival will be held May 8–11 at venues throughout Southeast Portland. Four-day passes are now on sale for $89; a complete festival schedule, with tickets on sale for individual shows ($5-30), is forthcoming.

A roster of performers and special shows is now available at bridgetowncomedy.com.

This year, Dan Harmon (creator of Community and co-creator of The Sarah Silverman Program and Rick and Morty) and his co-host Jeff Davis (Whose Line Is It Anyway?) bring their wildly popular live show Harmontown to Bridgetown, complete with its ongoing game of Dungeons & Dragons.

Kumail Nanjiani (Portlandia, stand-up special Beta Male) and Jonah Ray (the Nerdist Podcast) give Portland a sneak peek of their live show The Meltdown with Jonah and Kumail just prior to it being broadcast as a weekly Comedy Central series. Writers and performers from Totally Biased with W. Kamau Bell, including Aparna Nancherla, Janine Brito, and Eliza Skinner, all bring their whip-smart stand-up to Portland stages, alongside Portland comedy staples Amy Miller, Kristine Levine, Alex Falcone, Sean Jordan, Shane Torres, Barbara Holm, Nathan Brannon, and dozens of others representing the Northwest’s top talent.

Also of note is that Australian stand-up sensations Wil Anderson and Sam Simmons will descend upon Portland for the first time.

Bridgetown’s 2014 lineup features native Portlanders who have gone on to rule the comedy world and shape nationally televised comedy series. These include:

Morgan Murphy (Jimmy Kimmel Live, Late Night with Jimmy Fallon, stand-up special Irish Goodbye)
Matt Braunger (The Michael J. Fox Show, Maron, Up All Night, MADtv, Family Tree)
Ron Funches (Kroll Show, Undateable)
Ian Karmel (Chelsea Lately, CONAN)

In addition to Harmontown and The Meltdown, special shows and podcasts include Throwing Shade, The Crabfeast Podcast, and Brew Ha Ha —a comedy show that doubles as a drinking game. Bridgetown will also screen an original film entitled Thugs! The Musical, written and directed by comedian Kevin Avery.

Venues include:

Doug Fir Lounge
Bossanova Ballroom
Alhambra Theatre and Lounge
Hawthorne Theatre and Lounge
Eagles Lodge
Tanker Bar
Bar of the Gods
White Owl Social Club

ABOUT BRIDGETOWN COMEDY FESTIVAL

Long before Portlandia burst onto the scene, there was the Bridgetown Comedy Festival. Over the course of seven years, Bridgetown has established itself as one of the most esteemed entertainment events on the West Coast, a celebration of innovative humor that proudly bears Portland’s signature style. This four-day annual event unites thousands of comedy fans with a carefully curated roster of up-and-coming performers and comedy veterans from around the world, not to mention podcasters, writers, filmmakers, and musicians. Bridgetown regularly features seasoned performers and writers from television shows like 30 Rock, Arrested Development, The Daily Show, Saturday Night Live, and The Simpsons, and the festival’s hand-picked newcomers often go on to become prime-time and box-office darlings. More than just a celebration of stand-up comedy, Bridgetown’s programming offers sketch, improv, podcasts, films, panel discussions, music, interactive audience games, and more. The result is the type of ingenious, spontaneous, creative fantasia that can only happen in Portland.

The festival has hosted over 600 performers throughout its history, including Patton Oswalt, Marc Maron, Janeane Garofalo, Margaret Cho, Maria Bamford, Kristen Schaal, Tim Meadows, Todd Barry, Oscar Nuñez, and Fred Armisen. Each year’s roster of performers features Bridgetown’s signature blend of world-famous headliners, up-andcoming performers, and the Pacific Northwest’s top talent. Festival venues, focused in Southeast Portland, include the Alhambra Theater, the Bossanova Ballroom, the White Owl Social Club, and the Doug Fir, in addition to smaller and more informal performance spaces along Hawthorne. Audience members can see any of the dozens of shows over the course of the weekend with a single wristband; they can quickly hop from seeing a sold-out show in a 500-seat venue to seeing a national headliner in an intimate, 20-seat performance space on a bar’s back patio.

ANNOUNCED PERFORMERS
(Additions to the lineup and other festival developments will be announced periodically throughout March and April)

Sean Cullen
Dan Harmon
Matt Braunger
Kumail Nanjiani
Wil Anderson
Morgan Murphy
Jeff Davis
Sean Patton
Jonah Ray
Jamie Lee
Aparna Nancherla
Nate Bargatze
Julian McCullough
Andres du Bouchet
Matt Kirshen
Christian Duguay
Hari Kondabolu
Baron Vaughn
Ron Funches
Jon Daly
Adrienne Iapalucci
Adam Newman
Myq Kaplan
Brendon Walsh
Ahmed Bharoocha
Levi MacDougall
Shane Mauss
Andy Haynes
Jay Larson
Sean O’Connor
Ryan Sickler
Ian Karmel
Hampton Yount
Sam Simmons
James Davis
Auggie Smith
Tony Camin
Jesse Case
David Smithyman
Dwight Slade
Billy Wayne Davis
Amber Tozer
Mark Normand
Dave Stone
Karl Hess
Nick Rutherford
Chris Locke
Kevin Avery
Bryan Cook
Sean Flannery
Derek Smith
Joselyn Hughes
Bri Pruett
Kellen Erskine
Melissa Villasenor
Andy Erikson
Byron Bowers
Shane Torres
Mark Forward
Nathan Brannon
David Foster
Kristin Manna
Leo Flowers
Emily Maya Mills
Richard Bain
Jade Catta-Preta
Bob Khosravi
Will Weldon
Matt Ingebretson
Janine Brito
Megan Koester
John F. O’Donnell
Sean Jordan
David Cope
Randy Mendez
Casey Ley
Vince Averill
Aaron Weaver
Kristine Levine
Kiran Deol
Billy Prinsell
Charlie Rohrer
Mary Van Note
Greg Santos
Anthony Lopez
Jesse Elias
Jim Hickox
Sean Donnelly
Kimberly Clark
Amy Miller
Eliza Skinner
James Ball
Peggy O’Leary
Lance Paullin
Carolyn Busa
Caroline Bassett
Sean Green
Steve Gillespie
Rojo Perez
Ivan Hernandez
Anna Seregina
Rebecca O’Neal
Douglas Gale
Tony Sam
Ben Bizuneh
Martin Morrow
Lisa Best
Andy Wood
Will Smalley
Rob Haze
Adam Pasi
Kortney Shane Williams
Brian Mitchell
Doug Smith
Katherine Williams
Philip Schallberger
Tim Hammer
Gabriel Rutledge
Joshua Murphy
Will Miles
Rob Gleeson
Nick Cobb
Johan Miranda
Brent Flyberg
T.J. Chambers
Opeyemi Olagbaju
Mike Lebovitz
Christian Van Wade Ricketts
Subhah Agarwal
Tom Sibley
David Zoe Leon
Dina Hashem
Barbara Holm
Sachi Ezura
Katie Nguyen
Nick Sahoyah
Rhiannon Archer
Matteo Lane
Zak Toscani
Natasha Muse
Molly Fite
JoAnn Schinderle
Jeff Oliver
Jordan Casner
Kyle Mizono
Stephanie Hasz
Jackson Banks
Ryan Singer
Jacob Christopher
Yogi Paliwal
Anatoli Brant
Tanner Hodgeson
Steven Wilber
Nariko Ott
Curtis Cook
Wilfred Padua
Scott Losse
Monica Nevi