The Edinburgh Festival Fringe is the world's largest performance arts festival, which in 2024 spanned 25 days and featured more than 51,446 scheduled performances of 3,317 different shows across 262 venues from 58 different countries. Of those shows, the largest section was comedy, representing almost 40% of shows, followed by theatre, which was 26.6% of shows.
Just for Laughs was a comedy festival that was held every July in Montreal, Quebec, Canada. Founded in 1983, it was the largest international comedy festival in the world. In addition to the festivals themselves, Just for Laughs also developed, produced, and distributed other forms of comedy entertainment, such as television programming.
James Anthony Patrick Carr is a British-Irish comedian, presenter, writer and actor. He is known for his rapid-fire deadpan delivery of one-liners which have been known to offend some people. He began his comedy career in 1997, and he has regularly appeared on television as the host of Channel 4 panel shows such as 8 Out of 10 Cats, 8 Out of 10 Cats Does Countdown and The Big Fat Quiz of the Year.
The Melbourne International Comedy Festival (MICF) is the largest stand-alone comedy festival and the second-largest international comedy festival in the world. First held in 1987, it takes place annually in Melbourne over four weeks, typically starting in March and running through to April. The Melbourne Town Hall has served as the festival hub, but performances are held in many venues throughout the city.
The Buxton International Festival is an annual summer festival of opera, music and a literary series, held in Buxton, Derbyshire, England since its beginnings in July 1979. The 2020 festival was cancelled due to the Covid-19 crisis. The 2024 Buxton International Festival will run 4-21 July.
A comedy festival is a celebration of comedy with many shows, venues, comedy performers and is held over a specific block of time. Normally, each festival has a diverse range of comedy themes and genres.
Thomas Francis Gleeson is an Australian stand-up comedian, writer, television and radio presenter. Gleeson formerly co-hosted The Weekly with Charlie Pickering alongside Judith Lucy and currently hosts Hard Quiz and Taskmaster Australia.
Zoe Ann Lyons is a British comedian and TV presenter.
Joshua Michael Thomas is an Australian comedian, actor, and writer. In 2005, he won the Melbourne International Comedy Festival's Raw Comedy Competition. He has since appeared on television numerous times, including as a regular and Generation Y team captain on Network 10's Talkin' 'Bout Your Generation. In 2013, Thomas created the award-winning ABC2 and Pivot television series Please Like Me, which he also co-wrote and starred in.
Hannah Gadsby is an Australian comedian, writer, and actor. They began their career in Australia after winning the national final of the Raw Comedy competition for new comedians in 2006. In 2018, their show Nanette on Netflix won the Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Writing for a Variety Special and a Peabody Award.
Geraldine Mary Quinn is an Australian songwriter, guitarist, singer, comedian, and actor based in Melbourne. She has performed solo shows at many arts and comedy festivals, including Hex And The City in Adelaide, Melbourne, and the Edinburgh Festival Fringe (2009), and Queen Bitch at the 2018 Melbourne International Comedy Festival.
BriTANicK is an internet sketch comedy duo from Atlanta, Georgia, that consists of Brian McElhaney and Nick Kocher. McElhaney graduated from the Atlanta International School and Kocher graduated from The Paideia School. They attended New York University together. The duo's videos have been featured on internet video sites including YouTube, CollegeHumor, Cracked, Break, and FunnyOrDie. BriTANicK was nominated by the ECNY Awards as Best Sketch Comedy Group in New York in 2008 and by Comedy Central's inaugural Comedy Awards for best web video. In 2012, BriTANicK appeared in Joss Whedon's adaptation of Much Ado About Nothing.
Anywhere Festival is an annual Brisbane based festival for performance anywhere but traditional theatre spaces. The first anywhere-but-in-a-traditional-theatre concept was brought to Brisbane in 2011 by creative director Paul Osuch. His theory is that we need to take traditional story-telling out of theatre buildings and back to where life really takes place, in the community.
Bob Slayer is an Edinburgh Comedy Award winning comedian, musician and promoter. He has been part of a new economic model for venues at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe which has made the event fairer and more affordable for performers and audiences. Acts that have performed at his venues have won and been nominated for a number of prestigious awards.
Randy Feltface, mostly referred to merely as Randy or, on occasion, Randy the Purple Puppet, is an Australian puppet comedian. Randy is a fixture on the international stand-up circuit and makes regular guest appearances on Australian television. He also performs as one half of the musical comedy duo "Sammy J and Randy", who made their television sitcom debut in 2015 with Sammy J & Randy in Ricketts Lane on ABC in Australia, for which Randy is credited as co-writer and lead actor. In 2019, Randy competed in the American reality television comedy competition series Bring the Funny, making it to the second round.
Lindsay Webb is an Australian comedian based in Brisbane. Originally getting his break in radio Webb has been performing stand-up comedy all over the world since 1998, including major comedy festivals such as Melbourne International Comedy Festival and Adelaide Fringe.
