BY JASON PAFUNDI
After eight days of comedy, the inaugural Laughing Devil Comedy Festival came to a close on Saturday, May 19, with Michael Lawrence being crowned the champion at the Laughing Devil Comedy Club in Long Island City.
With the victory, in which he proved to be funnier than more than 100 other comics, Lawrence received $2,500 in cash and an automatic entry into the San Francisco Comedy and Burrito Festival. He also scored a week of work at the Laughing Skull in Atlanta and Monty’s Comedy Joint in Indianapolis. He’ll also get a year of work — 52 paid spots — at the Laughing Devil in LIC.
“I had never won a contest and was more than happy to accept I would lose this one, as consistency and an utter lack of confidence are reliable tools for a comic to have,” Lawrence said.
The festival was a part of the LIC Arts Open, a celebration of the thriving arts community in Long Island City that featured more 200 open studios, painting, theater, sculpture, music and dance.
“It surpassed anything we could have imagined,” Hofsetter said. “I was impressed by the level of the talent, thrilled by the attendance and honored by the way the neighborhood got behind us. This certainly did not feel like a first year festival.”
More than 200 comedians participated in the festival, with over 100 competing in the contest. The opening round featured 30 comedians each performing two-minute sets. The short time on stage was a challenge for the comedians to get into their routine and to captivate the audience, but eight competitors moved on to join the 40 already pre-selected as quarterfinalists.
For the quarterfinals, four shows were held with 12 comedians each performing for five minutes. Eight moved onto the semifinals while eight more were wild card selections. Those 16 performed for eight minutes each, with four from the semis and three wild cards moving onto the finals.
The finals featured each comedian doing 10 minutes each. Lawrence finished ahead of Andy Hendrickson, Marc Theobald and David Foster, who placed second, third and fourth, respectively.
Lawrence said that since all comics are poor, any one of the competitors could have used the first-place prize money.
Steve Hofstetter, owner of the Laughing Devil club, said the idea for the festival was hatched in January and implementation began a month later. He said the planning of the event was easy, but coordinating all the moving parts provided the biggest challenge.
With the festival being such a success, Hofstetter is already thinking about how to make next year’s event even bigger.
A portion of all proceeds from the festival will go to the Lenny Bruce Memorial Foundation to help build a drug recovery facility called Lenny’s House, a place to get healthy mentally, physically and emotionally while learning life skills to be better prepared for reentry into a sober world.
