SXSW Comedy Opts for Insight Over Innovation…But What’s Next?

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SXSW Comedy Opts for Insight Over Innovation…But What’s Next?

My feelings about SXSW Comedy and it’s inexplicable lack of growth are well documented.

My first trip to the Austin festival was in 2012, and I’ve gone a handful of times since then. And while the Music, Film, and Interactive festivals have only grown in scope and interest, growth in their comedy offerings has stalled. After a year away, I was excited to hear that they were offering a unique approach to laughs in an online format – shows presented from comedy clubs in six major cities, showcasing talent performing in their home clubs.

Given how many people look to SXSW to inspire their innovation, I was genuinely surprised that they didn’t choose to present a hybrid type of live/streaming programming, as initiatives like Don’t Tell Comedy or Mint Comedy have rolled out since the start of the new year. But despite being billed in the lineup as “Live From,” what festival attendees actually got were sets recorded in late February and early March. This wasn’t a surprise; the comedy lineup was released days before the events began, and SXSW billed it as “an impressive lineup of regulars, excited to be back on a real stage for a live audience and the result is a fascinating comedy time capsule.”

I’ll admit: I spent the first day and a half frustrated at the lack of imagination that this approach took. But the longer I tuned in, and the more of these shows I saw, I came to appreciate the “time capsule” element of the experience.

If a comedian’s filmed special is meant to capture a moment in time for their comedy, this group of seven sets, presented from New York, LA, Nashville, Minneapolis, Chicago, and Atlanta, show the respective realities from these cities as they start to reawaken and reopen. As expected, many comedians explicitly named that it was their first time on a real stage in nearly a year. We got to see a collective shaking off of rust, a tentative adjustment to being in rooms with people again, and some of the first attempts to engage a live audience in such close quarters. These small touches, which (I hope!) will seem bizarre in five years, felt relatable in the immediate moment.

Of course, there were jokes about masks. Of course, there were jokes about club capacity being better for comedians who weren’t selling out rooms. There were assuredly well-worn paths to laughs that we’ve all resorted to in order to get through this past year. For some reason, I got very preoccupied with trying to see how each respective site was handling cleaning the mic after each performer; to those also wondering, it varied based on location, most tried to edit it out, and many had comics come up with their own mics and switch out the connection. And yet, these jokes and rituals didn’t feel repetitive once you really embraced the framing of the shows as local time capsules. Even the methods of filming – the production value, the introductions to who was in the audience – gave each city’s “presentation” a distinct flavor. With common safety protocols in place, each city nevertheless had its own take on how it’d provide live laughs for their taped event. Crowds were as large as fifty in one instance, to twelve in another, to three plus puppets (yup, that was Dynasty Typewriter). And as SXSW’s Jordan Roberts correctly named, it was a fascinating time capsule.

Another bonus that was provided as part of the festival: Bring Back Laughs, an hourlong special made up of performances from last summer’s flatbed truck shows presented by The Creek and the Cave’s Rebecca Trent. Directed by Kristian Mercado and featuring sets from Carmen Lynch, Rojo Perez, Victor Varnado, The Lucas Brothers, Nore Davis, Tone Bell, Janeane Garofalo, Myq Kaplan, and Roy Wood, Jr., it was both the first time that anyone out of New York had seen those shows – one of the most innovative outings for live comedy, and organized to benefit Direct Relief. And there was an added sense of synergy implied; in the months since those nights were filmed, Trent announced the closure of their Long Island City location, and its eventual reopening in Austin. If Bring Back Laughs was a means to tide us over until we can meet again, I’d happily take it. It was a fresh and dynamic addition to the slate of shows.

And speaking of when we meet again: what does SXSW Comedy look like after this? If we return to live events in 2022, I could see it going a few different ways. Either the lineups and eventual scope of the festival will balloon to compensate for our lost years, or they’ll remain small out of an abundance of caution. Even if the latter is the smart move…what then? I’ve always wondered, in light of the following month’s mammoth Moontower Comedy Festival (which has been pushed this year from its typical April to a hopefully safer September), if the arrested growth of SXSW Comedy has been deliberate. For the time being, at least, I don’t have an answer to that, and frankly might never know. In the meantime, I’ll look back on this year’s festival as a marker for where we’ve been: a little hesitant, a little halted in their groove…but hilarious all the same.

 

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Amma Marfo

Amma Marfo is a writer, speaker, and podcaster based in Boston, MA. Her writing has appeared in Femsplain, The Good Men Project, Pacific Standard, and Talking Points Memo. Chances are good that as you're reading this, she's somewhere laughing.
Amma Marfo

Amma Marfo

Amma Marfo is a writer, speaker, and podcaster based in Boston, MA. Her writing has appeared in Femsplain, The Good Men Project, Pacific Standard, and Talking Points Memo. Chances are good that as you're reading this, she's somewhere laughing.