First Geelong Comedy Festival announced

GEELONG’S first comedy festival – organised by Geelong residents, for Geelong residents – is locked in to entertain for later this year.

Geelong-based couple and business partners of Anything Goes Entertainment, Blaise White and Kelly Baker, have announced Geelong will host its first community-driven comedy festival – aptly named the Geelong Comedy Festival.

The festival, which will involve no registration fees and no set venue hire for artists, will be on the final weekend of October (26-28), providing the region with three-days of ongoing comedic entertainment at a plethora of venues.

“Kelly and I have toured around attending and doing various comedy festivals and we decided Geelong was really in need of something like this,” Mr White said.

“Geelong is Victoria’s second-largest city and the fact we don’t really have a comedy scene, or a night scene to that point, is quite ridiculous. Cities like Bendigo and Castlemaine have big comedy scenes, there is no reason we can’t.

“We really want to make this first year of the festival as accessible to the artists and comedy lovers as possible and we have had some really exciting names express their interest to take part in the inaugural year – almost a hundred expressions of interests so far.”

The pair said no artists or venues have been announced publicly but will begin making announcements in June once the expression of interest period is over.

Mr White was able to reveal that among the applicants are award winners, best newcomers, and several “A Grade” entertainers.

“We’ve been extremely lucky and we’re extremely grateful to have had the reception that we’ve had this quickly from artists and the community,” Ms Baker said.

“We have received almost 1,000 follows on our Facebook page in the space of two to three weeks.

“A number of venues have reached out in the Geelong CBD and Pakington Street precinct, and we’ll have those details finalised as late as July.

“We estimate a total of 20 shows will be available to festival-goers in October.”

Comedians or local venues interested in being a part of Geelong Comedy Festival can email [email protected]