Hobart Comedy Festival

In 2002 The Hobart Comedy Festival, billed as “the world’s smallest cultural event”, kicked of with just 8 local acts in one venue and around 700 audience members. Just one year later it had grown to feature 3 venues and 25 acts and in excess of 3200 audience members. The event has continued that success ever since and in 2011 is in its ninth year.

Each year The Hobart Comedy Festival selects rising stars from overseas and brings them to Hobart for a taste of “we saw them when…” Past unknown-to-Australia but rising stars include DeAnne Smith (USA) who earlier this year returned to Australia and was nominated for the Melbourne Comedy Festival’s prestigious Barry Award. Each year the festival also selects the cream of the crop of Australia’s comedy artists, including expat Tasmanians now excelling on the national comedy circuit. The Hobart Comedy Festival is credited with discovering a series on “unknowns” such as Josh Earl, The Bedroom Philosopher and Hannah Gadsby, all of whom have since carved successful careers nationally and internationally.

The event showcases to Tasmania an array of famous and aspiring Australian and international comedians. The Hobart Comedy Festival is unique, being a programmed event in which performers only appear by invitation. It creates combinations of artists unique and unseen anywhere else in the world to provide audiences with as many comedic styles and experiences as possible.

The list of appearing artists since 2002 includes names who later went on to become Adam Hills, Charlie Pickering and Tom Gleeson. Other guests have included Wil Anderson, Justin Hamilton, Dave Hughes, Carl Barron, Judith Lucy, Fiona O’Loughlin, Peter Helliar, Lano and Woodley, The Umbilical Brothers, The Scared Weird Little Guys, Rod Qantock, Adam Spencer, Greg Fleet, Corinne Grant, Damian Callinan, Peter Rowsthorn, Denise Scott, Rachel Berger and many more.

Since those early days (when the pie heater thermostat kept tripping the power and killing the lights and microphones every hour) the event has grown to become one of the best little Festivals of its kind. The Hobart Comedy Festival now enjoys the fact that established artists want to appear, and emerging artists see it as a career right-of-passage to be invited to perform.

Over 20,500 patrons have sat in the audience at The Hobart Comedy Festival since its creation.