The Comedy Festival, formerly known as the US Comedy Arts Festival, is a comedy festival held each year in Las Vegas, Nevada. From its 1985 inception to 2008, it was held annually at the Wheeler Opera House and other venues in Aspen, Colorado. The primary sponsor of the festival was HBO, with co-sponsorship by Caesars Palace (the primary venue), TBS, GEICO Insurance, Twix candy bars and Smirnoff Vodka. HBO exited the festival business in 2007 and TBS became the primary sponsor.
The festival includes stand-up comedy performances, appearances by the casts of television shows, and has a film component called the Film Discovery Program.
In 2008, RooftopComedy.com and the opera house started a new festival based in Aspen, The Aspen RooftopComedy Festival.
Famous quotes containing the words comedy and/or festival:
“It is comedy which typifies, where it is tragedy which individualizes; where tragedy observes the nice distinctions between man and man, comedy stresses those broad resemblances which make it difficult to tell people apart.”
—Harry Levin (b. 1912)
“Marry, I cannot show it in rhyme, I have tried; I can find no rhyme to “lady” but “baby”Man innocent rhyme; for “scorn,” “horn”Ma hard rhyme; for “school,” “fool”Ma babbling rhyme; very ominous endings. No, I was not born under a rhyming planet, nor I cannot woo in festival terms.”
—William Shakespeare (1564–1616)