Eleven days. More than 300 reveals. The twentieth annual New York Comedy Festival provided a Golden Corral-style buffet of guffaws. It was unimaginable to see all of them, however listed here are the highest seven performances — in no explicit order — that Billboard witnessed.
1. Zarna Garg
Garg, who closed the pageant with a sold-out present at Town Hall in Midtown Manhattan on Nov. 17, took an unlikely path to stand-up comedy. Raised in Bombay, she escaped an organized marriage by leaving residence, immigrating to the United States and attending regulation faculty earlier than turning into a multi-hyphenate within the comedy enterprise: stand-up, screenwriting, podcasting and a memoir. She first headlined at Caroline’s on Broadway in 2020 and, based on her supervisor, the Town Hall look was one among her greatest headlining reveals so far.
Plenty of Garg’s comedy is steeped in Indian tradition and stereotypes — “You are Indian, your pronoun is doctor!” she mentioned throughout her efficiency —however judging from the composition of the group on Nov. 17, she has clearly crossed over. Garg received large laughs saying her bindi was the identical sort of sticker that Macy’s makes use of to mark down garments, and implied that she often makes use of hers to snag a discount. “You know I’m doing it!” she mentioned. And she elicited an enormous roar from the group after telling a narrative about conserving her comedy work from her mother and father. When her mom discovered, as an alternative of disowning her daughter, she instructed her that if it could assist along with her profession, “May you tell your audience that your father likes to do it doggy style.”
2. Jeff Arcuri
The Michigan-raised, Chicago-based comedian opened the pageant on Nov. 7, when he introduced his Full Beans Tour to the Beacon Theater on Manhattan’s Upper West Side, and proved how he has blown up over the previous yr: with crowd work, which has gone viral on social media. Arcuri is so lightning-quick and scalpel-sharp that making an attempt to take notes of his back-and-forth banter with viewers members — accomplished with an enormous, depraved smile — is a idiot’s errand. So, take a look at this video and notice that, not like different comics who single out members of their viewers, Arcuri practices largely cruelty-free comedy.
3. Jordan Jensen
The Ithaca, NY-born former contractor — she known as her firm Lady Parts Carpentry, as a result of her title was typically misconstrued as male — Jensen is a tattooed bomb cyclone of humorous, who turned the primary lady to win the pageant’s New York’s Funniest competitors in 2021. Her act is seeded with the wins and losses of womanhood and courting, rising up with a lesbian mom and an estranged weed-loving father, and her battles with OCD and intrusive ideas. As one among Jeff Arcuri’s openers on the Beacon Theater, Jensen had the group screaming with laughter over a wild bit on the realities of menstruation.
4. New York’s Funniest
The winner of the pageant’s annual joke-off — which catapulted the careers of Jensen and Michael Che, amongst different comics — was New York-based stand-up Jamie Wolf, who delivered a cultured set that closed with a killer, seemingly new bit on why he’s fairly positive God is a lady. “Picture dicks and balls,” he mentioned. “They’re so first draft.” It received higher from there however go see Wolf to listen to it firsthand. As they are saying within the enterprise, it’s all within the telling.
Wolf was one among 10 comics who competed on the Hard Rock Hotel on Nov. 16, and two particularly dropped at thoughts a remark Chris Distefano made in an interview with Billboard final week, by which he talked about his comedy originating as a “defense mechanism” that arose from his mother and father divorce.
The competitors’s opener, Soo Ra, who’s Korean, was born lacking fingers on one hand and adopted as an toddler after she was present in a field that had been left exterior a police station. A devastating story, however Ra, whose supply is might be described as cheerfully deadpan, received a variety of laughs out of it, telling the group she may need been deserted when her actual mom checked out her unformed hand and determined, “This baby cannot fix Samsung phones.” She additionally mentioned that when individuals ask her which Korea she is from, she replies, “The one you can get out of.”
Next up was Nick Viagas, who used his stutter to land a variety of laughs. He instructed the group that if he didn’t make it in comedy, “I can always get a job as a turn signal.” And that when he was put answerable for the countdown at a New Year’s Eve present, “That was the longest year.”
5. Ricky Velez
One of Judd Apatow’s favourite comics — he even made Velez a producer on The King of Staten Island New York City by which he co-starred with finest buddy Pete Davidson — the Queens-bred smart-ass repaid the kindness with a charged set for Judd Apatow and Friends on the Beacon Theater on Nov. 9. In addition to driving storytelling — take a look at his Dominican drug vendor within the bit on-line — Velez likes to rile up the politically right, and in his addressing the inflow of migrants into New York, he instructed the viewers, “I like migrants a lot because they’re fucking up the white-woman agenda. That makes me very happy. [In] 2017 white women canceled cat-calling in New York City. Well, guess what. Venezuela never went through a #MeToo Movement. So, good luck telling Papi that ass ain’t fine, Mami.”
He additionally welcomed extra crime within the metropolis, which he mentioned was “the war on gentrification,” including that he lately noticed “three men eating croissants on the corner.” Declaring such a brazen act of refined tastes “crazy,” Velez had the group wheezing when he mentioned, “This is New York City. That can’t happen. Those men need crime,” including: “Croissants and tote bags. If you’ve got a tote bag as a man. Time to move, bro. We back.”
6. Chris Distefano
Distefano did back-to-back-to-back reveals at three outposts of the New York Comedy Club, which is owned by his supervisor, Emilio Savone — partially to re-record traditional bits he did on Netflix and different comedy platforms in order that he may reclaim possession. He dubbed them “Chrissy’s Version” in homage to Taylor Swift. But he additionally riffed on the outcomes of the presidential election and a few of his profitable associates’ reactions to it. “I will say this. If you made a post crying about the president, you’re a p—y” Distefano mentioned. “You gotta be an adult here.”
He additional defined that a variety of associates he met by comedy “do big things. They host TV shows. I took the bus here.” Some of these well-known associates “are crying,” he mentioned. “I’m like, relax. You’re a multimillionaire making believe. You live in America. Shut the f—up. Everybody’s just got to take a deep breath. It’s gonna be fine. Now, do I know for sure? No. I went to Nassau Community College.”
7. Stand Up For Heroes
Year after yr, this profit for navy veterans brings out top-shelf expertise to boost tens of thousands and thousands of {dollars}. This yr, Bruce Springsteen, Norah Jones, Jon Stewart, Jim Gaffigan, Jerry Seinfeld and Mark Normand placed on a very large present, which you’ll be able to learn extra about right here (and watch a video of The Boss performing “Long Walk Home”).
