Sketchfest returns to SF with another packed lineup

SF Sketchfest comes but once a year, but when it comes it’s the biggest thing in comedy in San Francisco. Since its humble beginnings in 2002 as a showcase for six Bay Area sketch comedy troupes at San Francisco’s Shelton Theater, the festival has grown into a star studded smorgasbord every January (minus a two year COVID time out), bringing big names from all over the country and beyond to perform sketch, standup, improv, game shows, podcasts, tributes, screenings, musical acts, cast reunions, and pretty much any other kind of comedy show under the sun.

This year’s festival includes such luminaries as Eric Idle, Amber Ruffin, the Kids in the Hall, Paul Giamatti, David Cross, Kyle MacLachlan, “Weird Al” Yankovic and Triumph the Insult Comic Dog. Once they come out for Sketchfest, comedy stars tend to come back again and again. “It’s just a very great festival,” says Scott Thompson of the Kids in the Hall comedy troupe.

“They take really good care of you, and there’s all kinds of comedy, improv, clown shows, standup. It’s probably the biggest, most diverse comedy show I’ve ever been involved in. Comedians are so often on the road, and we have such itinerant lives. We’re all over the place, and these festivals are really good when you get to connect with people that you haven’t seen in a long time.” Thompson first came to Sketchfest with all the Kids in the Hall in 2008, and he returned the next year with a solo show.

The Kids have come back many times, often one or two of them doing their own things, and occasionally the whole quintet. From 2016 to 2020 Thompson came to the festival every year with some show or other, usually taking part in several shows. Fresh from the 2022 Amazon revival of their classic TV series, this year the Kids in the Hall return to Sketchfest with two different shows: “The Kids in the Hall: Unplugged” (Jan.

23) revisiting favorite sketches from over the years, and “Scenes They Wouldn’t Let Us Do” (Jan 24) staged readings of sketches rejected by the networks and censors. Thompson is also performing his latest solo show, “King” (Jan. 25), in his persona of gay lounge lizard Buddy Cole. “I always like when the five of us can get together, and I’m extremely excited about doing these sketches that we weren’t allowed to do,” Thompson says.

“I’m really looking forward to performing these sketches in front of an audience to see if they work. I mean, I know they’ll work. So I guess I’m looking forward to vindication.” Bill Irwin, the multiple Tony Award winning actor and clown who got his start with San Francisco’s Pickle Family Circus in the 1970s, says he admires Sketchfest’s “unmoored sense of purpose.” “It exists in a strange relation to reality, but it’s absolutely passionate about getting stuff in front of people,” he says.

Irwin performed in Sketchfest in 2017, teamed with musician Bill Frisell and guest starring fellow ex Pickle clown Geoff Hoyle. He also participated in Sketchfest’s mid pandemic livestream “Festpocalypse” in 2021. This time Irwin guest stars in “freestyle+,” an improvised hip hop show by the Tony Award winning makers of “Freestyle Love Supreme.” It is booked for several performances during the fest.

“They came up with a technique of gamesmanship back and forth that’s rooted in hip hop culture, but it takes its own form, and I’m always inspired and amazed when I’m around them,” Irwin says. Irwin guest starred with “Freestyle Love Supreme” a few times both on Broadway and at San Francisco’s American Conservatory Theater, and now he reteams with San Francisco based Freestyle Love Supreme co creator Anthony Veneziale and crew at Club Fugazi, the longtime home of “Beach Blanket Babylon” and current home of the circus show “Dear San Francisco” that was created by another generation of Pickle Family veterans.

“I’m hoping that ‘Dear San Francisco’ will leave some of its sweat and aura there, and that I can keep up with Freestyle and maybe bring some old school San Francisco baggy pants tradition and see how it mixes in their world,” Irwin says. True to its roots as a local comedy showcase, Sketchfest always features a ton of local comedians and comedy troupes in addition to the big names from out of town.

“Often when I speak to people from out of town, I don’t think they really have a sense of just how rich the scene is here, how absolutely creative and fearless people are when they’re trying stuff out,” says Nicole Odell, artistic director of local sketch comedy troupe Killing My Lobster. “And Sketchfest is an opportunity for people to get a sense of that.” KML performed in the second ever Sketchfest in 2003 and has only been absent for three of the festivals over the years.

This year Killing My Lobster performs “Best of KML: The Last Ten Years” (Jan. 31) at the Gateway Theatre in the festival, then extends the show to a month long run at Eclectic Box in the Mission (formerly Stage Werx, and Intersection for the Arts before that). Odell is also performing as part of La Spazzatura, an operatic improv troupe, in A Taste of Sketchfest” Jan.

28 at the Marsh. “I’ve been very fortunate in that I’ve been able to be a part of the last eight Sketchfests that have actually taken place, not canceled by COVID,” Odell says. “Some of it was with KML, some of it was with other improv groups that I’ve had through the years. And in the comedy community, there’s this whole city sense of excitement that lasts for three and a half weeks.

And that kind of energy really sparks you in a way that I haven’t really experienced at other festivals.” “It’s just such a comedy kid hangout,” says “Star Trek: Lower Decks” and “Space Force” star Tawny Newsome, who grew up in Vacaville and cohosts the podcasts “Yo, Is This Racist?” and “The Pod Directive.” This is Newsome’s fifth Sketchfest since 2017, and as always she’ll perform in the improv comedy show “SponTourCo” on Feb.

3 with her “Pod Directive” co host Paul F. Tompkins, “Lower Decks” costar Eugene Cordero and Sketchfest cofounder Janet Varney. Her shows this year also include the live podcast “Yo, Is This Racist?” in which she and Andrew Ti answer listeners’ voicemails about dodgy comments and encounters, plus a “Family Feud” style game show called “Comedian Feud” (both on Feb.

3). “I get to see all of my friends and acquaintances who you don’t really see unless you’re at a festival or if you happen to get cast in something together and you’re on set,” Newsome says. “That’s one thing I miss about doing live comedy, a guaranteed social interaction every night with at minimum one other very funny person.

Sketchfest is like a super dose of that.” Jan. 18 Feb. 4 Various San Francisco venues Prices vary by show;.