Festival searches for the funniest person in Bloomington

A field of 27 will be narrowed to one as the Comedy Attic presents its Second Annual Bloomington Comedy Festival during June and July.

This comedy festival takes place Wednesday nights at 8 p.m. at the club previously known as the Funny Bone Bloomington on Walnut Street. It features mainly local residents and IU students serving up their best efforts to make people laugh. Each comic has five minutes to perform his or her routine.

A total of 27 comedians are participating this year. In the first round, six comics compete and three winners qualify for the next round. The second round features all first-round winners facing off against each other.

The festival’s first night was June 2. Phil Hunt, Stephanie Lochbihler and Mat Martin were victorious. Lochbihler, the only female comic performing that night, used her life as a single mom to fuel her routine.

“Tonight was the first time I tried all of that single-mom stuff, and it obviously worked out pretty well,” Lochbihler said. “I get really nervous, but it’s always right before I go on. Like I’m getting really, really sick to my stomach and nervous, and then I just go and I have to tell myself ‘Screw it, let’s just go.’”

The main judge is the audience. Scoring cards are given to audience members, and they rank their favorites in each battle bracket. The audience also gets to enjoy additional closing comedic routines not involved in the competition.

“When you’re on stage, you don’t really pay attention,” Lochbihler said. “You’re kind of up there and you know that people are laughing, but at the same time you’re going, ‘Shit, what’s my next joke? Where am I going?’ So, you’re not really paying attention to laughs, so you have to watch yourself to be able to see.”

Tickets per evening are $5, and summer festival passes are $25. Local participants range from IU professors to Bloomingfoods and Cook Pharmica employees to Bloomington Playwrights Project contributors.

“People are going to be that much better, and so it’s going to be that much more difficult to win this thing because there are so many funny people in this festival,” club owner Jared Thompson said. “But at the same time, it needs to be an outlet for somebody to be able to win that doesn’t have the same experience level that maybe some of the other comedians have.”

The winner of the festival will receive a trophy and be crowned the funniest person in Bloomington.

“Just having the title of the funniest person in Bloomington or the winner of the second annual Bloomington Comedy Festival is a pretty big deal without having any other prize,” Thompson said.