The summer-long Bloomington Comedy Festival at the Comedy Attic put another week of competition in the books on Wednesday. It was the first of two quarter-final rounds, which feature six candidates each week.
The top three of six vote getters on Wednesday were Mark Bookwalter, Jonas Schrodt and Kristen Lucas.
The six candidates up next Wednesday will be Zach Rody, Abby Troughton, Glenda Deford, Bob Nugent, Joshua Sullivan, and Shanda Sung.
Local happenings were again fodder for some of the bits on Wednesday.
Background for a couple of jokes was the two-week cancellation of the farmers market, which is operated by the City of Bloomington, over public safety concerns. The concerns arose out of protests and counter-protests about the presence of a vendor believed to be associated with white-supremacist causes.
The City has not expelled the vendor as some people have demanded, citing the constitutional protections that are supposed to apply to everyone.
Even the set-up to Jonas Schrodt’s farmers market bit got a laugh: “I want to tell you about how my acoustic trio got kicked out of the farmers market three years ago.” The bit included some intermediate punchlines based on the idea that the reason they got kicked out was because they were too loud. Amish farmers were mixed up in it somehow.
Friends of Schrodt’s in the audience likely knew that he was not making up the fact that he plays in an acoustic trio, and that the trio has played the farmers market in the past.
Here’s video evidence of Jonas Schrodt, Susan Anderson and Matt Romy delivering a solid rendition of “Wagon Wheel” at the farmers market back in 2017.
After a two-week hiatus, the market is planned to resume on Aug. 17.
Schrodt punched out of the farmers market bit this way: “But once they open back up, I have this new plan where I just draw a swastika on my guitar, and then they can’t kick me out. Or just write on there…this machine is a fascist.”
The Bloomington Comedy Festival competition began in mid-June and runs for 11 weeks, ending with the naming of the Funniest Person in Bloomington on Aug. 28.