Home-grown talent on Funny Fest stage
This year’s Jive Cape Town Funny Festival, which makes a come-back after a two-year absence due to the Covid pandemic, features a number of Cape Town acts on the line-up.
The festival takes place at the Baxter Theatre from Monday June 6 to Sunday July 3. It is MC’d by esteemed local comic and Tokai resident Alan Committie who has run proceedings at nine of the 13 Funny Festivals which have been staged to date.
Although he studied as an actor, for the past 23 years he has become best known for starring in and writing his own one-man shows – and for his starring role in the long running Broadway hit show Defending the Caveman which had more than 962 performances across South Africa.
Among others, Committie has won a Fleur de Cap awards for best actor in Richard III and Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead and a Naledi theatre Award for best comic performance for Stressed to Kill.
The other Cape Town comics on the line-up are Arlene Petersen, who was raised in Retreat and lives in Lavender Hill; Ismail Moses who was born in Bonteheuwel and grew up in Northpine and Carl Weber who is originally from Bloemfontein but now lives in Strandfontein.
Petersen, also known as That Comedy Chick, describes her comedy style as a mix of social observations, life experiences and talking pure nonsense. She is also a plus size model, presenter, two-time national TV cooking show champion as well as a motivational speaker.
Moses acted, performed and entertained in school plays and other community productions from a young age and as early Grade 4 wanted to be an entertainer, but life had other plans for him. Twenty-five years later, he stepped back on to a stage to do his first open mic stand-up comedy set.
Weber has a string of competition wins to his name as well as a number of TV and film credits to his name. In 2019 he made his acting debut in local TV drama Arendsvlei and the following year launched an online Afrikaans show called Kombuis stories.
Book through Webtickets.