The Sacramento Comedy Spot will bring a new type of art festival to Sacramento this weekend, guaranteed to send attendees home with side splinters and sore cheekbones.

The first Sacramento Comedy Festival, to be held at the Sacramento Comedy Spot in Midtown, will bring to the stage 170 comedians in 17 different shows from Thursday through Sunday.

Brian Crall, owner of the Sacramento Comedy Spot and main coordinator for the festival, said that he and others at the club set a goal last year to host a comedy festival this year, and though they wanted to keep it relatively small, they wanted to bring a show that featured more than solely standup comedy.

“Since the festival is all about including different types of comedy,” Crall said, “we try to offer every night a different sampling of each of those things.”

The Sacramento Comedy Festival will feature four different comedy mediums - standup, improv, sketch and film - performed by comedians from Los Angeles, San Francisco, and Sacramento.

Each day of the festival features a performance of a different type of comedy and each day hosts a different show each hour ranging from two shows in a day to several shows.

Shows are priced individually, with tickets ranging from $8 to $10, and $12 for Saturday night’s San Francisco Standup Showcase.

The San Francisco Standup Showcase will feature five comedians, all who perform regularly in San Francisco, and who Crall said are “some of the best comedians in San Francisco.”

Crall said there will be deals posted daily on the website, day passes and package deals which will group a few different shows together.

“I tried to make it inexpensive; I wanted people to be able to see a couple of different shows that would be a lower price than if you paid for each one,” Crall said.

The Sacramento Comedy Spot started out as a local sketch comedy group, Free Hooch Comedy Troupe, in 2005. The club has grown, since then, to host weekly stand-up, improv and sketch comedy shows, and offers classes to the public on improv, sketch, and stand-up comedy.

“The Comedy Spot has always been pushing the envelope and was the first comedy club to offer sketch comedy, improv, and standup,” Crall said.

The club, which seats up to 80 persons each show, will have a concessions area stocked with water, soda, popcorn and candy. The club doesn’t have a bar currently, but Crall is looking to apply for a beer license soon.

“When you come to the show, it’s about the comedian and the comedy,” Crall said. “I’ve always wanted to have a spot that supported the comedian rather than making money off of them.”

Crall said he wanted to host the festival since the club moved into the MARRS (Midtown Art Retail Restaurant Scene) building in 2009, but waited a year to begin organizing for it.

Festival organizers started looking for performers in March, and started asking those who had performed at the spot before or those who had submitted a video on YouTube.

Performers for the festival include The Syndicate and Anti-Cooperation League, two of Sacramento Comedy Spot’s very own sketch comedy teams, Women Be Shopping - a women’s improv group from L.A., comedian Johnny Taylor and sketch comedy duo Uphill Both Ways.

To see the entire lineup for each day, visit the website here.

Uphill Both Ways is an absurdist-style sketch comedy duo from San Francisco, comprised of Dave McKew, 38, and Colin Benoit, 35, described by Crall as a “unique brand of sketch comedy.”

Dave McKew (left) and Colin Benoit (right) - from Uphill Both Ways, a San Francisco sketch comedy duo (Image by: courtesy of Uphill Both Ways)

“We start with a strange premise and take the audience on a journey they wouldn’t expect,” McKew said. “You often see things that are very similar - we wanted to be as different as we can so people don’t only say, ‘there goes another parody.’ ”

One of the duo’s more popular sketches and a great example of the absurdist humor they use involves a conversation between peanut butter and jelly in a sandwich. McKew described a sketch they will use at the festival involving “a woman who contracted syphillis immaculately” and the protagonists as the bacteria.

The duo has performed in festivals all over North America since 2002, created out of a passion McKew said he and Benoit shared at Cornell University in New York together, a sketch comedy group called the Cornell University SKITS-O-PHRENICS, though the duo Uphill Both Ways wasn’t formed until they ran into each other years later in San Francisco.

Uphill Both Ways has performed in Sacramento before, in 2006 and 2007, and McKew said they are excited to come back.

“The audience there is intelligent, engaged and very responsive and as a performer, that’s really what you want,” McKew said.

Uphill Both Ways will be performing Friday at 8 p.m..

Johnny Taylor, a standup comedian from Sacramento, said that this will be his first comedy festival but it certainly won’t be his last.

standup comedian Johnny Taylor (Image by: courtesy of Johnny Taylor) Taylor, 34, said he has been performing standup comedy for just about a year, and had been writing satire for blogs before that.

Describing himself as the “class clown,” Taylor said he found it really rewarding when he performed for his friends.

“Oftentimes you choose an art form that you’re passionate about and that you love and you want the audience to feel that too,” Taylor said.

Describing his humor as “observational,” and alternative, Taylor said he often plays off of the audience for his material.

Taylor will be performing at the Standup Showcase on the first night of the festival and said he is honored to be performing with some of the best comics around.

Crall said that none of the comedians are paid for their performances this year, but are coming of their own passion for the art form.

“They’re all comedians and they all want to come and do some quality work,” he said. “They’re all here just to be together.”

McKew described the festival as a chance to work with other comedians and see other shows, adding that his favorite thing is to see sketch comedy whenever possible.

“It’s your chance to see how other people are doing it; a chance to talk shop. It’s the excitement of discovery,” he said.

Sacramento has hosted its share of different festivals, with subjects ranging from food to art, music, dance and culture. Both Crall and Taylor said that in the twenty years they’ve lived in Sacramento, neither of them remember there being a comedy festival in the city, and agreed that it’s about time.

“It’s something Sacramento hasn’t had before and it’s something Sacramento needs,” Taylor said, adding that the comedic talent in Sacramento is on the rise.

Crall described his hope for the festival to have multiple positive impacts on the city and that he hopes it will being more attention to the city as a major metropolitan area.

“I think it’s a great opportunity for Sacramento,” he said. “I think we can attract more people to the city and it’ll be great for the economy,” adding that the festival would be a great staple for the city to have every year.”

Crall has already begun planning for a festival next year if the festival is successful this year. He said that next year would have more of a focus on film, and that he would try to get performers from all over the U.S.

“We’re really proud of this event, though it’s just the first year. Stay tuned - we’ve got some great shows coming up,” he said.

For more information on the Sacramento Comedy Festival, click here.