Norman Music Festival presents Comedy Night Live on Friday, April 28 at The Sooner Theatre.
The event will be hosted by Cristela Carrizales, a local actress who has also been doing improvisational comedy for about 14 years. Carrizales had the idea to start a monthly comedy night at The Depot in Norman, and Norman Music Festival reached out to her to bring a comedy event to the festival and promote the upcoming Depot comedy nights.
Carrizales said that she admires comedians and wanted to help bring comedy into Norman. She wants people to be able to experience not only stand-up, but improv and sketch comedy.
“Really, you have to be quite intellectual to make a host of people laugh,” Carrizales said. “So it was kind of a natural thing for me to be like, ‘Hey, you know, this seems like a lot of fun.’ Let's bring it down here and make it accessible to people here.’”
There will be shows every hour on the hour, from 6 p.m. to 10 p.m. The first two contain sketch, stand-up and improv. The third contains sketch and stand-up. And the last is a stand-up only show. The acts will be more kid friendly towards the beginning of the night and will be uncensored later on.
“We are kind of trying to keep the 6 and 7 (p.m. shows) a little bit family friendly,” Carrizales said. “If we see kids in the audience, we'll clean up our act a little bit. If there aren't children in the audience, then we might be a little more flexible. (After 9 p.m.), of course, is going to be more anything goes and we won't be doing any more censoring with that.”
Carrizales said attendees can expect to see performers from different areas, performing various kinds of acts.
“All the people who are coming have been doing this for a while,” Carrizales said. “Most people are doing it professionally. So we have people coming in from the Dallas area, from the Austin area, people coming over from Tulsa to perform, and then of course, just some of our comics in our own backyard. So it's going to be a nice, fun, mix-them-up kind of evening and a little bit of something for everybody.”
Performers include Oklahoma City-based Spencer Hicks and many other prominent comedians. Next Stage, a theater production company based in Oklahoma City, will also be making an appearance.
“We're really excited to have Spencer Hicks. He’s been doing comedy around the Oklahoma City area for a long time. We're also welcoming a guy named Symply Courtney. … We just have a ton of different performers. You can find them all on the app. So anybody from Meredith Everett to Cody Troutman, we have people who've opened up for big names before.”
Carrizales said she hopes to develop the comedy scene in Norman to add onto all the other great things the city has to offer. She hopes people will come to Comedy Night Live and help start that scene.
“Hopefully the community will come out and support because it's going to be fun,” Carrizales said. “The more things that we can get here in Norman, the more people we can attract and just make Norman even cooler than it already is.”
To learn more about Norman Music Festival’s Comedy Night Live, visit the NMF website or Instagram.
This story was edited by Silas Bales and Emma Blakley. Ansley Chambers and Nikkie Aisha copy edited this story.
