Comedians/performers Spencer Jones and Will Adamsdale have set up the Exeter Comedy Festival. An eclectic comedy festival featuring acts from across the South West as well as those featured on Live at The Apollo, 8 out of 10 Cats and Taskmaster it will take over a number of independent venues across Exeter for one weekend during Summer 2024.
The Festival will see several independent bars, shops and community venues turned into performance spaces in a bid to bring a vibrant programme of performance to the city.
The venues currently announced include: The Fat Pig, The Little Drop of Poison, Bunyip Craft, The Roots Foundation, The Music Depot and Theatre Alibi in Exeter St Thomas, as well as The Mint Methodist Church, with further venues to be announced in the coming weeks.
The festival promises audiences an eclectic line-up: with everything from stand-up comedy to spoken word, and even an offering aimed at a younger audience, with the award-winning Comedy Club for Kids and Mighty Kids Beatbox Comedy Gameshow. The festival will feature well known acts such as Mike Wozniak, Spencer Jones and Josie Long alongside newer more experiemental acts, plus shows from Jones and Adamsdale.
It is the brainchild of Will Adamsdale (Perrier Award Winner), and Spencer Jones (Herbert Clunkerdunk, Upstart Crow), two comedians and old friends, who separately made the move from London to Devon at the height of the Covid-19 pandemic. For Will, a move to Exeter marked an opportunity to spend more time with family. For Spencer, having grown up in Plymouth, the move to Devon was a return to his roots.
Will commented on the unusual nature of the festival and his move to Devon: “I think Spence and I are unusual in that we’ve both got some profile in comedy and performance, but we’ve chosen to work out of Devon rather than London, and I think that it’s really important to both of us that we contribute to the area in which we live. In fact, everything’s a bit unusual about this whole enterprise; we’re celebrating emerging artists trying their first hour and established performers bringing work in progress shows – and we’re putting them on in all sorts of spaces: a barbers (Roots Foundation) and Bunyip Craft are our most recent additions to the line up!
Exeter is lucky to have great venues in The Phoenix and The Northcott, who bring loads of interesting work out West.
We hope that by platforming exciting new acts from the South West alongside a few we’ve coaxed into making the journey down to Devon, we can showcase Exeter as a great place to live and work for artists and audiences alike.
Josie Long, who will be travelling from Glasgow to perform her show at the Mint Methodist Church, has expressed her excitement for the festival, “this is so exciting! So many interesting, silly and fun things are going to happen!”
There are also a number of newcomers with roots in the South West, including Kev Mud, (Winner, UK Pun Championships 2024), Leicester Mercury nominees Louise Leigh and Alasdair Wallace, and local boy Alex Kitson.
In 2021, Adamsdale met local producer and performer, Charlotte Evans, and together they set up a small weekly comedy night which they called Locally Sourced – a nod to both the local talent that they would showcase, and the locally sourced produce on offer at Ebdons Refreshments, where they would hold the night every Tuesday until the cafe-bar closed in 2022.
Upon the closure of Ebdons, Locally Sourced found a new home in The Little Drop of Poison on Fore Street.
The night has featured fellow Exeter resident and Taskmaster contestant Mike Wozniak, as well as new comedians trying work for the first time.
Alex Kitson has been a regular at Locally Sourced (the weekly comedy night from which the festival has sprung), and will bring a work in progress of his debut show, Must I Paint You a Picture to the Music Depot on the Saturday evening. Kitson, who grew up close to Exeter, remarked on how special the festival is for artists in the South West.
“I’m so looking forward to performing at the festival. Growing up near Tiverton, I was always so jealous of comedy fans elsewhere who got to see amazing funny stuff on their doorstep because I never thought that could happen in Devon. Since then, Locally Sourced starting has not only managed to establish a scene in Exeter, but also somehow epitomised what comedy should really be about in the process. The festival lineup is wonderful and feels like something you want to be able to say you were at the genesis of. And I’d say that even if I wasn’t part of it.”
The festival is entirely volunteer-run by Will, Spencer, Charlotte and third year Exeter University student, Georgia Thomas, who came to the group via a relationship forged between Locally Sourced and the Exeter University Comedy Club.
Adamsdale goes on to explain how the audience at Locally Sourced has helped to shape the festival: “We’re lucky for the generous and talented audience that we’ve cultivated at Locally Sourced without whom we wouldn’t have a weekly comedy night – let alone a festival.
Its an odd mixture: comedy enthusiasts, artists, students and the odd pub regular who popped in for a pint and had no choice but to stick around! They’ve all contributed.
If anyone knows someone who drives a van, or someone who could lend us approximately one hundred chairs, we’d be very grateful.” Adamsdale (half) jokes.
The Exeter Comedy Festival takes place from Friday 7th - Saturday 8th June. Tickets start from £8. Full line up and tickets are available via the Exeter Comedy Festival website below
Logo Design – Tom McLaughlin
Line up includes: Mike Wozniak ~ Josie Long ~ Bec Hill ~ John Hegley ~ Spencer Jones ~ Louise Leigh ~ Jordan Brookes ~ Will Adamsdale ~ Kev Mudd ~ Amy Mason ~ Simon Munnery ~ Stevie Martin ~ Ed Tripp ~ Louis Burgess ~ Corpsing ~ Lulu Poppelwell ~ Ed Gaughan ~ Alex Kitson ~ Ben Moor ~ Burt Williamson ~ Amy Matthews ~ Joanna Neary ~ Mary O’Connell ~ Gavin Osborn ~ Lucy Pearman ~ Charlotte Evans ~ Comedy Club 4 Kids ~ Joe Mayo and Merry Martin ~ THE MIGHTY KIDS BEATBOX COMEDY GAMESHOW ~ Spork presents ‘Worst Poet Wins’.
More acts TBA.
Watch the promo video below
