Monday, June 16th, the people who brought you the Bridgetown Comedy Festival are proud to present Will Franken at Berbati's!  Will is traveling all the way from New York to make his second-ever appearance in Portland, and if you haven't seen him yet, you're not going to want to miss this show.

Before taking on New York, Will established himself as a San Francisco cult figure and was selected "Best Comedian" by SF Weekly and "Best Alternative to Psychedelic Drugs" by the San Francisco Bay Guardian in 2005. Tribe.net named him one of the Top 25 People to Watch Nationwide the same year. His solo show Good Luck With It debuted at the New York International Fringe Festival to rave reviews by the New York Times, and ran at San Francisco's Marsh Theater in late 2005.

In 2007, Franken was the first runner-up for the highly prestigious Andy Kaufman Award, presented to performers carrying on Kaufman's tradition of comedic innovation.  For a taste of the absurd brilliance of his comedy, I highly recommend checking out his podcast Things We Did Before Reality, which you can subscribe to here.  For a sampling of some of his live performances, check out these videos.

We also just got word that Seattle's Andy Haynes, featured on last week's Last Comic Standing, will be performing!  You may remember him as the guy who was actually funny, and was given a ticket to the semi-finals in real life, and yet somehow not on the show that aired last week.  Damn you, Last Comic Standing!  I wish I knew how to quit you!

Anyway, Andy will be joining an already incredible lineup featuring Ron Funches, Richard Bain, and headliner Will Franken, who is not to be missed.  The Portland Mercury's on board with Bridgetown Comedy -- shouldn't you be, too?


What the critics are saying about Will Franken:

"What elevates Mr. Franken above your garden-variety comedian is an erudite wit and a highly developed sense of the absurd" - New York Times

"Manic brilliance" - The New York Daily News

"Probably the funniest thing I've seen all year" - NYtheatre.com