Skidmore’s National College Comedy Festival celebrates 25 years of laughter—
and learning, craft, trust, and networking BY PETER MACDONALD
You have to marvel at the audacity of a 19-year-old student who decides, pretty much on a whim, to create the National College Comedy Festival. Having started Skidmore’s Ad-Liberal Artists in 1988, David Miner ’91 wanted to network with other college comedians, so he launched ComFest in 1990—a pre-Facebook era that meant his primary recruiting strategy was making cold calls from a dorm phone. In a WAMC public radio
interview just before the 25th festival this year, Miner recalled, “I thought, why do it small? Why just take our group and go to one college or invite one group to us? I thought, just go big.” He confessed, “I gave it the grandiose name of the Na- tional College Comedy Festi- val to make it sound like it was established.” Today, Miner is one of
Globe. He also manages Satur- day Night Live and 30 Rock alums Tina Fey and Tracy Morgan. Much to Miner’s delight,
BEN JURNEY ’14 AND LUKE CONLEY ’14, COMFEST ORGANIZERS
Hollywood’s top comedy pro- ducers, with credits for NBC’s 30 Rock and Parks and Recre- ation, as well as Fox’s Brooklyn 99 and an upcoming HBO comedy about high society in Charlotte, N.C. His work on 30 Rock has garnered him multiple Emmys and a Golden
the festival is still going strong, with its 25th anniver- sary on February 7–8 directed by Luke Conley ’14 and Ben Jurney ’14. ComFest has be- come the “holy grail of ama- teur comedy, a feast for the funny bone,” says Conley, president of the Skidomedy troupe. According to a 2012
New York Times piece on ComFest, for some student partici- pants it’s “a turning point, a heady confirmation that, yes, this is what they want to do with their lives. What’s more, they might actually have a shot at it.”
14 SCOPE SPRING 2014
ERIC JENKS ’08
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