New York Comedy Festival: The best shows and how to buy tickets

The New York Comedy Festival and Comedy Week brings a riot of stand-up comics, improv, sketch and variety shows, podcast tapings and marquee benefits to town.

By Time Out editors Tue Oct 23 2012

Kevin Hart Photograph: Hannibal Matthews

The New York Comedy Festival is a four-day bonanza of comedy shows drawing national headline acts and the cream of the local scene. The 2012 dates for NYCF are November 7–11. Comedy Week—a tie-in launched last year by Mayor Bloomberg—runs concurrent with the fest between November 5 and 11, and adds a few extra shows (one is a free Key & Peele event) but essentially throws the city's weight behind NYCF.

RECOMMENDED: New York comedy 2012

The New York Comedy Festival takes place across 23 venues in Manhattan, Brooklyn and Queens. Headliners fill cavernous spaces like the Apollo, Carnegie Hall and the Beacon Theatre, with the big news this year being that the rapidly rising Kevin Hart has sold out two nights at Madison Square Garden. NYC's go-to comedy clubs, like Carolines, Gotham Comedy Club, Upright Citizens Brigade Theatre and UCBeast, shoulder the majority of shows, alongside some of the best new comedy spaces, such as The Stand and Greenwich Village Comedy Club. The Paley Center and 92nd Street Y get into the act with serious (okay, probably not that serious) discussions, and even noobs to the comedy scene like Santos Party House and MoMA PS1 play a role.

Tickets can be purchased on venues' websites, but the New York Comedy Festival's site (nycomedyfestival.com) has a browsable list of every show and a link to its buy-tickets page. A seat to see a headliner will run you anywhere between $30 and $80, but the majority of shows clock in between $10 and $20.

New York Comedy Festival 2012 shows

Key & Peele

Critics choice
Free

Skirball Center for the Performing Arts 566 La Guardia Pl, at Washington Sq South
Wed Nov 13

More info

Aziz Ansari

Price band: 4/4
Critics choice

Apollo Theater 253 W 125th St, between Adam Clayton Powell Jr. Blvd (Seventh Ave) and Frederick Douglass Blvd (Eighth Ave)
Fri Nov 9 - Sat Nov 10

More info