The Melbourne International Comedy Festival is the largest cultural event in Australia and the third largest international comedy festival in the world.
Unlike the other large comedy festivals, the MICF lays low as the least commercial and most relaxing of the major comedy festivals.
Melbourne International Comedy Festival History
The first festival made its launch in 1987 by Peter Cook and Barry Humphries. After the successful opening of twenty-two succeeding festivals throughout the years to the present time, the Melbourne International Comedy Festival grew to be the largest cultural event in all of Australia with over 400,000 attendances present.
Melbourne International Comedy Festival
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Melbourne International Comedy Festival Highlights
The Melbourne International Comedy Festival has a different style of presentation making it more eccentric to the other festivals like the Fringe Festival held in Edinburgh and the Just For Laughs festival in Montreal. One interesting thing to note is that the atmosphere remains friendly throughout the festival and competition isn’t practised very much as comedians mainly entertain to lighten up the audience.
This makes it more of a suitable venue for any comedians and entertainers to perform because the pressure in hopes of attracting an audience is much lower. With Melbourne being Australia’s comedy capital all come to celebrate the joys of the event throughout the month of April. The Melbourne Town Hall officially transforms into an enormous comedy hub which symbolizes the ongoing events of the Melbourne International Comedy Festival.
Melbourne International Comedy Festival Shows
The Melbourne International Comedy Festival is also the most diverse of the other comedy festivals heard in other parts of the world. The bulk of the shows many consist of stand-up comedies and other cabaret acts just like the other festivals, but the MICF also throws in other neat elements into the mix to further attract audiences like the art exhibitions, sketch shows, musical plays, theatres, and even debates.
Melbourne International Comedy Festival Expectations
The festival is such an international event with so much variety in the shows. In addition to the famous comic artists from Australia performing their usual big hits, a vast range of established international stand-up comedians and new comic performances and styles are demonstrated each year.
The average ticket prices stay consistent at around $22 (Australian Dollar which is ~USD15) which makes the Melbourne International Comedy Festival one of the more accessible comedy festivals in the world. Keep an eye out for special deals like Tight-Arse Tuesdays which can slash your ticket price in half!
Post-Festival Activities
After the three-and-a-half-week event, the Comedy Festival continues to stay active throughout the rest of the year with new comedy shows planned for future months showing the latest talents of new comedians and performers. There are plenty of school projects as well that teach the art of comedy so future comic artists can join the next annual Melbourne International Comedy Festival.
The Melbourne International Comedy Festival will definitely be a festival to remember with its low-price tickets and amazing quality and selection of shows to witness.
It is a great event.
Even if you do not get to go to some of the shows, keep an eye out for special tv shows during that time that covers some of the shows.
