Yikes! A safe date night on Friday the 13th? At the Vacaville Performing Arts Theatre?
Yes, and it’s likely to be filled with plenty of laughs. Many of them probably will be straight from the belly or your nearby funny bone, aka the humerus. You know, the long bone of the upper arm.
Indeed, humor will be plentiful at the semifinals of 48th San Francisco Bay Area Comedy Competition, beginning at 8 p.m., at the 1010 Ulatis Drive venue. Doors open at 7 p.m. As he was last year, the host will be past champion Ellis Rodriguez of Vacaville.
More than 30 stand-up comics, out of many more dozens who applied to compete, do their best in shows held in comedy clubs, bars, restaurants, and theaters in San Francisco and outlying areas.
For the two preliminary weeks, the top five of each round move on to the semifinals, which brings them to the VPAT stopover and another venue before the top five from the semifinals head to the finals for five more shows, leading to a winner.
In an email to The Reporter, competition founder and producer John Fox called his comedic scrum a “legendary event that provides important early exposure.”
The proof is a roster of alumni that includes plenty of household names in the Amercan comedy universe: the late Robin Williams, Dana Carvey, Ellen DeGeneres, Rob Schneider, Louis C.K. and Sinbad. Others, besides Rodriguez, were Rick Reynolds (whose solo show, “Only the Truth is Funny,” was a Broadway hit in the early 1990s), Patton Oswalt, and Al Madrigal.
“Each preliminary round had a unique character,” Fox said. “The first round was almost all acts from around here. The second round included national and even international performers from places like Denver, Dallas, Toronto, Barcelona and Berlin.”
But for the semifinals and certainly the finals, the competition begins to intensify.
“Now the high scorers from each group have been thrown together,” said Fox. “There’s a certain amount of pride in who they represent, sort of like the American League and the National League in the All-Star game.”
For the Vacaville show, the 10 semifinalists will each perform 10-minute sets each.
The semifinalists are Dan Aguinaga (San Francisco), Marcus Howard (Oakland), Shaheen Khal (Sacramento), Iain Langlands (Pacifica), Frankie Marcos (San Jose), Xander Beltran (Oakland), Mike Freedman (Los Angeles), Irene Sango (Barcelona, Spain), Natasha Vinik (San Francisco) and Dvontre Coleman (San Francisco).
The competition is judged, and judges will score each contestant in seven categories.
The finalists will be announced on Saturday in front of a sold-out crowd of 1,600 at Luther Burbank Center for the Arts in Santa Rosa. Ultimately, the winner will receive $7,500, with an additional $12,500 distributed among the second to 10th-place finishers, Fox noted.
IF YOU GO …
- What: The 48th San Francisco Bay Area Comedy Competition semifinals, hosted by past champ Ellis Rodriguez of Vacaville
- When: 8 p.m. Friday (doors open at 7 p.m.)
- Where: Vacaville Performing Arts Theatre, 1010 Ulatis Drive
- Tickets: $32, $37 and $41 ($2 or $3 facility added)
- Online: www.vpat.net
- Telephone: (707) 469-4013