Bend Comedy Festival

Twenty-six comics in three days.

That’s a lotta laughs.

Spanning about eight venues during the Aug. 29-31 weekend, the Bend Comedy Festival is the brainchild of local comedian Skylar King, who flexed her organizational chops last year by putting on four comedy nights in Bend. By scaling to the festival format, King, 26, felt ready to tackle a festival — with the continued help from friends. Granting her additional assurance is the enthusiasm of both Bend comedians and comedy show goers alike.

“There was so much excitement around it we were bringing in comedians from Portland, we were mixing up the schedule for comedy shows that Bend typically has,” King said. “We thought, ‘What if we put on a weekend full of cool shows and got people from out of town or out of state to come?’ It just grew and grew.”

Nearly 500 comedians paid a submission fee to the Bend Comedy Festival to have their material considered. That’s how comedy festivals cover upfront costs, King explained. She’s no stranger to comedy festivals herself; She recently advanced the semifinal round of Helium Comedy Club’s Funniest Person contest in Portland, where she delivered a killer five-minute set about the awkwardness of pre-adolescence. Still, she’s funneled most of her comedic energies this year toward the Bend Comedy Festival.

“I’ve been blown away by how many submissions we’ve gotten,” King said.

“We’re super excited about Kate,” King said, recounting an instance when she caught Berlant live in Los Angeles. “It was the best show I’d ever seen.”

Twenty-six comedians made the cut. A 12-person panel shuffled them through a ranking of material quality, timing and general stage presence. Some submissions, however, got an automatic pass. Such is the case of Kate Berlant, whom King called the festival’s dream headliner. Berlant’s latest special “Cinnamon in the Wind” streams on Hulu. Her dizzying filmography includes roles in “Sorry to Bother You,” “Once Upon a Time in Hollywood” and an episode of “The Bear.”

Berlant is one of four headliners, including Susan Rice, Ehsan Ahmad and Peter Antoniou.

While the Bend Comedy Festival roster boasts big-name comics, King has mixed in talent from Oregon, such as Portland’s Rachelle Cochran and Bend’s Cody Michael, who recently performed a 30-minute set on the same bill as big-name comic John Caparulo in June.

Michael moved to Bend from Iowa seven years ago. Much of his comedy deals with fish-out-of-water observations, born of his West Coast relocation as his nonchalant defiance of people’s expectations of who he is. Having done stand up since 2015, Michael begins some of his sets with a series of disclaimers addressing expectations regarding his appearance, race and timber of voice. Facebook Ads, he explains, consistently misidentify him, plying the comedian with advertisements for a particular Japanese auto brand, hyper-specific outdoor gear for a sport he doesn’t do, and, well, women’s basketball highlights. Michael explores the themes of manliness, Oregon’s specific strain of whiteness (Michael is mixed-race) and his pronounced frustration with one inaccurately titled horror movie sequel from the 90s. (His comedic outrage is superb.) During high school, Michael connected with the comedy of Bo Burnam and Aziz Ansari — “I got really attached to Aziz’s comedy. He was the first comedian that I really identified with. A lot of his material was just goofy, young man material. Not super mature, energy based,” Michael said of Ansari, who’s Indian American. “And he also had material about being a brown kid in a really white place that I really gravitated toward. I was, like ‘Oh, if these are the kinds of stories you can tell onstage, then maybe I do have some things I can talk about.”

In the time since, Michael has found a distinctly original method of addressing complicated and potentially embarrassing issues with straight man aplomb. And he’s still delightfully goofy.

Rochelle Cochran, hailing from Elmira (near the Country Fairgrounds west of Eugene) via Portland, is another comic to watch out for. Cochran, 34, knew she wanted to be a comedian by age 10. Raised in a devout Catholic family with five siblings, Cochran said she gravitated toward humor when she realized she “wasn’t the smartest or the cutest” of the litter. But she could make everyone laugh. One of her earliest jokes happened when an older cousin teased Cochran that she poisoned the cup of water she’d just drank from.

Cochran deadpanned: “You’re not invited to my funeral.”

Around the same time, Cochran caught comedian Maria Bamford on television, pushing her interest in comedy over the edge. (Yeah, Cochran is similarly intense.)

Since attending the University of Oregon’s accounting program, Cochran has no lack of bookkeeping jokes: “seemed like a good career move, the IRS will outlive us all.” She moved to Portland in 2012. Cochran developed her comedy at open mics and on her YouTube channel, where she did silly skits involving taste tests of Pabst Blue Ribbon beer. Then, life happened. In 2017, Cochran came out as a lesbian. During the Covid lockdown, Cochran began bringing herself to the forefront of her work. She also stopped going to monthly confessions after a priest encouraged her to seek conversion therapy.

“Coming out as gay set my comedy free,” Cochran said. “I never thought I’d talk about being gay on stage. I thought I was going to wait until my parents died.”

A taste of Cochran’s newest work is available in ample supply on her Instagram account. Hilariously, a running theme is her notion of “Portland Sober,” which goes something like: “If California Sober means you don’t drink but you smoke weed, then Portland Sober means you don’t drink but you microdose mushrooms, obviously drop acid at queer goth drag brunches and accidently join a coven.” In preparation for her three sets at the Bend Comedy Festival, Cochran said she was tossing around some jokes that compare Portland lesbians to Bend lesbians. We also wondered what “Bend Sober” might look like. I ventured a guess: “We’re Bend Sober. We don’t drink anymore; we stick to daily shots of testosterone and EPO.”

Meh — let’s workshop that.

Bend Comedy Festival
Fri.-Sun., Aug. 29-31
Multiple venues, Bend
For more information visit
Bendcomedyfestival.com

This article appears in the Source August 21, 2025.