I’ll let you in on a secret: I prefer sketch comedy to all of comedy’s other hilarious Hydra-heads. My transition from a roly-poly junior high kid to the health goth adult I am today has its genesis in my early devotion to Canadian sketch comedy show The Kids in the Hall. A power-hour of old episodes aired every weekday just as school ended, and I literally ran home after the bell to catch the second half hour, my backpack jostling chaotically as I dodged awkwardly through a sidewalk-less industrial shortcut.
In my adult life, I discovered that sketch comedy doesn’t always go with a side of cross-dressing and that sketch has a spectrum, from stand-up storytellers to improv-created scenes. To keep their dramatic muscles loose, comedians frequently overlap forms—sketch to improv, stand-up to sketch. Portland’s comedy scene has been going through something of a slow, building boom over the past decade. So although the city has a number of great stand-up festivals (All Jane, Queer Comedy) and an improv festival (Stumptown) that grow in strength each year, I was overjoyed to see Portland’s the Best of the Sketch Fest, whose last year was 2008, reborn as the Portland Sketch Comedy Festival.
