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This season, as well as the tremendous comedians performing in the Tobacco Factory Theatre’s main house, we have a fantastic mini-season of comedy at The Brewery. We asked our Producer Melanie Zaalof to tell us more about it and explain why she’s so excited about the acts chosen.

What’s ‘Comedy at The Brewery’?

We’ve programmed a lot of comedy at The Brewery on an ad-hoc basis and realised that it’s a fantastic space for it. We decided that we wanted to do this on a more regular basis and for it to happen on Sunday evenings made total sense to us. Sunday nights can be a bit of a non-event and no matter how much you love your job they’re always tinged with a ‘oh no back to work tomorrow’. Whilst Monday morning can’t be avoided, you can put yourself in a really good mood for the start of the week with some great comedy and a drink or two.

The Comedy Box programmes a fantastic selection of comedians for the Factory Theatre and people always have a good night out. A little while ago we realised that there are a whole host of talented stand-ups both locally and nationally that can’t quite fill our main theatre yet but given a year or two we believe they will and we wanted to give Bristol folk a chance to see them. There’s also quite a lot of niche, slightly more leftfield comedy happening which may never fill a stadium but is equally fantastic, has a strong following and again we really want to share this with our audiences.

With so much choice it was quite hard to pull together a season of just four acts.  Two of our staff, Katy and Ed, are total comedy buffs so meeting with them and bouncing around ideas was a great starting point.  We also chatted to other people on the comedy circuit and got a sense of what would work really well in Bristol and at The Brewery.

What can we look forward from ‘Comedy at The Brewery’ this season?

Shazia Mirza plays in bigger venues so this is a fantastic opportunity to see her close-up. She really needs no introduction. If you love Radio 4’s comedy, you’ll like Shazia.

Daniel Simonsen toured with Simon Amstell last year and won the Fosters Edinburgh Comedy Award for Best Newcomer. He’s a fantastically awkward, young Norwegian chap whose oddness completely wins you over. I think we’ll be seeing a lot more of him on our TVs this year.

Shazia Mirza: Cuckooland
Sun 03 March at 7.30pm
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Daniel Simonsen: Champions
Sun 24 March at 7.30pm
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