In its biggest lineup yet, the will showcase stand-up from national headliners Whitney Cummings, Margaret Cho, Adam Devine and Kevin Nealon at its Feb. 21-25 showcase at the Wheeler Opera House.
The event — now in its seventh year — revamped its name and strengthened its lineup. From 1995 to 2008, Aspen hosted the world-renowned, HBO-sponsored and, following that, three years of the much smaller Rooftop Comedy Festival, which the Wheeler co-produced.
The Aspen Laugh Festival — which this year changed its spelling of Laff to the slightly more-respectable Laugh — is an event founded in 2011 and wholly produced by the Wheeler, which has been the constant venue amid the upscale mountain town’s .
Patrons were happy with previous fests, but were “very open with the Wheeler staff” about wanting bigger names for this year’s event, said Gena Buhler, executive director of the Wheeler Opera House.
“We asked the city council to use more of our real estate transfer-tax funding to be able to put more dollars into making this festival bigger and better,” Buhler said. “We asked them for an extra $91,000 in artist fees alone, so that’s about $125,000 we added to our budget — which pretty much doubles it from last year.”
As a result, this year’s lineup improves noticeably upon previous installments, which have included names such as Gilbert Gottfried, Heather McDonald and Pete Holmes (), and Jim Breuer and Christopher Titus ().
Most of 2017’s programming is devoted to showcases from the headliners, including (co-creator of the Emmy-nominated CBS comedy “2 Broke Girls”) on Feb. 22; (vaunted stand-up and outspoken LGBT and homeless-rights activist) on Feb. 23; Adam Devine (Comedy Central’s “Workaholics” and lately, ABC’s “Modern Family”) on Feb. 24; and affable actor/”Saturday Night Live” veteran on Feb. 25.
“We’re hoping people will want to come and make it a long weekend, because you save on the price of a festival pass versus individual tickets,” Buhler said. “We’ve been selling things out (at the Wheeler) this fall, which we’ve never really done before in general, so hopefully that shows we’re doing things more attractive to our community.”
Last year’s festival filled the Wheeler to about 76 percent of capacity over the four days of the event, or an average of 400 people per show at five shows, with a total of 2,000 tickets sold.
“We’re also looking at adding a more raunchy, late-night show over at the Belly Up, which is what’s missing from the lineup at the moment,” Buhler said. “So people should keep an eye on that, as well as adding two openers on the four evenings of shows,” including one Colorado comic on each show.
A full-festival Laugh Pass is $165, with individual shows $55-$75. Tickets available starting at noon on Nov. 16 by calling 970-920-5770 or visiting .
