Santa Fe will be a funny town — for three days, at least — thanks to the return of the CloudTop Comedy Festival after a two-year pandemic hiatus. Everything this year takes place in Railyard-area venues, with performances kicking off on Thursday, Sept. 15.
More than 50 comedians from across the country will take part in 18 events, six of which are free of charge.
Nationally known comics Hari Kondabolu and Beth Stelling are headliners in solo shows on Sept. 15 and 17, respectively.
Kondabolu is a Brooklyn-based Indian American comedian, writer, and filmmaker who was called “one of the most exciting political comics in stand-up today” by The New York Times. It went on to hail Warn Your Relatives, his 2018 Netflix special, as “an incisively funny and formally adventurous hour that reveals a comic in command of his powers.”
Kondabolu generated international attention with his 2017 truTV documentary The Problem with Apu. It criticized the stereotypical portrayal of Apu Nahasapeemapetilon, the Indian immigrant and convenience store owner on The Simpsons since its first season, launching a widespread discussion of the underlying issues. A classic example of brownface, Apu was voiced for almost 30 years by white actor Hank Azaria, who stepped away from the character in 2020. Apu has not appeared since then.
Hari Kondabolu; photo Antoine Didienne
Beth Stelling
Ohio-native Beth Stelling honed her comedic skills during five years in Chicago, after which she moved to Los Angeles with the release of her first album, Sweet Beth, in 2012. Three years later, she famously tweeted, “I’ve been called a ‘female comic’ so many times, I’ll probably only be able to answer to ‘girl daddy’ when I have children.”
In 2020, Girl Daddy became the title of “a knockout special,” wrote The New York Times, on HBO Max, “a virtuosic performance, conversational while dense with jokes — with a portrait of her father, an actor who works as a pirate at an Orlando mini-golf course, that manages to be scathing, loving, and sort of over it, all at the same time.”
Tickets for the two headliners are just $30, thanks to CloudTop’s non-profit structure. It was founded in 2019 by Jessica Baxter, then head of special events at the Santa Fe Opera. “CloudTop” comes from a combination of the local elevation, she says, and the sense that “you’re on top of the clouds when you can’t stop laughing, like that scene in Mary Poppins!”
Baxter said she was consuming more and more comedy (“I was becoming so nerdy about it!”) when she realized that a festival would add something special to the local calendar. While she’s now based in the Washington, D.C., area due to a high-altitude health issue, she’s able to return on shorter stints for festival planning and fundraising. (It takes about $50,000 in contributions, plus in-kind corporate sponsorships, to offer 18 events at current prices.)
The festival’s most unique offering is the Sept. 16 Indigenous Showcase, offered in collaboration with the Institute for American Indian Arts, which features New Mexico Native American performers Ricardo Caté (Kewa), Adrianne Chalepah (Kiowa/Diné), Josh Fournier (Diné), and Corey Herrera (Cochiti).
Caté, who is well known to New Mexican readers for his daily cartoon, Without Reservations, is a writer, teacher, and tribal official. He’s also a mentor to Chalepah, whose first stand-up foray came at an open mic he organized at Fort Lewis College in Durango, Colorado. “I’ve always searched for different avenues to express myself, including being the class clown in grade school,” she says, “but couldn’t find the right one until then. He encouraged me and gave me three to five minutes, and I ended up doing 17. It was like time stood still and nothing could rival that feeling.”
Chalepah also appreciates the personal honesty stand-up encourages. “Comedy can be so accepting of imperfection,” she says. “I have an awkward delivery at times, and I embrace it, because it works for me. Audiences want to see something and someone real. We laugh at the truth because we all live in a manufactured world.”
Coco Caliente, Miss Santa Fe Pride in 2017 and a frequent actor and director at the Santa Fe Playhouse, hosts Friday’s Queen Comedy: A Celebration of CloudTop’s LGBTQ+ Comedians. Featured performers include Britt Boyd, a self-proclaimed “queer hillbilly” from Fort Collins; Carla Vasquez, who grew up in various national parks; and Albuquerque’s Quinn Fontaine, author of HUNG LIKE A SEAHORSE: A Real-Life Transgender Adventure of Tragedy, Comedy, and Recovery.
Baxter thinks of the three Future Comedy Showcase: Rising Stars from Across the Country performances as “the crown jewels of the festival.” In an online, open submission process, comedians were invited to submit the best five minutes of their material. “We had 265 submissions from all over the country,” she says. “We put together a group to review them and chose 13 winners who’ll do a rapid-fire presentation each night.”
Mariachi musician and comic Carlos Medina will be joined by The Colorado Crew, a quartet of north-of-the-border comedians for a set on Thursday, while Santa Fe Improv takes the stage on Friday and Saturday. Other festival performers include Zach Abeyta, Isabel Madley, and former Michelle Lujan Grisham spokesperson Tripp Stelnicki.
