Denver Sketch Festival Returns to RISE Comedy For Year Two

When Denver Sketch Festival producers Katie Congrove and Connor Schuck think back on last year’s inaugural event, one memory still makes them laugh. A performer from Philadelphia, who goes by the character name Fastball Pitcher Bob Gutierrez, took the stage with a borrowed guitar that Congrove and Schuck had arranged. 

Midway through his set, a string snapped. The audience gasped, but instead of stalling, the comic grinned and quipped, “This is going to significantly impact the rest of this show,” before he carried on, weaving the mishap seamlessly into his act.

“It was just so charming and funny and really captured the spirit of the fest,” Congrove recalls. “He was silly and went with the flow; it saved the moment and made the whole sketch even funnier.”

Schuck agrees, remembering how the comic later called the broken string one of the best things that had ever happened to him on stage. “This thing went wrong, but it was this beautiful accident,” he says. Both producers agree that the guitar fiasco encapsulates the energy of the festival they’ve built together around risk-taking, camaraderie and the joy of live performance. 

That ethos returns this month, as the Denver Sketch Festival launches its second year at RISE Comedy from October 9 to 11. Following its debut, which drew sellout crowds and earned Westword’s nod as the Best New Comedy Festival of 2025, DSF has quickly staked its claim as a new cornerstone in Denver’s cultural calendar. 

Produced by Congrove, Schuck and RISE Comedy, the festival will feature live sketch shows, video shorts screened in its “Ultra Short Film Festival” and three jam-packed nights showcasing talent from across North America. “Denver proved last year that it was ready for a sketch festival,” Schuck says. “Now, with the second Denver Sketch Festival, we’re cementing Denver as a national hub for comedy.”

Part of what makes this year stand out is its scale. While only ten returning performers are on the lineup, the festival will host 114 comedians from across the U.S. and Canada, selected from roughly sixty submissions. That mix of fresh faces and seasoned acts is intentional, a way to keep the energy high and ensure no two shows feel the same. 

To help make that possible, the producers adjusted the format: no more hour-long headliner sets. Instead, each block will feature multiple groups performing shorter 25-minute slots. The result is tighter pacing and room for more performers.

“Last year was perfect, as close to perfect as I could have asked for,” Congrove says. “But this year we’ve made tweaks. We wanted more show slots, so we slimmed down the set times. And the one big quote-unquote mistake we made last year was not being as strict with times, so the show started to bleed over, and then we had to start shows late. By the end of the night, we were a little behind schedule. This year we want to run a slightly tighter ship.”

The festival’s expansion is especially evident in its Denver representation. In 2024, only three local acts made the bill. This year, there are six, double the number, including Congrove and Schuck’s troupe, Big Ol’ Mess, which will close out the festival with a show they’ve honed on the road in Austin, Washington, D.C., Montreal, Philadelphia, New York and Toronto. 

“We’ve worked on this show for a while and every element of it has our creative touch on it,” Schuck says. “There are videos. There are musical interludes in between each sketch, and we created every aspect of it. This is the most work we’ve put into a show, and it’s also been the most rewarding show for us.”

“And we also got feedback this year from our moms, and our moms were like, ‘We love this show. This is the best you’ve ever done,’ and our sweet moms have seen everything,” Congrove adds. “And you know, our shows are not always for them, so the fact that both of our moms liked it is pretty high praise.”

The lineup, stretching across three nights, underscores the festival’s diversity of styles and voices. Thursday opens with the Ultra Short Film Festival before diving into live acts like Drop the Root Beer and Run, King Schlub and Catastrophic Success. Friday brings character-driven showcases and inventive duos, while Saturday features international troupes and local standouts, culminating in Big Ol’ Mess and Toronto-based Ghost Girl.

The growth of DSF isn’t just visible in its programming. The festival has already begun inspiring new artists.

 “We’ve definitely seen more people interested in sketch since the festival,” Congrove says. “One person who’s actually in the sketch fest this year is someone who came up to us afterwards and was like, ‘I’m so impacted by this. I really want to try sketch. I’m gonna spend the next year working on a show, and then I’ll submit.’ And then, sure enough, he worked on the show all year, did a couple of test runs and he made it into the fest.”

That ripple effect is also taking shape in education. Following DSF, Congrove and Schuck will teach Sketch 101, a new class at RISE Comedy starting on October 28, designed for those eager to try the art form. 

“I’ve been talking to a lot of people who want to get involved in sketch in some way, and it took us a while to schedule this class that we’re doing, but we’re doing a class two or three weeks after the festival that Katie and I are teaching together,” Schuck says. “Ideally, after the first year, we would have taken a huge leap forward, but it’s more like a step or two forward, which is still great.”

Denver, they believe, has the audience, talent and infrastructure to sustain a national sketch festival. “The Denver Sketch Festival shines a light on the incredible creativity and talent in sketch comedy today,” Congrove says. “We’re proud to see it becoming a cornerstone of the city’s vibrant arts community.”

A year of planning and months of watching submissions has led to this moment, but for Congrove and Schuck, the festival is about more than logistics. Each October, it becomes a stage for discovery, where national acts meet Denver audiences and where future sketch comedians might find their spark. That blend of polish and possibility is what excites the producers most as they prepare to welcome crowds back to RISE Comedy.

“Last year, there was a moment in the middle of the chaos of it all where I was going, like, ‘Oh, I’m having the best week of my life right now,’ which is kind of an unfair standard to set for this year and years going forward,” Shuck says. “The first one will probably always have that special feeling of so much validation behind doing something the first time because we accomplished what we set out to do. We did better than I thought we were going to, and I’m proud of us for that and am excited to keep growing the festival into the future.”

Denver Sketch Festival runs Thursday, October 9, through Saturday, October 11, at RISE Comedy, 1260 22nd Street. Show tickets are $20 online and $25 at the door; an all-access pass is $99. Learn more at risecomedy.com.