The team behind Tasmania's Dark Mofo midwinter arts event is launching a comedy festival in Hobart.
Yet some punters might be left looking for the punchline, as the Dark Mofo festival itself has been cancelled for 2024 due to rising costs despite record attendance and box office sales in 2023.
The new comedy festival will be held over three days in March with 11 headline acts, at popular Dark Mofo venues the Odeon Theatre, Altar and In The Hanging Garden, with the precinct's Cathedral becoming a free Festival Hub.
Hobart has a year-round stand-up circuit and did have a comedy festival for about a decade in the early 2000s, back in the day when reviewers described Tassie-born Hannah Gadsby as a "newbie".
The Hobart Festival of Comedy is scheduled after the Adelaide Fringe and before the Melbourne Comedy Festival, and organisers say this timing has helped them lure more acts to the Tasmanian capital.
The festival slate features Heath Franklin with his impersonation of real-life criminal Mark 'Chopper' Read, and South African-New Zealander comedian Urzila Carlson with her new standup show Just Jokes.
There's also British comedy troupe Sh!t-faced Shakespeare with Macbeth featuring an extremely drunk actor, and Irish stand-up Ed Byrne with Tragedy Plus Time, a cathartic show based on the recent COVID-related death of his brother.
Local talent will be showcased in ten-minute performances in a night titled Resident Comedy.
Hobart Festival of Comedy runs from March 22-24.
