North Carolina Comedy Arts Festival To Welcome Letterman’s Eddie Brill to Stand-Up Comedy Line-Up

11.04.2009 – CARRBORO, NC – As The North Carolina Comedy Arts Festival continues to seek some of the top comedy talent in the country for its 10th Anniversary, festival producers announced Friday that it will welcome Eddie Brill to the Stand-Up Comedy Block. Brill will be performing a headlining stand-up comedy set at the festival and he will be offering a premium workshop to festival performers. Brill is a stand-up comedian and the audience warm-up and Talent Coordinator for comedians on Late Show with David Letterman. Next year, The North Carolina Comedy Arts is adding two new performance blocks, expanding to two more weekends, and will run from February 4-27, 2010. The festival will be held at four venues throughout the Carrboro area and will showcase some of the best rising comedy talent in the nation.

The Stand-Up block will run February 11-14. Shows will be scheduled at the DSI Comedy Theater and partner venues in Chapel Hill and Carrboro. DSI Comedy Theater is located at 200 N. Greensboro Street in Carrboro. More information on the festival can be found at www.nccomedyarts.com.

Eddie Brill is a well-respected stand-up comedian who has performed across the USA and abroad. He has been a regular on the comedy scene in England since 1989. Brill also works regularly in Australia, Ireland, Scotland, Canada, France, Holland and Hong Kong. For the past eleven years and counting, he has worked on the Late Show with David Letterman. He is the audience warm-up and Talent Coordinator for the comedians who appear on the show.

Brill started stand-up comedy in the late 70's in college, but moved back to NY and was a copywriter for an advertising agency for a short while. In July of 1984 he got back into stand-up when he started, booked, and hosted the very successful Paper Moon Comedy Club in the West Village of NYC and hasn't stopped since. He is also a 3-time MAC Award Winner (Manhattan Association of Cabaret and Clubs) for Best Male Stand-up Comic in NYC.

He has hosted and performed for hundreds of corporate events, working for companies like ESPN, Glaxo Welcome, Hyatt Hotels, and BMC Software. He has performed on some of the greatest stages in the world including The Shrine Auditorium and Radio City Music Hall. He has been the audience warm-up for many shows including The Dana Carvey Show, Madigan Men, This is Your Life, and for a short time, early episodes of Saved By The Bell. He has appeared in numerous films as an actor, most recently, 30 Years To Life with Tracy Morgan. He has used his voice talents in many animated series including Comedy Central's Dr Katz and ABC's Science Court.

Brill produces and helps book stand-up talent all over the world. He is the creative director of the wildly successful Great American Comedy Festival, which honors Johnny Carson in his hometown of Norfolk, Nebraska. Along with Norman Lear in 1978, he helped create one of the first ever college comedy writing departments in the country at Emerson College in Boston. He also helped create the Emerson Comedy Workshop, founded in 1976 and continues to thrive today. Some of the talents emerging from that workshop include: Denis Leary, Mario Cantone, Anthony Clark, David Cross, and Bill Burr to name a few. He currently teaches a highly acclaimed stand-up comedy workshop worldwide that helps comics young and old take their comedy work to the next level.

The 2010 NC Comedy Arts Festival will run as follows:

• Sketch Comedy will run February 4-6
• Stand-up Comedy will run February 11-14
• Improv Comedy will run February 17-20
• Film and video will run from February 25-27

Throughout the last decade, the North Carolina Comedy Arts Festival has made Carrboro a comedy destination. Last year, the festival boasted over 500 performers from 17 states and Canada. In 2008, the festival raised the population of Carrboro by 4% for a week and generated $150,000 in spillover spending for the downtown business community. Local leaders have started to take notice of DSI and the NCCAF as contributors to area economic development.

Starting with the 2009 festival, the North Carolina Comedy Arts Festival began a partnership with the website RooftopComedy.Com. Staff members from RooftopComedy filmed all of the stand-up sets from the festival and pulled comics from the NCCAF to perform at the new 2009 Aspen Comedy Festival. This partnership will continue with the 2010 festival.

More information is available at: http://www.nccomedyarts.com.
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About NCCAF
Dirty South Improv (DSI) produced the first North Carolina Comedy Arts Festival in 2001 to give North Carolina audiences and students at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill the chance to experience workshops in the art of Chicago-style improvisation. Then known as the Dirty South Improv Festival, the festival has rapidly become one of the largest comedy festivals in the nation. Last year, the Dirty South Improv Festival increased the population of Carrboro for a week by 4%. With professional performances in Chicago and New York and its college touring company, DSI started to receive national attention. The 2006 festival celebrated the opening of the DSI Comedy Theater, an 80-seat venue in North Carolina and the new home for shows and the DSI Training Center. The festival has attracted high level instructors in improvisation including: Asaf Ronen, Jeff Griggs, Dan Izzo, Eric Hunicutt, Kevin Patrick Robbins, Anthony King and Jill Bernard. From the DSI Comedy Training Center and DSI Comedy Theater in Carrboro, NC to its productions in Chicago, and professional Touring Company, the Dirty South name has spread around the country, drawing both participants and quality teaching staff to its annual comedy festival year after year.

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News Facts

North Carolina Comedy Arts Festival welcomes Eddie Brill to the Stand-Up Comedy Block. Brill will be performing a headlining stand-up comedy set at the festival and he will be offering a premium workshop to festival performers.
Brill will be performing a headlining stand-up comedy set at the festival and he will be offering a premium workshop to festival performers.
Brill is a stand-up comedian and the audience warm-up and Talent Coordinator for comedians on Late Show with David Letterman.