SXSW Comedy's Completely Official Showcase of Comedy went off spectacularly for its eighth consecutive year, with an appropriately intoxicated crowd shutting down a front row heckler who refused to follow her friends' quieter leads.
Megan Gailey, the evening’s host, managed the filled-to-capacity Esther's Follies fantastically, despite a riled up festival crowd turning the room into an oven. Gailey even handled a persistent heckler with sugar instead of vinegar during her opening set.
Gailey, who helps produce and host The Front Room at Brooklyn’s The Knitting Factory, recently made her late-night TV debut with an appearance on The Conan O’Brien Show.
Gailey’s efforts were unfortunately in vain and the heckler later returned to try her hardest to ruin Joe Pera’s set. To his credit, Pera let the heckler have three strikes, including one before Pera could even speak into the microphone, and another at the tail end of a long build-up. But on the third strike, Pera went hard and shut the front-row heckler down, staying in character as the crowd’s cheering silenced the heckling for the rest of the show.
Pera creates and hosts the web series The Pancake Breakfast Critic for MTV Other, and is a regular on the NYC comedy circuit.
Todd Barry had his set next, and by the time Barry finished mopping up, the heckler and her friend had abandoned their front row seats and left the room.
Barry has been featured on The Late Show with David Letterman, Late Night with Conan O’Brien, and Jimmy Kimmel Live!, and has worked on shows such as Flight of the Conchords, Aqua Teen Hunger Force, Louie, and Bob's Burgers.
The last two performers of the SXSW comedy showcase, Todd Glass and Nate Bargatze, didn’t get a chance to speak their mind with the heckler, but both comedians kept the crowd laughing just as hard the Gailey, Pera and Barry.
Glass runs a podcast called The Todd Glass Show on the Nerdist podcasting network and has been featured on Jimmy Kimmel Live! , Late Night with Conan O'Brien , Tough Crowd with Colin Quinn and Last Comic Standing .
Bargatze, who was named one of Variety’s Ten Comics To Watch of 2015, has also been featured on late night TV shows such as Conan and The Tonight Show.
