The annual DC comedy fest Bentzen Ball is coming back for its seventh installment this October, curated by Tig Notaro.
This year, Notaro and the Brightest Young Things team decided to focus on presenting all female/non-binary headliners. Announced thus far: podcasters Phoebe Robinson (of 2 Dope Queens), Carmen Esposito and Rhea Butcher (the couple behind Put Your Hands Together), singer-actress Amanda Seales (from Small Doses), and Michelle Buteau, who hosts the WNYC talk show Late Night Whenever. For fans of Netflix’s reboot of Queer Eye, Jonathan Van Ness will also appear as a special guest. Of course, Notaro will be performing as well. Other guests and events are still to be announced.
“We want to make this really positive space inside of DC,” says Brightest Young Things’s Svetlana Legetic. “We will have some men. It’s not female and angry, it’s female and smart and joyous—kind of like a conscious flipping of the script.”
The festival will be from October 25-28 and hosted at various venues. Starting today, only the Lincoln All Access passes are available (at $120). Individual ticket sales start in early June.
Rosa is a senior editor at Bitch Magazine. She’s written for Washingtonian and Smithsonian magazine.
