Festival Aims to Boost Local Comedy Scene

There’s a new entertainment festival in town — and it’s not the one with Geena Davis.

After four years on the Chicago improv comedy scene, Fayetteville natives Jordan and Hope Haynes returned to their hometown May 2015, with plans to be closer to family and “a vision to strengthen the already burgeoning local comedy scene by creating more diverse comedic events, performances, and experiences.”

They quickly got to work forming a nonprofit, Arkansas Comedy Collective LLC, and creating the Huge Lightning comedy festival, which debuted this May.

The event is unique in its inclusiveness of different forms of comedy, from stand-up and improv, to comedic music, poetry, essay readings and painting, Hope said.

Huge Lightning brings together local acts and performers from throughout the nation, whom the couple met in Chicago.

There, Hope worked with the producing team at The Second City, while Jordan performed professionally and also studied improvisational and sketch comedy with the theater, in addition to studying at The iO Theater and The Annoyance Theatre & Bar.

The Comedy Collective also puts on a monthly show called Roughhouse, which features improv, readings, music and a live artist at the BackSpace venue downtown.

Hope planned to hit the ground running directly after this year’s festival to plan Huge Lightning 2017.
“We hope it continues to grow each year until it’s a nationally recognized event that comedians and audiences from all over the country want to come to,” she said.