Comedian and Bad Theater Fest Founder Comes to The Living Room

With the Empire State Building and the New Yorker hotel visible in the background, Bad Theater Fest co-founder Shawn Wickens performs jokes to a packed living room of a dozen people. Scroll down for footage!

Highlights from the set of mostly new material and a few older jokes are available on YouTube.

Wickens, with Gavin Starr Kendall, co-produces the annual Bad Theater and Bad Film Fests. "We started the theater festival thinking it sounded like a weird, fun, off-beat event. But we stumbled on an interesting phenomenon," states Shawn. "Some shows fail because they are too lofty, the production team is stretched too thin. Maybe they are trying too hard or want it to succeed too badly. We noticed that sometimes a submission was trying too hard to be "bad" and that didn't work either. So we started to tell all of our accepted theater pieces: Do what you can. Have Fun. If it's a hit, that's great. If it's a miss, don't worry about."

This low-stress, Zen philosophy of "do what you can, make it easy on yourself" was the motivation for staging some living room theater.

"I was getting ready to go on vacation but I wanted to work on a new show. Not wanting to worry about details, make plans or rehearse while visiting Europe for the first time, I secured a living room space, invited some friends & their plus ones and threw together some old and untested material. It's not my best performance. It's not groundbreaking but I did it, I'm happy with the results, on to the next thing."

The Living Room Stand-up show has already been featured and reviewed in the ironically-titled "Yeah I Know it Sucks". Shawn is spreading the video around in the hopes that it inspires others to think creatively in terms of their own projects or just to try something new.

Bad Theater Fest is held every autumn in New York City. Bad Film Fest is currently taking submissions for its 4th annual spring event. Submissions close Friday, March 11, 2016. The Submission fee is dependent on the length of the film. Most short films are only $3 - $4 to submit at badfilmfest.com.