Get the best of Vancouver in your inbox, every Tuesday and Thursday. Sign up for our free newsletter.

When Matt Clarke, Olivia Paluzzi, and the rest of sketch comedy troupe RIOT Vancouver heard about the lineup for the 2025 Great Outdoors Comedy Festival, they weren’t happy. This year, they decided to do something about it.

The Great Outdoors Comedy Festival is an annual event that occurs in venues across the country, with the Vancouver edition taking place in Stanley Park and featuring numerous big-name comedians plying their trade in front of thousands of people. Last year, that festival drew some ire for a lineup that was made up almost entirely of white men.

This year, it appears to have doubled down. Bill Burr is headlining the affair and will be supported by a group that includes Anthony Jeselnik, Pete Davidson, and Pete Holmes. Overall, there are more men named Pete (three) than women (two) on the bill.

“Last year we were rubbed the wrong way,” says Clarke, sitting with Paluzzi and comedian Nancy Ho in the Georgia Straight office. “And when it happened again this year, we were like, ‘Well, we have to do something. We’re taking action.’ ”

That action is the GreatER Outdoors Comedy Festival, a five-hour event that RIOT is doing in tandem with the Mount Pleasant BIA in the 2400-block of Main Street, where a fire several years ago has left a few empty lots.

RIOT, which runs monthly shows out of Hero’s Welcome further up Main, has a big crew of performers that sometimes hits double digits. But Clarke and company knew that they’d need some backup.

“We realized that if we were going to respond in the right way, we had to involve other community members,” says Clarke, noting that the group had collaborated on an outdoor show last summer with the Mount Pleasant BIA and hit the organization up again for support.

Then they went to work recruiting a variety of local comedians to help supplement the show, including Ho, Niki Mohrdar, Emily Woods, Nyla Carpentier, Bradley Fung, and Maarten Bayliss.

“I do know some of the comics that have opened for the festival,” says Ho, who has performed at Just For Laughs Vancouver, among many other high-profile gigs. “And, you know, last year I think they had one woman, so when RIOT reached out to me, I said it sounded like a great idea.”

RIOT’s material tends to be focused on municipal politics and city issues, and there will be a strong dose of that at the festival, which just so happens to be taking place at the exact date and time of the other festival.

“We have comics, and then as RIOT we’ll do some of our sketches,” Paluzzi says. “Maybe some new sketches, maybe some old hits, and then music guests. It’s like RIOT expanded.”

The coming municipal election will be a focus. Councillors Sean Orr and Lucy Maloney are “friends of RIOT”, says Paluzzi, and one RIOT member, Anna Cran, is officially running for mayor as (presumably) a bit.

“Maybe it is, maybe it’s not,” says Paluzzi with a smile.

But the comedians will also bring their own flair to it as well.

“My material right now is really about how I’m fuelled by rage and spite,” Ho says. “I think that might work. It might work quite well.”

The GreatER Outdoors Comedy Festival runs August 28 on Main Street and 8th Avenue.