KCCAT presents Fringe film The Weirdos Comedy Hour Part II with (at least) one laugh guaranteed
A sneak peek of The Weirdos Comedy Hour Part, premiering at KC Fringe Festival at the Stray Cat Film Center. // Photo Courtesy of ManaSharc Productions
As the 2025 KC Fringe Festival is soon to discover, weird is the new normal. To take the stage on the set of The Weirdos Comedy Hour Part II, an akin to strangeness is the cost of entry.
“I just want to embrace that weirdness,” co-creator Sadie Teel says. “It’s just a different way of doing things.”
For Kansas Citians looking to add a taste of strange to their previously normal lives, Forest Kinsey Films and ManaSharc Productions are partnering once again to bring the weird to the centerstage.
The Weirdos Comedy Hour Part II is a compilation of comedy shorts featuring many local Kansas City comedians. This year, the comics are leaving the atmosphere with a show featuring a horror story taking place in outer space.
“It’s wacky, it’s wild—We lean into that,” fellow co-creator Forest Kinsey says. “I think we proved last year that the enjoyment of what we have kind of transfers to our audiences regardless of the project.”
Over the past year, Teel and Kinsey have collaborated with various comics, slowly piecing together a show upon their very own designed film set.
Photo Courtesy of ManaSharc Productions
“We do this for fun, and we don’t have budgets, so we really lean into the campiness,” Teel says. “Just yesterday, we were painting a bunch of cardboard walls for this year’s special. We’re just going to make it look like a tacky sci-fi, old ’50s movie, like on a spaceship. It’s a ‘do-it-yourselfers’ kind of thing.”
What makes the comedy show even more unique is its unusual format as a short film. The ability to edit adds creative freedom to post-production. As usual improv performers, the co-creators are excited by the additional safety net for their project.
“We know from doing sketches live that if we make mistakes, that’s part of it,” Kinsey says. “Now, we get to deal with it with a little more security being able to edit through these things. You can do a scene multiple times to get it right together in one lovely piece. Plus, we get a lot more special effects; We shoot with a lot of green screens.”
But with juggling the busy lives of the actors, Teel and Kinsey need to keep the ball rolling, move on to the next sketch to respect the hectic schedules of their comics, and to keep their production on track.
“The writing process is one week, we are shooting probably the next week, and editing has to all be done within like a three-week span,” Kinsey says. “Essentially, the whole process is within three weeks for each one of these little shorts.”
With the production set at the Stray Cat Film Center for Fringe 2025 on July 18 at 10:30 p.m., July 19 at 3 p.m., and July 20 at 6 p.m., Teel and Kinsey are confident audiences will crack a smile—even if it’s just one.
“I think you can expect a lot of really bad puns,” Kinsey says with a grin. “One laugh guaranteed,” Teel agrees.
