The Bonnaroo Survival Guide
Thursday, June 17, 2010 at 4:51PM
is hard to do. If it's not the heat that gets you (as it did unfortunate soul), then it's the lines at the port-o-potties, the overpriced beer swill, the crowds, and, if you're me, it's the lines to get into the Comedy Theatre.
The Comedy Theatre seats a defying 1,600 folks, and was packed to overflow capacity for the majority of the showcases (especially Conan O'Brien 's two shows, and Aziz Ansari 's four shows). Kids queued up as early as 7 a.m. for Conan's first show, scheduled for 1 p.m. Friday. They weren't even queuing up for actual seating -- they were staking their claim to a little orange admission ticket that would allow them into the tent when it was time to seat. For Conan's shows, overflow kids were relegated to the neighboring Cinema Tent for a live feed of the performance.
Unfortunately for media (and especially, impatient, sunburned media), there were no special in/out privileges for the Comedy Tent. It was strictly first come, first serve. I was able to catch a few peeps performing in the tent, and some random around-the-fest spottings. Otherwise, the inside of the air-conditioned tent remained a stranger to me for a good majority of the festival. Judging from the lines that existed from morning until night for all scheduled performances, festival-goers were excited to take breaks from the Tennessee sun and the music stages to take in some truly world-class comedy.
