Middle Eastern comedy in L.A. in October

Conflict. Culture. Hummus. From politics to food, the mainstream media loves anything and everything Middle Eastern, but the entertainment industry has been seemingly slow to follow…until now. Popular entertainers Ronnie Khalil and Ryan P. Shrime have quickly earned fans from a wide array of cultural backgrounds thanks to their founding of the Middle Eastern Comedy Festival in 2009. Last year's festival garnered instant buzz and managed to sell out all six of its shows. The festival was proudly sponsored by industry heavy hitters including DisneyABC Television, FOX Entertainment, and KPCC Southern California Public Radio. They’re currently gearing up for what is already promising to be an even more successful second year, this October 4-7, 2010 in Los Angeles (www.MidEastComedyFest.com ).

“Our audiences are amazingly multi-cultural and they love that we don’t hold back on any of the jokes,” says Khalil. “We’re not doing Middle Eastern comedy; we’re doing mainstream comedy with a Middle Eastern flair.” He continues: “We figure by providing Hollywood with content and talented artists that can cross-over in both the U.S. market and the booming Middle Eastern market, we can give films an even better chance of International box office success.”

Khalil, a successful Egyptian-American stand-up comedian, has headlined on four continents and taped comedy specials in the Middle East and Australia. At the Dubai Film Festival in 2008, he was on the panel for ‘Comedy across Cultures’ and was part of the first-ever Amman Stand-up Comedy Festival in Jordan, as well as numerous other comedy festivals including the New York Underground, NY Arab-American, South Beach, Los Angeles and Boston Comedy Festivals.

Co-Founder Shrime comments: “Our aim is to change the way Hollywood portrays the Middle East and prove to them how marketable we are when we’re not just focusing on the usual overplayed stories from the region."

Shrime, a Harvard-educated Lebanese-American actor, singer and writer, has been featured on a wide array of popular television shows including Conan O’Brian, David Letterman, Al Jazeera, CNN, PRI’s ‘The World’, and CBS’s ‘The Unit’. He is currently writing an untitled historical screenplay in addition to producing the festival.

The festival is comprised of four back-to-back nights of stand-up and sketch comedy featuring performers all from Middle Eastern backgrounds, including Arabs, Israelis, Persians, Afghanis and more. Together they are dedicated to bridging the inter-cultural gaps between Middle Eastern communities within the United States and across the Globe.

Khalil adds, "We don’t want Hollywood to ‘throw us a bone;’ we want to show Hollywood that not only is this material hilarious, engaging and completely uncharted, but also extremely marketable.”