Connecticut Comic Coming Home

To Work Out His Half-Hour Comedy Central Special

DANBURY — Andrew Kennedy started his stand-up comedy career by doing shtick over the phone to Treehouse Comedy Club owner Brad Axelrod in the summer of 1994. Now the Sandy Hook resident is preparing to shoot his own Comedy Central Presents special at the Hudson Theatre next month.

In preparation for that event Mr Kennedy will going to rehearse his TV set at the Treehouse Comedy Club in Danbury on Saturday, July 29, at 9:30 pm, in an exclusive Connecticut appearance.

Mr Kennedy will also be working out his TV material this month up in Montreal for the 2006 Just for Laughs Comedy Festival, where he will be performing for the second time in three years. In this year’s comedy event Mr Kennedy will be featured in five spots culminating with an appearance on the main stage hosted by the legendary John Cleese of Monty Python fame.

Mr Kennedy’s last Montreal Comedy Festival appearance led to offers from The WB Network, HBO and CBS for a television pilot he wrote and starred in. CBS eventually won the bidding war for the rights to “Related by Marriage” in which Andrew had a great opportunity to work with Gary Halverson, executive producer of “Everybody Loves Raymond” and of “Friends” fame.

Mr Kennedy resides in Sandy Hook with his pregnant wife Amy and sons Aidan and Ian. Mr Kennedy met future bride at the Treehouse in Norwalk in 1995. Amy is now due to deliver their first daughter, which surely will be a new resource for Mr Kennedy’s ever evolving comedy material.

Mr Kennedy was born in Bogotá, Columbia. His mother is Columbian and his father is English. By the time he was 13 he had already lived in Columbia, Puerto Rico, Venezuela and Hong Kong before the family settled in Connecticut.

Mr Kennedy and his family have lived in Stamford, in Redding, and now at the Kennedy Compound in Sandy Hook.

His stand-up is autobiographical and centers on his bicultural upbringing, marriage, and fatherhood, a far cry from his mid-90’s phone impressions of Arnold Schwarzenegger, Sean Connery and Bill Clinton. His act is high-energy observations and characters.

His opening acts will be Tina Giorgi who has appeared on Letterman, The Late Late Show, Comedy Central and Conan, along with Johnny Watson, who has appeared on NBC’s Saturday Night Live.

Tickets are $15 and as an added bonus, guests will be invited to attend the August taping of Mr Kennedy’s Comedy Central TV special.

For reservations call the Treehouse reservation line at 744-5575 or order tickets online at TreehouseComedy.com. Treehouse’s Danbury location is within New Sorrento Restaurant, 32 Newtown Road.