Two of the comedy industry’s biggest hitters collide with work-in-progress shows that’ll blow your socks off. Starring Edinburgh Comedy Award Best Show nominee and “glittering new talent” (The i) Ania Magliano and Harriet Kemsley from Live at the Apollo and 8 Out of Cats Does Countdown.

What a night! What a time to be alive!

Martin Willis founded comedy production company Objectively Funny in 2017. Since then, the organisation has run three 42-show comedy festivals and produced 20 full Edinburgh Fringe runs, as well as programming a central London comedy club. Objectively Funny have hosted acts such as Nish Kumar, Rosie Jones, Tim Key, Phil Wang, Kerry Godliman and Bridget Christie. The Guardian have dubbed the programming as “the art form’s cutting edge”. In the summer of 2022 Martin was awarded a Comedians’ Choice Award by his peers for the mental health work Objectively Funny did at the Fringe that summer and his wider support of the industry. These days he works part-time on the programming team at Theatre Royal Stratford East and co-runs Hilarity Academy, a Children in Need-funded collective that teaches comedy to children in East London.

For WAF2024, Objectively Funny are programming a variety of comedy work-in-progress shows for acts that are either going out on national tours or building towards a run at the Edinburgh Fringe. Typically diverse in both demographics and comedic style, the acts include those with some major TV credits to their name (Live at the Apollo, Taskmaster), as well as some up-and-coming performers that are set to take the comedy industry by storm.