INDIAN RIVER COUNTY – Pete O’Neil thought he had come up with a great idea to complement the Comedy Nights he had been promoting Saturdays at the Surf Club and to help local hotels with one of their traditionally slow weeks of the season.
He and partner Victoria Jackson decided to put together a comedy boot camp and invited comedians, booking agents and others in the business to a retreat in Vero Beach from Jan. 9 to Jan. 15.
“I guess in January there is low occupancy at some of the hotels and the idea was to try to put something together,” O’Neil said. “We wanted to do something unique that would benefit the comics. We want it to be something like the Sundance Film Festival in Vail, (Colo.), but for comics.”
O’Neil and Jackson planned on holding the event at the Surf Club and had made arrangements with the previous management group running the hotel to host the event. However, late last month the hotel reverted back to the owners Jon and Mark Bates and they chose not to participate in the comedy retreat.
“For whatever reason, we were not invited to stay going forward,” O’Neil said.
With the holidays upon them and the loss of what was going to be their host hotel, O’Neil and Jackson have been scrambling to put on the retreat as some of the participants had already committed to it in their schedules and made travel arrangements.
O’Neil and Jackson said the retreat will go on with a scaled back schedule, though details had not been finalized.
Among the events they have scheduled are three comedy showcases, Jan. 9 (at the Quilted Giraffe), and Jan. 14 (at Filthy McNasty’s Pubbery) and Jan. 15 (at the Vero Beach Italian American Club).
The latest information can be found at their Web site at www.sebastiancomedy.com/ComicRetreat.html. The public may purchase tickets to attend these events either individually or as a package.
