Andy Wood (comedian)

Andy Wood
Andrew "Andy" Wood
Occupation	Stand-Up Comedian/Producer of Bridgetown Comedy Festival
Years active	2005 - Present

Andrew "Andy" Wood (born 1977) is an American comedian and a founder/producer of Portland's Bridgetown Comedy Festival. He is a native of Ann Arbor, Michigan currently residing in Los Angeles, California.

Wood has performed at the Bumbershoot Arts Festival, the Seattle International Comedy Competition, the Portland Amateur Comedy Competition, SF Sketchfest and the Bentzen Ball. He has performed with comedy acts such as Patton Oswalt, Todd Glass, Doug Benson and Janeane Garofalo. He graduated from Huron High School (Ann Arbor, Michigan) in 1995 and took his degree in Electrical Engineering at Cornell University in 1999. Before he became a comedian, Wood was an engineer at Pixelworks.

Wood is one of the hosts of the popular podcast Probably Science where he and other comedians talk about science news stories. While Andy Wood does have a background in science, the podcast is meant for humor and entertainment and is not intended to provide accurate scientific information. He affectionately refers to the show as "Your week in half-assed science."

As tri-founder of the Festival, Wood is responsible in part for "the fastest-growing comedy extravaganza in America." Successively larger and better-planned comedy festivals prompted one reviewer to comment, ". . . as usual, organizer Andy Wood and his royal army of geniuses outdid themselves. How can you make something already great even better? I'm not sure, but it happened." In late 2009, the Portland Mercury reviewed the festival, stating that, "Bridgetown (or should we say, Andy Wood) is changing Portland comedy" and the following year, the Portland Monthly stated that Wood "deserves several rounds of applause for making the fest happen . . . ." In his work as a comedy promoter, Andy Wood created a venue where the comedy market was struggling, and has promoted the venue to as a regional and national event. Part of Wood’s approach in creating ‘draw’ to a weak comedy market was to couple art with philanthropy.