Best Local Comedian

Many young comedians treat Atlanta as a proving ground to build their stand-up chops before moving to New York or Los Angeles. Catch Evan Fowler while you can: Although the lanky, blond 30-year-old started his stand-up comedy career only three years ago, he’s quickly become a polished joke-teller with bad-boy charisma to spare. Like many of his peers, Fowler adeptly cracks jokes about pop culture and drugs, both on stage and via Twitter: “Just had the very distinct odor of meth waft by me while standing outside of a Taco Bell. It was like Conyers saying, ‘Welcome back.’” But he can also launch into outlandish personal stories about getting fired from Chili’s or crashing fancy auctions that make him sound like a pothead Huckleberry Finn for the 21st century. <i>www.twitter.com/ThatEvanFowler. less...

Tanner Inman’s jokes start with regular-guy observations and then take absurdist twists. He can segue from deadpan delivery to amusingly spazzy imitations of Salt-n-Pepa or literally what it sounds like “when doves cry.” Inman’s been working Atlanta’s comedy clubs since 2003, and won the Andy Kaufman Award from the Atlanta Stands Up comedy honors in 2009. He could be the next big thing, assuming he can get off the couch. myspace.com/tannerinman. less...

With his quick wit and smooth delivery, DREW THOMAS has become a force in Atlanta’s comedy scene. Aside from hosting the weekly open-mic night at the Twisted Taco on Tuesdays and regularly performing at other venues across the city, Thomas recently headlined at the Punchline. He’s toured nationally to perform with the likes of Bill Bellamy, Aries Spears, D.L. Hughley, Bill Burr and Ron White. And, in the fall, he will be appearing on Robert Townsend’s “Partners in Crime” on the Black Family Channel.
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COURTNEY PATTERSON excels in such serious roles as Stella in Georgia Shakespeare’s A Streetcar Named Desire or a secretive sister in the Jewish Theatre of the South/True Colors Theatre Company co-production of Brass Birds Don’t Sing. But over the past year, she demonstrated the split-second comic timing worthy of a big-screen character actress in such roles as Georgia Shakespeare’s Comedy of Errors, Aurora Theatre’s Last of the Red Hot Lovers (in which she played three different women), and Theatrical Outfit’s Hank Williams: Lost Highway, where her honky-tonk vamp-turned-tone-deaf singer routinely ran away with the show. less...