Lawrence Arts Center Announces Headliners for Free State Festival, 6/20-25

Lawrence Arts Center is proud to announce that comedian Maria Bamford and Radiolab founder and co-host Jad Abumrad will be featured presenters at Free State Festival 2016.

Maria Bamford is the star of the upcoming Netflix series Lady Dynamite, Maria Bamford: the special special special, and the cult hit web series The Maria Bamford Show. She was awarded the American Comedy Award for Best Club Comic in 2014 and was included in Rolling Stone's list of 50 Funniest People. Maria voices characters on numerous animated series including BoJack Horseman, Adventure Time, Legend of Korra, Puss in Boots, and PBS's Emmy-winning series Word Girl. As part of Free State Festival 2016, Bamford will perform stand-up followed by a short film screening and a Q&A.

The ideas keynote speaker for Free State Festival 2016 is Jad Abumrad. Abumrad is the founder and co-host of the Peabody Award winning public radio program and podcast Radiolab and a MacArthur Genius Award winner. With a background in journalism and music composition, Abumrad is creating a "new aesthetic" in broadcast journalism by combining dialogue, interviews, music, and sound effects into compelling audio-documentaries. As part of Free State Festival 2016, Abumrad will present his multi-media talk "Gut Churn," about the anxieties that commonly accompany the start of the creative process, followed by a Q&A. He will also do an outreach session on sound recording and podcast production for a select group of students.

The 2016 Free State Festival runs from Monday, June 20th to Saturday, June 25th. More Free State Festival headliner announcements will be coming soon, and VIP passes, film passes, and tickets will go on sale in March 2016. For the latest Festival updates go to www.freestatefestival.org.

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