The 3rd Annual New York Arab-American Comedy Festival (NYAACF) will take place from November 13th-17th 2005. The Festival was founded in 2003 by comedian Dean Obeidallah and comedienne and actress Maysoon Zayid to showcase the talents of Arab-American actors, comics, playwrights and filmmakers, and challenge as well as inspire our fellow Arab-Americans to create outstanding works of comedy.

The 2004 Festival was an overwhelming success, with all four nights playing to standing room only crowds, showcasing a diverse group of Arab-American comedic plays, stand up comics and short comedic films, with the participation of close to 50 Arab-American artists.

In our first and second years, we were able to successfully achieve our main goal of increasing the visibility of talented Arab-American artists as well as attracting positive attention for the Arab-American community.

The Festival has progressively received positive media coverage with each year in numerous national and local media outlets including: ABC News, WBAI radio, The New York Times, Entertainment Weekly, The Village Voice, The NY Daily News, The Guardian, The Herald News, Time Out New York, the nationally syndicated radio program Democracy Now, and in various international, national and local Arab-American publications.

In addition, representatives from various casting and talent agencies and television networks attended the Festival in search of fresh and new talent, including NBC, CBS, and Comedy Central.

The success of the past two Festivals have visibly benefited both the artists' careers, as well as had an influence on the positive image of Arab-Americans through the media coverage we received. These accomplishments have shown that our Arab-American artists are crossing over into more mainstream entertainment venues.