I FIRST SAW THE DOUG ANTHONY ALL STARS, or DAAS if you are in a hurry, at the Union Building in RMIT University, Melbourne. It was 1994, and the trio had reached a decade into their abusive, in-your-face, yet somehow intellectual, comedy careers, that sprouted from the streets of Canberra where they first busked. Tim Ferguson, tall and charismatic to the left. …
IF YOU’RE NOT FROM MELBOURNE or you are, but have never left the house because you believe exam results are more important than a personality, then there’s a slight chance that you’ve never, ever heard of the Melbourne International Comedy Festival (MICF). Now in its 30th year, the MICF is one of the three largest comedy festivals, next to the Edinburgh Festival Fringe …
FIRST THERE WAS ‘SHAUN OF THE DEAD’. Up until then zombies were only grotesque, not hilarious. But Simon Pegg and Nick Frost changed the rules proving that zombies could be slap-stick, while you slapped them over the head with a stick, or a baseball bat. You get my meaning. Now’s there’s Australian ‘Me and My Mates vs. The Zombie Apocalypse‘. Much like …
THERE’S MANY WAYS TO write a joke. At the School of Hard Knock Knocks stand-up comedy course, we teach three. The one that we’ll share on this blog, is our favourite joke structure – the Normal-Normal-Twist. The Normal-Normal-Twist takes the audience on a familiar journey and then suddenly zigs sideways, with a surprise. And no, we didn’t invent this. It’s been …
BUNGEE JUMPING, PARACHUTING and stand-up comedy. These are possibly the three most legally terrifyingly activities that one can do today, and yet, with the Melbourne International Comedy Festival in full swing, the city is crawling with hundreds of comic masochists. So what makes them do it? What makes someone leave a perfectly safe seat, climb onto a stage, grab a microphone …
THERE’S THREE TYPES OF PEOPLE who enrol in a stand-up comedy course, at the School of Hard Knock Knocks here in Melbourne. Those that want to be a stand-up comedian, those that have a bucket list to tick off, and upcoming best man speech givers. It’s not difficult to fill up our stand-up comedy classes with budding comedians. Melbourne, after …