http://www.theage.com.au/news/comedy...e#contentSwap1
Hall the stage for the wackier wackos
Greg Burchall
April 5, 2007
Comedians in Melbourne benefit from strong foundations - including those of the Trades Hall. 
Prime Minister John Howard (left); the man behind the PM, Shan Jayaweera; Lawrence Leung, who is not cool; and Comedy @ Trades producer Catherine Woodfield.
Photo: Rebecca Hallas
It's a funny thing, these two buildings that throw wide their doors and corridors, their obscure rooms and tucked-away chambers and invite inside the weird and the funny, the silly and the subversive when Melbourne Comedy Festival time rolls around.
The Melbourne Town Hall is grand and ornate, with portraits of bearded mayors on its walls and insignia woven into the carpets. Up the road, Trades Hall stands squat and solid, on slightly higher ground, with honour rolls, murals, bullet holes in its walls and floorboards worn down by workers' boots.
There has always been a connection - perhaps uneasy - between the two: the establishment with visions of grandeur and the tradespeople whose skill can make it real.
While the Town Hall has been Comedy Festival headquarters for many years now, Trades Hall leapt onto the stage last year with a program of mainly emerging and hard-to-classify acts that nevertheless pulled laugh-seekers in with a program of cabaret and theatrical fare.
About 20,000 tramped into Trades Hall last year, the first official Comedy @ Trades, produced by Catherine Woodfield. She says "nerves of steel" were needed to hire all the venue's spaces and program a four-week season.
This year, she has added rooms and acts, brought in some headliners, shifted the focus and arranged an even bigger headache for herself.
"The programming intention has not changed," she says. "We still want a broad cross-section, we still want to mix things up.
"But while we had a more theatrical content last year, this year there is more stand-up. More alternative forms of comedy. We even have magic."
Woodfield is particularly pleased that some established acts - among them British comic Daniel Kitson and local musical trio Tripod - approached her for a spot.
"There were a few who spent a lot of time here last festival - after-hours - and enjoyed the atmosphere. Now they are coming back to work."
At the showcase launch last Thursday, many acts made reference to the serious, labour-driven edifice.
Energetic comic Dave Thornton took delight in getting the crowd to chant the Snoop Dogg refrain "Make money money make" but wild-eyed evangelist Pastor Michael's attempt to get the crowd to yell "Bless John Howard!" tested the very bounds of audience participation.
Perhaps the silence was the punchline.
Cath Jamison's wicked routine that involves illusion and dating, Jim Lawson's feral footy coach and the deliberate awfulness of
Burlesque Idol left nobody in any doubt that the stand-and-deliver style of comedy has alternative manifestations.
"There are people who talk about who they are, there are people who talk about what they think," says comic Lawrence Leung. "And there are those who don't know about either of those things.
"I'm just testing new things all the time."
Leung's new show is about the fact that he has never been hip and desperately wants to be seen to be as cool as his older brother, who has moved to Sydney and plays in a rock band.
"It's a personal story and it's narrative-driven - I think audiences prefer that rather than a whole lot of jokes: they want to know more about you and where the story is going."
Disturbingly, the "nerd" factor appears rampant. Do we blame
Seinfeld? Or these conservative times?
Apart from Leung, who admits to having slept in a bunk bed until he was 24, there is an unsettling theme of nerdishness infecting other acts.
The cardigan-clad librarian Josh Earl celebrates music and the Dewey Decimal System; lab-coat attired Ben McKenzie argues that science rocks; Tripod has put out its "nerd-feelers" to shoot willing citizens for video accompaniments to its backlist.
The only theme Woodfield can see is the need to encourage emerging talent.
"I love to see the arc of someone's development," she says.
"There are failures, there are surprises, but the important thing is to see things that aren't conventional, things that are unexpected. The performer gets something out of it and so does the audience."
As with the Town Hall, Woodfield continues to find new, intimate spaces in the labyrinthine hallways of Trades Hall, which she hires for the festival.
This year it includes her previous office, which is now a performance space for 30.
"There aren't that many people who can fill a 100 or 200-seater, or even - when they are starting out - a 50 to 60 seater," she says. "It's a common problem to find a space where a new act can feel comfortable and build (his or her) confidence."
Woodfield insists Comedy @ Trades is not in competition with the main game down at the Town Hall. She says the two precincts complement each other and that the Comedy Festival has provided great support, in terms of programming - and even financially.
"Ideally, we can help to strengthen each other and build a wonderful hub between us," she says.
"Although we will always remain a little bit odd - I hope."
The Age is a Festival sponsor http://www.theage.com.au/news/comedy...e#contentSwap1 As Melbourne comedy fans engage in the annual "What's funny?" dialogue, Michael Dwyer has a harder question: "Why?"
Dom Romeo insists no animals will suffer as a result of his comedy appreciation course, Dissecting the Frog, part of the Melbourne International Comedy Festival. But that doesn't mean every animal will be leaping for joy after five weeks.
In session one, the second-funniest moment was when one of the participants accidentally walked into a wall looking for the toilet. Believe me, I know funny and that was gold.
Sure, there were theoretically amusing recordings by Jerry Lewis, Filthy Rich and Catflap, Maria Bamford, Bev Killick and other dead funny people plucked from Mr Romeo's heaving suitcase of CDs and DVDs.
But from this corner, an evening scrutinising what makes other people laugh was a solid affirmation of the course's titular disclaimer, attributed to American writer E.B. White: "Analysing humour is like dissecting a frog. Few people are interested and the frog dies of it."
"Admittedly, comedy nerds can be boring for people who only want to be amused," concedes Romeo, a radio humorist and "hanging judge" for the annual Raw Comedy stand-up competition. "But for people who like comedy enough that they can hear a joke a second time and still appreciate it, some of them want to work out why the second time had that effect."
Said effect is, of course, largely subjective.
And subject to change. One aspect of comedy that interests Romeo is the way in which social trends influence whether a gag can draw a laugh. "
The Morecambe and Wise Christmas Show of 1977 rated 28 million, the biggest historical viewing audience in England," he says. "(But) try and watch their stuff now and at times you're wondering 'What is it that was funny?' "
Those were more innocent times, when two heterosexual men sitting in the same bed smoking pipes was a recipe for instant hysteria - once you added a can of laughter, naturally. But Romeo is far more interested in "wrong" comedy, the stuff that makes us laugh that really, truly shouldn't.
"The thing I find most interesting is why racial humour exists, and who gets to be the butt of the jokes," Romeo says. "There was a time in our history when it was actually OK to laugh at things that you're just not allowed to now."
Some of these gags even seem to oscillate, he says, between acceptable and unacceptable. He cites Benny Hill's dodgy buck-toothed and bespectacled Asian stereotype of the '70s,and wonders how it differs from the character of Ricky Wong in Chris Lilley's award-winning TV series of 2006,
We Can Be Heroes.
"How does he get away with it? Why does it not offend the Asian students who watch that show and see themselves in it?" he inquires.
Melbourne comedian Nelly Thomas isn't in the business of adjudicating on jokes, "wrong" or otherwise. As co-presenter of the
Jeez Louise Funny Women's Forum, her approach to what's funny is less philosophical and more practical.
"I keep getting asked whether you can teach comedy," she says. "Some people will never be funny on stage. They might be funny in life, but they can't perform it."
Thomas has a pretty good claim to being naturally funny. She enrolled in
Jeez Louise in 2003 thinking it was a writers' workshop. When it turned out to be a dedicated training ground for comediennes, she went from stand-up virgin to winner of Raw Comedy, and Edinburgh Festival debutante, within six months.
In terms of deciding what's funny, "it's not my job to be prescriptive", she says.
"To me, there's no subject that is taboo, but whether it's funny depends on who the butt of the joke is. I've done a lot of work for the Royal Women's Hospital, so I've had to tackle issues like obesity, domestic violence, sexual assault, really full-on things that you don't wanna make people laugh about. But if you're making a joke out of the person doing it, or the system that lets that happen, it's a very different thing."
One joke that doesn't raise a smile with Nelly Thomas is "Why Aren't Women Funny?" The perennial provocation cropped up again in January, as a headline in
Vanity Fair magazine. Thomas said she received the link from a dozen friends, but has so far declined to read it.
If the author of that piece had made it to Dissecting the Frog last week, he may have been surprised at the funniest moment of the evening, when Bev Killick excused herself after a long day of rehearsing for the mammary manipulation spectacular, D-Cuppetry. "I've had my tits out all day learning tricks and I've got a teenager and a toddler waiting for me at home," she said on the way out.
How I laughed. Is that wrong?
Dissecting the Frog: Comedy Appreciation Course continues April 16 and 23. Jeez Louise Funny Women's Forum takes place at the Melbourne Town Hall on April 14 and 15. D-Cuppetry is at Umbrella Revolution, Federation Square, until April 29. http://www.theage.com.au/news/comedy...970943723.html
COMEDIANS may laugh a lot, but the majority don't earn a lot.
So they have day jobs, working on their routines while they serve your coffee, fix your car and scan your purchases.
Take Josh Earl, whose reality-based show
Josh Earl is a Librarian covers his three years working at Hoddle Street's Collingwood College.
"I moved to Melbourne (from Tasmania) to do comedy, so it's a way I can make cash to put on shows in festivals," he said.
The 25-year-old teaching graduate points to Hobart's Comedy Festival — an emerging event in January used by some comics to strengthen material and test shows — as a way his work accommodates his passion for comedy.
"I get 12 weeks, paid, off a year," he said, happily. "I'm only getting paid $40 a spot some nights, but I can afford to go and do it."
Comedians in the festival work as receptionists, cashiers, couriers, drama teachers, farmers, salespeople, in call centres, as mascots and in cover bands.
Other shifts are more dramatic. By day Justin Gregory is a civilian, working alongside military personnel, in the payroll division of the Department of Defence in Melbourne.
At night he's Jillette Jones in
The Sound of Music Drag Show.
"(The department) pays for life," he said. "Whereas performing is an outlet, something fun and exciting to do."
For former mechanic and brick-stacker Ben Chisholm, finding a job to work around his comedy schedule is torturous.
"It's nearly impossible," he said, "unless you take on a part-time job during the day."
Chisholm's
Voicebox show in the Melbourne International Comedy Festival is filled with impersonations.
But when former audience members have identified him during interviews, their impression generally ends with ringing words, he said: "You're not what we're looking for."