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[title]In case you missed it, the Melbourne International Comedy Festival is kind of a big deal. In fact, with more than 650 shows and 7,800 individual performances happening on 185 stages this year, calling it a massive deal is probably more accurate. As the festival (which runs until April 21) ramps up its seven-late-nights-per-week of rib-splitting laughs, we chatted to a funny bunch of local jokesters about what the whole thing means to them.
How do you usually introduce yourself to someone new at parties?
He Huang: I normally don’t like to bring up that I’m a comedian at the party. Nowadays, whenever I say I’m a comedian, people say, ‘Tell me a joke’. You want to go hard on them and say ‘What’s your job? Do your job in front of me too’, but then everyone’s just quiet. I used to work at an NGO. Now I’m not trying to save the world, I’m just trying to save myself from insanity.
Gillian Cosgriff: Hello I’m Gill, where are the snacks? Generally, I would say I’m a performer and see if they have any follow-up questions to explain what specific kind. Sometimes I’m a comedian, and I’m an actor, musician and writer. For me, a swift self-deprecate and a pivot is my preference.
Nick White: I’ll just say, 'Hi, my name’s Nick' and I’ll leave it at that. If they ask what I do, I’ll say I’m a comedian who does stand-up comedy and content creation. I try not to get into the nitty gritty unless they ask… I hate being called an influencer, because I’ve been doing stand-up for over six years.
Rhys Nicholson: I’ll throw a drink in their face and make them watch my Netflix special in full. Comedians are usually pretty embarrassed. If you say ‘I’m a comedian’ and someone hasn’t heard of you, their brains automatically go to sadness. So I tend to say ‘I work in TV’, or now that I’ve written a book, ‘I’m a writer’. I think most comedians lie.
Rapha Manajem: I usually tell them I’m a used car tyre salesman. Then I try to sell them used tyres, trying harder and harder sales tactics until they’re not really sure what’s going on. Just as I can tell they’re about to say ‘I’m gonna get a drink’, I ask them ‘What do you do?’, so then they have to stay.
Tell us everything we need to know about your MICF show in two sentences or less.
He Huang: My stand-up comedy show is jokes and stories about me travelling around the world, including Thailand, Africa and North Korea – that’s it.
Gillian Cosgriff: It’s a show that’s different every night based on the audience. It’s all about things that are actually good. I know that people have gone on to reference the show in birthday toasts, at dinner parties and in wedding vows. It’s nice, it’s a show that has a life beyond the show.
Nick White: It’s about trying to find a creative outlet for you, that feels authentic and right. It also features some of my characters.
Rhys Nicholson: Tickets still available. I don’t think I want kids.
Rapha Manajem: So there are five emerging comedians selected for this show Comedy Zone every year – past years have had greats like Hannah Gadsby, Aaron Chen, Becky Lucas and Matt Okine. This year four out five of the comics are really good, and one of them has a dirt file on the Comedy Festival executives.
What does the Melbourne International Comedy Festival mean to you?
He Huang: I have a really personal connection with the festival, because I feel like it gave me the start of my career here in Australia. When I first came here, I participated in the Raw Comedy competition, then did Comedy Zone, then did my solo and got nominated for Best Newcomer – this year is my second solo, so it’s very personal.
Gillian Cosgriff: Too much, I would say. My therapist would suggest implementing some healthy boundaries. I love this festival and to me, it’s when Melbourne feels most alive.
It’s a month of late nights, great shows, good friends and more than your recommended daily dietary intake of crêpes.
Nick White: I’m from Brisbane, but I used to watch the gala every year. It’s an exciting thing that comedians love (or funny children who aren’t comedians yet). Now as a comedian, it feels like comedy summer camp or comedy Christmas. I moved to Melbourne a month ago and I’m so excited to live here for the festival.
Rhys Nicholson: So much. I’m like a child of the festival. When I was 16-17 my friend and I used to come from my hometown in Newcastle to go to shows, staying in a hostel. I’ve done every piece of the festival that you can do, except I didn’t get into Comedy Zone… and I’m fine about it.
The festival means a lot to me because it’s my community. The fact that I get to do the gala blows my mind, because I have ten VHS tapes in my family home. I would just watch them over and over, and now I get to work with those people.
Out of the whole year, this festival is the thing that means the most to me.
Rapha Manajem: Well, thanks to my dirt file it gives me a chance to perform to possibly dozens of people alongside four fantastic comics. It’s the largest comedy festival in the cultural capital of Australia, and because comedy is formless, there are almost no barriers to entry – during this month you are exposed to the full breadth of human creativity and depravity.
What’s your take on the purpose of comedy?
He Huang: The purpose of comedy is that it’s honest, it’s raw. If it’s funny, people laugh. If it’s not funny, people don’t laugh. It doesn’t matter how powerful or how good you are offstage, on the stage it’s a very honest platform to show what you have, skills-wise.
Gillian Cosgriff: I think shared laughter is the single best human experience. Laughing at something at home alone on your couch is nowhere near the satisfaction of laughing in a room full of people at the same thing. Comedy’s purpose is obviously to elicit laughter and to make you think, but shared laughter in a room connects us in a way that the world is currently trying to divide us. Wow, what an earnest answer from a comedian.
Nick White: I see comedy as a way of reminding people that life has a light side. Life has horrible things happening in the world, but I know that my purpose is to remind people that you can laugh as well and feel good. My comedy isn’t the deepest. I’m not trying to make a huge point, I really just like to be silly. And I think there’s nothing wrong with that.
Rhys Nicholson: I think the concept is changing very rapidly. There’s this weird thing that I do not agree with, where through straight white male podcast culture comedians are becoming these modern philosophers. Don’t ask a comedian about how we should fix things! It’s like asking a plumber to fix electrical cords – he works with water, leave him alone (or she, or they! Nonbinary people can be plumbers now).
Rapha Manajem: Comedy is most useful as a tool to address subjects that are difficult, or [that] make people feel frustrated or lonely. There’s this bit from Nietzsche: “Battle not with monsters, lest you become a monster. And if you stare into the abyss, the abyss stares back into you.”
I think at its best, comedy is an attempt to make the abyss laugh back at you and give people some levity from the stuff that drives us crazy.
When did you first realise that you’re funny?
He Huang: Nine years ago I was working part-time at a store and my co-worker back then was very strong about pushing me to do stand-up. That’s when I realised I actually might be funny.
Gillian Cosgriff: I studied musical theatre because I am insufferable. I was in Anything Goes and there’s this one big song in act two with all these sailors, where I had to fill in a gap in the middle. So I just came up with these little jokes, did them in front of people and realised they were actual real jokes – I didn’t know! And I just felt so comfortable.
Nick White: When I was eight, I would go to my brother’s soccer games with my parents and sit there really quietly. When we got home I’d do impressions of all the parents, because I’ve always been able to impersonate people.
Rhys Nicholson: I was quite a desperate teenager and wanted to be the class clown, but I wasn’t. I think I got funnier when I settled down a little in my 20s. Eventually, instead of doing jokes that I thought the audience would find funny, I started doing jokes that I found funny. That seemed to help me quite a bit.
Rapha Manajem: You know the allegory of two fish swimming? Another fish swims by and says, ‘How good’s the water today?’. One fish turns to the other and says ‘What the hell is water?’. Everyone in my family was funny and all my friends were funny so I just thought that’s what people were.
Craving some comedy? Read our ultimate insider’s guide to MICF.
Photographer: Carmen Zammit
Lead designer: Conor Mitchell
Design: Jack Puglielli
Location: Kindred Cameras