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21st May 2012

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The link to the Poster For Charity Auction →

21st May 2012

Final Show Count

For those who asked, the final show count was 56. Don’t forget to check out the Poster For Charity.

25 April:

Big Wednesday at The Classic

26 April:

5 Star Comedy Preview

27 April:

The Gala

28 April:

Steve Wrigley and Cyan Corwine – Kevin the Musical

Terry Frisby – The Great Frisby Experiment

29 April:

RAW SemiFinal 1

30 April:

Dead Cat Bounce

1 May

Stephen K Amos

Jeremy Elwood’s Time Bomb

2 May (Wellington)

TJ McDonald – My life has been a series of poorly made decisions

Jan Maree – Hairy Today, Gone Tomorrow

3 May

Cut to the Chase – The Director’s Cut – Reverend Jellie

Urzila Carlson - I’m going to need a second opinion

Ben Hurley and Guests

4 May

Jamie Bowen – Munfred Bernstein’s Cabinet Of Wonder

Covert Improv

5 May

Mr Boon’s Fairy Tales

Dead Cat Bounce

Jesse Griffin

Late Laughs with Urzila Carlson

6 May

RAW SemiFinal 2

David O’Doherty – Is looking up

7 May

Terry Alderton

8 May

Cal Wilson - Is All Ears

Justine Smith and Irene Pink - The Pitch

9 May

Desperate and Dateless - Class Comedian Graduates 2011

Brendon Green

Rhys Mathewson vs The World

Jamie Adam, Tim Batt, Steven Boyce - Jokers, Smokers, and Midnight Tokers

10 May

Rhys Darby - This way to Spaceship

11 May

Des Bishop – Likes To Bang

Gordon Southern - The history of history

12 May

Class Comedians 2012 - Final

Cal Wilson

Brendhan Lovegrove - Bury Me Happy

Late Laughs with Justine Smith

13 May

Raw Comedy Final

14 May

Tevita Manukia – Knock Knock

Guy Williams – On the verge of nothing

15 May

Rose Matafeo – Scout’s Honour

Andrew Clay - Dumped

16 May

Private Dick

Greg Ellis - Vance Fontaine in Command Performance

Clayton Carrick-Leslie - Write About What You Know

17 May

Tom Furniss - The Free Ice Cream Show

Ben Hurley and Steve Wrigley

James Elliott and John Glass - Monkey Business

18 May

Tarun Mohanbhai - Joke In the Box

Janey Godley

The Nowhere Show

19 May

The Boy With Tape On His Face

Bombs Away! A Musical

Reuben Lee Soul Doubt?

Gish – Takes

Late Laughs with Steve Wrigley

20 May

Last Laughs

21st May 2012

A Small Summary of My Festival

So it’s over. What does this mean? Where do we go from here?

Well, for punters like me, we start getting back to normal with our lives, and wait for the next big thing.

For the awesome Festival Team, including, but far from limited to the wonderful Kylie Aitchison, Lauren Whitney, Spencer Dowson, Debs McKeen, and Kate McGee. These were the five main people I talked to, negotiated with, harassed in the lead up to the festival. I’d like to thank you all for all the great work you’ve put in to the festival, and for all the time you set aside to deal with my petty requests.

Kylie Aitchison: Thank you for letting me do this. With me as a punter, if you’d said “I don’t feel comfortable with what you’re doing” I’d have stopped straight away, I’d have shut the blog down immediately, and just gone to my shows. You didn’t. I’m grateful for that. You gave me permission to try for the Poster For Charity. Thank you for that, both from me, and from the Child Cancer Foundation.

Lauren and Spencer: I’ve harassed you both pretty fiercely over the last year, but to be honest, this whole project sparked out of a suggestion from Lauren last year. I owe you a lot. Spencer, for starters you’ve taken the heat off of Lauren from me most recently. You’ve done a great job for the festival, and promoting me where you can through your wonderful means of communication, even getting a blog of mine up on the website (and hopefully this one too). Thank you.

Debs McKeen, you’ve done an awesome job producing all the big events throughout this festival, whether or not people know the extent of the impact you make on the festival, you should unquestionably be recognised for it. You rock!

And Kate. You’ve been awesome, for hooking me up with the media pass, for coordinating a lot of my tickets, dealing with last minute changes, among many other things. You’ve been awesome to deal with, and I have no idea how you’ve managed to stay so happy and chirpy all the time.

To my beautiful half. Thank you for your love, support, and tolerance during this project. It’s been a long three and a half weeks. A longer four months. Thank you for supporting me through this project which became an obsession, and is now a great set of memories, or will be, as soon as the #PosterForCharity has been sold.

To all the acts who’ve supported me, either with comp tickets, or stuff to give away, or even a tiny bit of promotion, thank you all.

To all the acts I’ve seen, thank you for making me laugh.

It is safe to say that you might not see me at the classic for a couple of weeks, while I comedy-detox, but I look forward to jumping back on this bandwagon next year. Whether or not it’s to the same extent, I don’t know. I have a feeling I’m going to need some help next year. So if you’re interested in comedy blogging, let me know.

To all the readers and subscribers, thanks for your support. I hope you liked what you got. If you didn’t, let me know what I can improve on.

Now I suppose all that’s left to say is that it’s time to start bidding on the #PosterForCharity - You know you want to! http://drake.net.nz/LrNzbP

20th May 2012

(@NZComedyFest) A Pre-Culmination Note of Love

All,

First of all, thank you to everyone who has supported my goal of the last 23 days. It’s been an awesome ride, and I plan to do a lot of shoutouts in my wrap up blog. Which I do hope will be syndicated on the Comedy Festival website.

Tonight was awesome. I had a blast. Tears pouring down my face, my sides hurt, it was an awesome late show.

I know I’m about 6 blogs behind in reviews. In all honesty, I’ve hit the wall. They will come, in a few days, once I’m winding down.

I’m fifty three shows in. Fifty four is tomorrow night. It’s the big one: The night we find out who’s won the Billy T Award, the night we find out who’s won the Fred Award, and many other rightful acknowledgements will happen.

I’ve met and chatted with all of the nominees for the Billy this year, some formally, some informally. You’re all awesome in your own rights. And only two people know who I’m hedging my bets on, but it’s very tight.

The Fred Nominees are all wonderful people. Two of whom I’ve interviewed, one of whom it’s very difficult to interview because HE HAS TAPE ON HIS FACE!

Good luck to everyone up for an award tomorrow.

Tonight I hang up my festival shirts I’ve been rocking on high-rotation for the last three and a half weeks. (Don’t worry, they’ve been washed every night, and I’ve had two on rotation). Tomorrow I crack out the business shirt I should have worn to the Gala, if for nothing more than to show respect to the people who have worked so damn hard to get where they are on the night.

I’m going to go have a shower, and try and catch up on some sleep.

May you all laugh until your sides hurt, and your eyes are red from tears.

Yvan

Clayton Carrick-Leslie’s Written about what he knows…

Clayton Carrick-Leslie has long since been one of my favourite kiwi comedians. In a court of law one might call that Bias, but I call it “Recognising great talent”. This is the third festival show I’ve seen of Clayton’s and once again I was not disappointed.

Clayton’s sense of humour takes the audience on a long satirical ride of impressions, observations, detective work, and the search for love. His one liners draw great laughs from the crowd, and if one fails, he always has a quick call-back to bring the audience back on-side.

Reusing only the tiniest piece of material from last year’s show, this show of mostly-new material had me in laughter from situations that are all too real - so real it hurt. His observations of the general psyche of both the male, and female mindsets can be quite thought provoking about the motives behind the actions of those who you love most, and it was brilliant.

Clayton Carrick Leslie’s show is running until Saturday at the loft at Q, and is a highly recommended see.

I want an Encore to Vance Fontaine’s career!

I went into this show, honestly not knowing what to expect. I was greeted by a Four Piece band and one of the most impressive beards I’ve ever seen on a drummer (how he didn’t get his brushes caught, I’m not sure).

This show shows the completely improvised career of Vance Fontaine. A kiwi legend who’s done all sorts of interesting things in my life. Some of the things that appeared in the show I saw were:

Songs about love lost with Hungarian Dancers
Improvised trip-hop songs
Singing about working as the sixth spice-girl
Working in a sex hotel, as a cleaner from a reputable Auckland Carpet Cleaning Company
Being Responsible for NZ Band Tadpole
and a gigantic medley.

It’s clear that Greg Ellis is not someone who shies away from a good challenge. And I like that. It’s well worth taking the time to see this show, even if it’s with the intention of trying to trip up a band who could quite easily become NZ’s Next top Party Band.

I’m going to give them a respectable rating of four well-impressive sets of sideburns.

Private Dick - An Improvised Film Noir Mystery

It’s really hard to review and rate an improvised show, I’ve come to realise during this festival. But what I have realised is I very much like improv, and virtually anything put on by the Covert Improv group and produced by the delightful Wade Jackson is generally brilliant, because the Covert Improv group are well conditioned to go for anything put in front of them.

The premise of this show folllows around a Private Detective (Dick) while he goes looking for something determined by the audience. It’s clear to see the cast are having fun, especially when they try to throw each other off with some of the most obscure references, or lines with some of the seediest double-entendres known to man.

It was a fantastic show, and a great laugh, as every production I’ve seen by this troupe has been. The only tip I will give potential audience members, is to avoid sitting by the right hand side of the seating, too near the live music. Sure, it’s a nice touch, but I found it was a little towards the “excessively loud” range, and meant I only caught about half of the dialogue.

Dumped - A Five Star Performance

Of a Tuesday Night, I wouldn’t normally be found in a theatre waiting to see a play. This kind of stage amusement is something new to me, outside of the requisite school productions (I was only ever in one, and I proudly played a tomato - where’s my role on Go Girls?), and the couple of Ballets I saw performed because my cousin was it it.

I honestly didn’t know what to expect, maybe a couple of comedians on stage throwing some punchlines around, and everyone claps and laughs. But I was genuinely surprised with the level of performance I saw.

Rose Matafeo - Scout’s Honour (@Rose_Matafeo)

Rose Matafeo’s show started off with a twist I’ve not seen before. I’ve never seen a performer of a comedy show on stage as the audience comes in (unless the audience is late, of course). I even got a cute badge with an adorable kitty!