Tag: Comedy
[COMEDY: Interview] Jeff Dunham
For a comedian, the ability to deal with hecklers is a vital skill. Effective engagement with the more belligerent elements of your crowd can make the difference between walking off-stage with your head held high or slinking off in shame; depending on the circumstances, it’s been known to make or break careers. In this respect, stand-up comic and ventriloquist Jeff Dunham finds himself in a somewhat unique position: when audience members get a head full of steam, it’s often the puppet, not Dunham himself, who takes the heat.
Posted: July 24th, 2012 under Arts, Arts - Interview.
Tags: Alasdair Duncan, Comedy, Jeff Dunham, Jeff Dunham's Controlled Chaos Tour, Sydney Entertainment Centre
[COMEDY: Interview] Ron White
on White, the cigar-smoking, scotch-drinking Texan with a rough voice and a rougher sense of humour, has worked his way to the top of the comedy food chain, a long way away from where he started 26 years ago. “At one point I was doing a lot of work for one chain of comedy clubs, and they realised I didn’t have anywhere else to work, so they decided to cut my pay by a third and take away my airfare,” he recalls. “So basically I told them to go eat a steaming bowl of fuck.”
White promptly moved to Mexico with his then-girlfriend, and opened a pottery mosaic factory. “But then this thing called the Blue Collar Comedy Tour happened, which is what made me really popular, and they couldn’t tolerate me living in Mexico. So they said, ‘You have to move back to the US if you want to do this.’”
Posted: June 5th, 2012 under Arts, Arts - Interview, Arts Feature, Brag 465 (June 4), Live Comedy Reviews.
Tags: Arts, Arts Feature, Brag, Comedy, interview, Live Review, Metro Theatre, Moral Compass Tour, Ron White, Roslyn Helper
[COMEDY: Review] Theatresports
For many of us, doing theatresports for drama class was sort of a high-school rite of passage; but the Theatresports National Championships takes that classroom experience to a whole, manic new level – a boisterous night when the best improv comedians from around the country come together to battle it out in teams. “We have group of incredibly experienced players,” MC (and former contestant-slash-champion) Rebecca De Unamuno tells me. “They make it seem effortless when it’s actually really pretty tricky to do well. It’s great to watch them play – the level of characterisation and the level of storytelling is incredible.”
Posted: May 23rd, 2012 under Arts, Brag 462 (May 14), Live Comedy Reviews.
Tags: Alasdair Duncan, Comedy, The Enmore Theatre, The Theatresports National Championships, Theatresports
SXSW 2012: Day Three (mostly comedy)
After a series of extremely entertaining interviews with Joss Whedon, Drew Goddard, and the cast of The Cabin In The Woods (BRAG will be publishing a feature in good time), Sunday in Austin was spent mostly in lines before capacity would be cut off right in front of us. Apparently we’d been lucky until now; most people spend the first few days of their first SXSW in this horrific state of wait before they learn you have to get to everything at least half an hour early…
Posted: March 13th, 2012 under SXSW 2012.
Tags: balls, Comedy, Comedy Bang Bang, Eric Wareheim, James Admonian, Jeffrey Tambor, Marc Maron, podcasts, Reggie Watts, Scott Aukerman, Seth Morris, SXSW 2012, SXSW Comedy, WTF?