How Many Stephen Colberts Are There?
Posted on 7 January 2012 | No responses
Fascinating New York Times article about Stephen Colbert, his development as a comedian, and how The Colbert Report came into being and functions.
By now Colbert and his staff, which numbers about 80, have the show down to something like a science. They call it the “joy machine,” with equal emphasis on the fun and the mechanics, and the engine runs practically nonstop, at very high r.p.m.’s. By 11 every morning, a rough plan for that day’s show is established and the writers — all of them brainy and most in their 30s — are sent off, usually in pairs, to come back with finished scripts in just a couple of hours. Editing and polishing goes on all day, and sometimes continues even after the taping is done, around 9 or so.
“How Many Stephen Colberts Are There?” by CHARLES McGRATH
Quotes: Ruth Buzzi
Posted on 6 January 2012 | No responses
Life has all sorts of hills and valleys, and sometimes you don’t end up doing what you had your heart set out on, but sometimes that’s even better!
—Ruth Buzzi, comedian, actor
Funding a Comedy Show
Part 1: State & Federal Funding
Posted on 3 January 2012 | 1 response
Perhaps one of the most difficult things a new comedian has to face is funding their first shows. If you are planning on having a show in the Melbourne Fringe Festival, you would do well to have at least $2000 to spend on participation fee, room booking, equipment, and marketing. If you plan on having a show in the Melbourne International Comedy Festival you must have at least $5000 to get yourself off the ground.
Going to smaller festivals and making a name for yourself is a good way to potentially garner a financial producer who will back your entry into the Melbourne Comedy Festival. Before that point you will have to find the money yourself.
I will be publishing a series of articles about the different ways in which you can put together the money you need to produce a show. Financial sources include:
- State and/or Federal Funding
- Private Granting Institutions and Sponsorships
- Crowdfunding
- Personal Fundraising
- Savings Programs and Loans
I would strongly recommend using several of these sources for any show. Rarely do you get sufficient funds from a single funding body to make it realistic to put all your eggs in that basket. I have to admit I have used most of these sources, not all. For some I am as eager as you to learn more, hence doing the research and writing these articles. Please let everyone know of your experiences and understandings of these bodies in the comments. We can learn from one another.
State Funding
Artists within each state of Australia have access to both state and federal grants. You may not be Leonardo da Vinci or Dame Joan Sutherland, but to get money from these sources you need to accept the title of comedy artist. I am not familiar with the funding bodies in states other than Victoria, but I’m pretty sure the funding dynamic is similar, if not the same. So, I will be writing from a Victorian perspective.
State funding is a notoriously slow process. In my state each funding category has only two application dates a year. If your application is successful, you will then have to wait for a number of months before the money arrives. So, if you decide in October you are going to run a show at the comedy festival, you will have missed the August application for funding in January. If you were then to try the February application date, you wouldn’t receive funding until July…too late for the April festival. Careful advance planning is a necessity.
Certain aspects of state funding seem to be easier for comedians than others. First you are asked to have at least three years of experience doing the thing for which you are asking funding. This seems like putting the cart before the horse, but there may be ways around this. If you are willing to volunteer on other people’s shows, such as being one of a group of comedians performing at a festival or event and continue to do so for three years, you will have the experience without needing a bazillion dollars up front. In fact being a part of an ensemble makes you attractive to funding bodies who want to effectively support a variety of artists.
Project grants seem a little out of reach for comedy. Checking through Arts Victoria funding records, not many comedies have achieved a funding award. My experience of arts bodies is that they want material that embodies a sense of significance, timeliness, and timelessness, and are often interested in the socially, politically, and aesthetically challenging. Now comedy can achieve all these things, but most comedians don’t think in those terms and so may not be representing themselves well. This year Tom Cho received funding to write this book: The Meaning of Life and Other Fictions, a collection of short stories that blend critical enquiry and comedy to explore the meaning of life. Can you see how he presented his comedy in a way that would feel appealing to the arts board?
Touring grants are where comedians excel. Touring is essential to comedians building up their audiences and establishing a career. Comedy tours are also well received by people outside of cities and in other countries. It may also be where we feel confident enough to ask in the right way, such that Arts Victoria more regularly gives the nod. Comedians who have recently received funding include Stephen Teakle, famous for his Barry Morgan’s World of Organs show, for touring within Victoria and Clare Bartholomew for touring Die Roten Punkte within Canada.
Federal Funding
Federal funding also accepts submissions only twice a year. Please note: Australia Council for the Arts is usually more focussed on large arts organisations with a few exceptions.
One improvement over the states is they do have funding for first time artists through ArtStart. This was created specifically for people who have recently completed an arts degree. Other available emerging artist funds include JUMP which provides funding for mentorship and development. If you are an established comedian, you might want to apply for a Creative Australia Fellowship. Australia Council also have a number of touring grants.
If your comedy show has a national vision, do spend some time crawling through the Australia Council’s grants search page and see what might suit you.
For both state and federal funding once you are past your early adult years, government support becomes thin for emerging artists. This is a problem for comedians, and in particular female comedians who have traditionally not started their careers until after their children reach a certain age. This is an area we should probably address as comedians. To represent ourselves to government and take care of other pressing concerns, we desperately need to form a support organisation or union. Email me if this interests you.
I’m as interested as anyone to know about people’s experience in achieving funding. So, I look forward to people chiming in with their stories.
Peace and kindness,
Katherine
Scientists Tickle Animals
Posted on 31 December 2011 | No responses
This is just awesome!
Thought it was just humans that are ticklish? Think again – scientists are studying how animals respond to being tickled in a bid to shed light on how laughter evolved.
BBC NEWS: Scientists Tickle Animals to Find Laughter Clues
Using Your Power for Good: Super Comedian
Posted on 27 December 2011 | No responses
Comedy is a remarkably powerful tool for influencing public opinion. It can be used to raise people’s awareness; it can also be used to mock and belittle the disempowered. As they say in comic books: with great power comes great responsibility.
Those who have been bullied in their childhood do not always recognise that in their efforts to gain “justice”, they are merely putting the shoe on the other foot and become bullies themselves. Anyone in any sort of power who abuses that position by stripping another intellectually, emotionally, culturally, or physically of their humanity is a bully.
Someone bigger and stronger who pins someone smaller and weaker against a wall, putting them in physical distress, is a bully. Someone who holds high position within cultural mainstream, who then emotionally belittles someone who is vulnerable and not part of the mainstream, is a bully. Someone who has had benefit of an expensive education, who then mocks the sincere beliefs of those with less access to an education, is a bully. It is all right to disagree with another. Anytime someone invalidates another, we are entering into abuse.
For some reason of late comedy has been lauded when it is “dark and edgy” and “politically incorrect”. This quote from an article about the downward slide of Saturday Night Live reflects some of my concern about this material.
Disdain for “political correctness” is often positioned as a concern that some important truth is not being spoken for fear of offending someone. But that concern is nothing but smoke and mirrors. To invoke “political correctness” is really to be concerned about loss of power and privilege. It is about disappointment that some “ism” that was ingrained in our society, so much that citizens of privilege could express the bias through word and deed without fear of reprisal, has been shaken loose. Charging “political correctness” generally means this: “I am comfortable with my privilege. I don’t want to have to question it. I don’t want to have to think before I speak or act. I certainly don’t wish to inconvenience myself for the comfort of lesser people (whoever those people may be–women, people of color, people with disabilities, etc.)”
—What Tami Said: Conservatives, “political correctness” and the incredibly offensive unfunniness of “Saturday Night Live”
I highly recommend reading the entire article. I believe at least a few comedians are good-hearted enough that with a little self-awareness, they may move away from their less savoury material.
Here is another quote worth considering by art historian Kenneth Clark.
We can destroy ourselves by cynicism and disillusion, just as effectively as by bombs
—Kenneth Clark
Our culture is currently falling to bits. We are seeing more and more world financial crises. We are also facing more and greater natural disasters brought on by our own production of carbon emissions. These situations may seem to justify a position of cynicism and disillusion, but that creates apathy and self-fulfilling prophecies.
What we need is not a natural optimism, but a hard-won optimism. An optimism that says, “I know things are hard, but I WILL make things better. I WILL do what it takes to ensure the future is bright. And I have faith that I can.” Comedy is good at this sort of message. We aren’t looking for sugar-coated aphorisms that are clearly hollow. We want a genuine realism which accepts that with a public will and responsibility, we can make things better. Mohandas Ghandi and Martin Luther King Jr lived that sort of realism.
Use your power for good, people.
Peace and kindness,
Katherine
Quotes: Robert Florence
Posted on 19 December 2011 | No responses
I’m a professional comedy writer, and have been since I was 19 years old. At the moment I have a sketch show on the BBC here in the UK, and I’ve been writing the third series all year. For a sketch show, you need to burn through thousands of ideas to find hundreds of good ones, from which you hope to find maybe a hundred great sketches, from which only half will actually be great because you’re a fucking idiot. I need ideas. If I have no ideas, I can’t write sketches. I need ideas for characters, and ideas for funny situations and ideas for jokes. Ideas are important to me.
from Cardboard Children: The Dragon & George
—Robert Florence, tv presenter, comedian and writer
Comedy and Humility
Posted on 14 December 2011 | No responses
I have three degrees in creative writing. I have run several writers groups. I have been a raving artist since the day I was born. More than that I crave being a good artist. Certainly I want to be successful, but of even higher priority is respecting my abilities and respecting my creations enough to want them to be the best they can possibly be.
One of the most important skills you can develop, if you are committed to your work, is humility.
Personal humility is not the same as a willingness to be bullied or humiliated. It’s about emotional maturity and a supple ego. Someone with an immature and bloated ego will be unable to listen to advice that might help move their work to a professional level.
As comedians humility is an absolute necessity when facing an unappreciative audience. If your routine dies and/or people are heckling you, it is much more prudent for your career to maintain a level of graciousness. The instant you get angry with your audience and tell them so, you lose your audience, and are unlikely to ever win them back.
Here are some of the characteristics of humility.
* You are willing to accept your limitations.
If you are still unsure of your microphone technique, be willing to admit this so you can receive some help. If your spelling isn’t all it should be, don’t sweat it when someone points this out on your press release, and be open to finding a friend who can do some copyediting for you.
* You are willing to accept you may be mistaken or wrong.
You turn up at a gig thirty minutes late, because you are sure the venue owner told you your set started at 9pm not 8:30pm. The owner is furious with you. Instead of defending yourself, you apologise and admit that you must have misheard the time, then make an offer of appeasement such as helping with the clean-up at the end of the night. Now, you may have heard rightly, but memory, particularly short-term memory, is a tricky thing. Better to err on the side of humility and graciousness. It improves your reputation.
* You are willing to change your mind, if something else seems more right or true.
Don’t change your mind on those things you feel are good and true. However, don’t be so attached to them that with new information, you aren’t prepared to accept something else as better reflecting reality.
When I was a child I was fully into Creationism, because that’s what my family said was real. They said scientists were out to trick us into falling from the one-true path. One of the first required university courses I took was evolutionary biology. The lecturer was a kind man who was fascinated by plants. He was genuinely respectful of my religious stance, even though he was an admitted atheist. I could have listened to my ego and not seen the beauties of nature he was revealing, because that would mean I had been wrong for many years. Alternatively, I could shift my outlook to what seemed more true, even if it felt uncomfortable for awhile. I learned to not mind uncomfortable transitions. This was made possble due to that lecturer’s respect.
* You are willing to accept that someone else, regardless of status, could be more right than you.
I have to admit that I get annoyed with the advice of know-nothing know-it-alls who seem to think they are imparting the greatest of wisdom on my art when they have spent no time whatsoever in learning and/or practising that art. Watching television sitcoms evidently gives them a license to lecture. However, if the majority of your audience is not responding to certain aspects of your routine and they are all saying the same thing, such as you need to slow down your pacing…then you should probably slow down your pacing.
* You are comfortable with allowing varying views on the truth.
This takes us back to accepting limitations. I don’t know all there is to know about life, the universe, and everything…I could be wrong. I am also aware of the times I thought I knew the truth, then changed my mind, then changed my mind again (not that I’m always changing my mind). As such, who am I to judge someone else’s view on truth? They may be more right than I am. With a little time and experience they may even change their minds as well. Life is a process, and we and our understanding are also processes.
Living with uncertainty is a frightening thing for many people. They want to know that there’s a place for everything with everything in its place. That will never happen. Laughter is one of the best ways to help people find the resilience to allow for an ambiguous universe. Comedians play with the absurdity of life all the time. Sometimes two apparently opposing views are both true: light is both a wave and a particle. Tolerance makes dialogue possible. Dialogue makes greater understanding possible.
* You are willing to accept that you are not necessarily better or worse than anyone or everyone else.
We ARE all unique, but often we want to be absolutely and incontrovertibly unique. I am THE funniest person in Australia. I am THE most miserable person on Earth. No one else even comes near to my joy or sorrow. Yes, it’s ego, but I think we all slip into “three-year-old centre of the universe” mode upon occasion and feel those ways.
Humility makes it possible for us to say, “I may not be the biggest, smallest, goodest, baddest at anything, but that’s okay. I’m all I need to be and I’m happy.” All we ever need do is our best and leave it at that without comparison. Beginning comedians can kill their own careers with self-doubt, if they don’t learn this form of humility straight-away.
* You think neither more nor less of yourself based on other people’s assessments of you.
Styles change, public opinion changes, different people like different things. You will never be able to please everyone all the time. Relying on external validation for your self-esteem is a fool’s game. When someone compliments you, you accept that compliment with good grace and say “thank you.” It is a gift that deserves respect. When someone offers you their criticism say, “thank you.” It may have been offered in good faith, and deserves respect even if you don’t agree. If it wasn’t offered in a helpful fashion, say thank you anyway. Everyone is allowed an opinion. Sometimes it will be an opinion of you. You cannot stop that from happening. Like facing a stony audience, your graciousness in deflecting a negative comment will simply improve your reputation.
Now none of these aspects of humility are easy to enact in our daily lives. This is why I call humility a skill. They are well worth cultivating as a way to lubricate our social interactions, grow, and become better comedians.
Peace and kindness,
Katherine
Human Rights Day Quote: Jim Wright
Posted on 11 December 2011 | No responses
I’m an enthusiastic advocate for civil rights. I’m a passionate and unrelenting advocate for human rights, regardless of race, creed, color, sex, age, origin, station in life, or any of the other bullshit categories people use to exclude others from full participation in our society…Give me one good reason why anybody should be made to hate themselves. Give me one good reason why one person should be able to define another. That’s what bullies do, you know, define others. Put them in a box. Limit who they can be. Force them into categories: Fatty, Fag, Geek, Nerd, Retard, Stupid, Ugly, Loser. Bullies make their victims hate themselves. Well, I won’t stand for it. The single most fundamental of all human rights is the right to define yourself.
—Jim Wright, retired US Navy Chief Warrant Officer, blogger
One-liners: Daffy Duck
Posted on 9 December 2011 | No responses
This dressing room is so small I have to step outside to change my mind!
—Daffy Duck
NICA: Circus Showcase 2011
Posted on 5 December 2011 | No responses
Melbourne is fortunate enough to have one of the most interesting of resources: The National Institute of Circus Arts (NICA). I was aware of its founding in 1995. At the time I mentored for Big Brothers Big Sisters and kept encouraging my little mentoree to run away and join them. Since I’m keen to learn more about physical comedy and I love acrobatic circus, I was overjoyed at the chance to see NICA’s Circus Showcase 2011. This featured the year’s graduating students. I wasn’t disappointed.
I attended the matinee. So, I was surrounded by school-age children. Kids can be the acid test as to whether a show is working, since they only respond when something genuinely interests them. Clearly much of the show emphasized an adult aesthetic. They used balletic choreography, stylised storytelling, artistic costuming, and atmospheric lighting. However, they did not lose their young viewers. They just added to the “cool” factor as each performer demonstrated their physical prowess. This is the basis for Cirque de Soleil‘s success: it engages people of all ages.
I was pleased these graduates were taught that circus is not just physical demonstration. We aren’t watching the Olympics. Circus is all about performance. Therefore, most show segments set up a dramatic situation which contextualised their physical activities. One example was Emma Shepherd’s vignette about escaping a war-zone, and therefore needing to twist and turn and balance on a suspended net. Mind you, even simple hoop acts or juggling were made dramatic by “accidentally” missing a jump or dropping a ball at the beginning. So when the performer is about to attempt a more virtuosic stunt, the audience feels tension as to whether or not they can succeed—and feel elated when they do.
Particularly shrewd was how a number of the graduates made use of character projection. When a performer projects a particular character, the audience relates to them as a human being, not just a moving body. Their character may be stereotypical, but they are recognisable and the audience makes an empathetic connection. When Vanessa McGregor pours on the lighthearted allure in her burlesque trapeze act, the last thing you want to see is her falling. So every success in her series of moves is our success.
Character projection is even more important for those graduates who were studying clowning. These are the people who get to fall down. If you don’t care about them, then you will be unconcerned when they fall, and not see the humour when they bounce back up. Reuben Zalme did a superb job of illustrating character in his mime act. Struggling with his wayward puppet-hand, we were delighted by the story that unfolded and what it said about his (and his hand’s) persona. The kids rightfully went nuts for Staniforth Ricketson’s Tarzan act. Tosha Tharp-Kindley could explore this area further. She has a beautifully expressive face and would make an outstanding comedian.
The one notable omission in this show was audience participation. You can have a sexy, thrilling, deeply aesthetic show and still find moments where you actively engage your audience. CircusOz are experts at this. Certainly, talking to and guiding your audience is not an easy skill, but it is a common part of many circus acts and these graduates are going to have to use it at some point in their career.
So many of the cast in Circus Showcase 2011 showed talent and promise that I will probably get into trouble for not mentioning everyone. Takayuki Seki was exceptionally attention grabbing with his juggling ninja act. His grand fall at the beginning was breathtaking. Julian White, Brian Talaga, and Jennifer Simon all ooze charm. Jessica Niven’s swinging trapeze act was the perfect attention grabber for bringing the children into the show. In all we saw seventeen performers showcased whose skills were polished to a fine professional gloss. It’s no wonder we’ve been seeing an explosion of circus in Melbourne. Congratulations graduates!
Peace and kindness,
Katherine