Banter from the 'burbs
Rosalie Higson
March 18, 2005
WHEN times are tough, the public wants to laugh. In that case, nervous home buyers should head south for the annual Melbourne International Comedy Festival.
Funny buggers can spring up anywhere. The polyester legend, Bob Downe, comes from Newcastle, droll Corinne Grant from Corryong, and young Rebel Wilson from Sydney's Hills district - not quite as exotic as Richard Pryor who grew up in a brothel, but they're what we've got and we'll have to make do.
Downe, Grant and Wilson are just three of almost 200 comics from around the world who will appear in Melbourne over four weeks. Is the city ready for such heavyweights as Steven Wright and Rich Hall, old favourites such as Downe, Wil Anderson and Sue-Ann Post, and a rash of newcomers? Festival director and comedy wrangler Susan Provan says audiences flock to the city for the silly season, ready and willing to pay good money to laugh until they snort beer out of their nose.
"It's developed over the years as the smart place for comics, writers and festival directors and scouts from TV, radio and advertising to come and see what is the current state of the world of comedy," she says.
Word of mouth is the festival's most important marketing tool, Provan says, and word is out on young Rebel Wilson. She's just landed a part as a goth girl rescued by Nicolas Cage in Ghost Rider, which is filming in Melbourne now, and there are rumours of a new TV show in the offing.
At 24, Wilson has finally made the break from the outer suburbs to the city and is ensconced in a tiny apartment in Newtown, in Sydney's inner west. She's given up her job at the Castle Hill Greater Union multiplex, where she had the surreal experience of selling tickets to her own movie (Fat Pizza) and seeing herself on screen while sweeping up popcorn. "People would go, 'Hey you were in that movie?' It was embarrassing. I was famous but not rich."
For her character-based live work, the softly spoken Wilson taps into her own life and adventures, whether in the suburbs - the heartland of Australia, she says fondly - or further afield. Her first shows, The Westie Monologues and Spunks, skewered life in the 'burbs, but Wilson says she's laughing with, not at, her fellow westies. "They're just as intelligent and classy as anyone, just in a different way," she says. Her other role, as Greek goddess and nunchaku expert Toula on the SBS comedy Pizza, has given her a legion of fans.
The Wilson bio goes like this. A quiet, brainy, unassuming girl turns 14, comes out of her shell and begins cracking jokes in class, locking teachers in cupboards and generally causing mayhem at school. Naturally enough, she becomes very popular - and she still comes top in maths. At 19, she decides to become an actor and, in 2003, after studying at Australian Theatre for Young People, goes to New York, courtesy of Our Nic.
"I got an international scholarship that Nicole Kidman initiated. You decide where you want to go to further your career, so I chose to go Second City television, which is where all the big comedy names in the US come out of - Jim Carrey, Mike Myers, all the Saturday Night Live players. It's a powerhouse. There's no real comedy schools in Australia. You try your hand at it and if you're good you keep going and if you're not ... die on stage and never come back."
After comedy school, Wilson landed her first serious job in television, as the feisty Toula. "It's guerilla television," she says. "We're always out on location. At the moment we're filming in Fairfield, and it's always 35C and we're in full-on tracksuits, and there's a hundred extras, from Bankstown and Liverpool. It's always chaos - someone's car is being broken into while we're filming. It's very spontaneous."
Her new show, Confessions of an Exchange Student, is based on her time in South Africa when she was 18. She lived on the outskirts of Johannesburg, in an Afrikaans enclave. "You would still think apartheid was going on. It was a very racist area. All the white people lived in big mansions, it was very violent. You had all the guns in the car, everyone has armed security. There's a lot of serious issues, so I needed a few years to digest the experience, in order to turn it into a comedy show."
She confesses to being slightly nervous about her first appearance in Melbourne and meeting her fellow comics there. "I've got some things in the show which are pretty offensive, pretty gross ... also, comedians are a weird breed of people, and there's not that many girls down there. Someone told me the statistic is one girl to 30 males at the festival. Maybe that just makes the girls a bit more special."
The Melbourne International Comedy Festival, next Wednesday to April 17.
. I'm sure it would look good
