Finding it’s birthplace on RRR radio in 2007, dedicated comedy braodcast Comedy Obscura continues on strong, featuring on both radio and podcast. Annette Slattery talks to the creative team behind Comedy Obscura Peter McAllister, Comedy Kate and Gerard McCulloch about it’s orgins and the state of comedy coverage in Australia.
Tell us about Comedy Obscura. How did it start?
Peter: Kate and I were talking one day about the lack of decent comedy on radio and with her training and background in comedy, my time at RRR on Radio Marinara, we decided it was time to fix it. As luck would have it, RRR was calling for submissions for shows to fill the Max Headroom spot – so we made a pitch for the show during the Comedy Festival in 2007. The station was fantastic in the support they gave us, and soon we were back for a summer fill. When the chance to podcast came along, so did Gerard, who added the depth that can only be provided be a seasoned comedy pro, and with have we never looked back. It is hard to believe that we have put over 50 shows to air or podcasts in that time.
Kate: Other art forms are well served with a plethora of newspaper, TV and radio coverage of newcomers and verterns sharing their back stories, secrets of their process and inspiration. Comedy seems just to get reviews and even these are concentrated around the MICF in mainstream media (with the GS being the significant exception!). We started Comedy Obscura with a mission to address this gap by promoting comedy all year round (comedy is for life not just festivals) and having pretensions to being “Inside the Comedians Studio”.
Gerard: I came on board last year, when I went to Triple R head honcho Mick James to say I thought comedy should be back on the RRR airwaves, and he pointed out that it already was. Awkward.
Is the title of special significance? Does it contain a particular meaning or reference?
Peter: The name sort of came from camera obscura, an early sort of camera whose modern application can produce a 360 degree room sized image of what is happening outside – that was sort of adapted to focus on a 360 degree view of comedy. The obscura bit was also intended to flag that the focus won’t be on the big names, but on the people who need the exposure – we wanted people to hear about the next big thing from RRR first. Or we might have been drunk….
You started the show on RRR. Does the move from radio to podcast affect the way you do the job? Does it allow you more liberties?
Peter: I find the podcast is a bit more restrictive – we can’t play copyrighted material so it can be harder to put context around a guest. Also, some guests are a bit reluctant to come to a prerecord for a podcast, because they are unsure what it will deliver to them in terms of bums on seats. But the two in tandem is great – the weekly on-air seasons complemented by the fortnightly podcast seems to give us the best of both worlds – but the defamation laws seem to apply equally to both media…
Kate: We started as a MICF 6 week special in the Max Headroom slot on RRR in 2007 and have done live summer fills and MICF specials since. The podcast came about in 2008 as a way to keep the show going when we weren’t live on RRR. When we are podcasting I miss being able to play material, we are restricted to interview content only.
Gerard: We still podcast through RRR, which has a growing slate of podcasts now (try Along For The Ride on local bike-riding, or Plonk on Australia’s wine scene). The copyright thing is a pain, though it only applies to material that has been commercially released. RRR is looking to help us record some of the stuff going on in local rooms – with performers’ permission, of course. It’s a great promotional opportunity. The advantage of the podcast is that, unlike a live radio show, people can listen to it whenever it suits them. And we’re not as restricted by the time constraints of radio, so if we’re enjoying a chat, we can stretch it out. Hopefully the listeners won’t reach for the ‘fast forward’ button.
Which have been your favourite interviews?
Peter: We have made a habit of telling people we don’t expect them to be funny in the interviews, rather we want to know what how it works for them – inside the actors studio style.
I guess the standouts for me were Denise Scott – hearing how she and director Alan Brough turned her cathartic life story into a standup show and Sean Chulburra, talking about how his dancing career moved to comedy because every day he saw the comedy theater at Parramatta, and every day he promised himself he would go in there.
Kate: My favourite interviews where one of our earliest and then the two on our last show.
We chatted with Tommy Dean in 2007 and the way he talked about structuring his act was fascinating. He visualises the show as a deck of cards with each “bit” a card. He’ll move from one to another in a different order most nights punctuated by improv as the whim takes him.
On our last show we interviewed Lawrence Mooney and he told us about how a negative review he received a few years ago really rocked his confidence and how he got his mojo back thanks to the support of the Melbourne comedy community culminating in winning this year’s “Piece of Wood” Award in the MCIF. I was really moved by his story. We followed Lawrence with Richard Watts who is, of course, a comedy judge and reviewer and he told us about the challengers of a small comedy community and delivering honest reviews. It was a fascinating counter point.
Gerard: I second all of the above, especially Lawrence Mooney’s, which every comic should listen to. Other favourites would have to include Rod Quantock, Hammo, and Dan Ilic the week the ‘Beaconsfield’ scandal engulfed him. I also like interviews that discuss wider issues beyond plugging a particular show, like Toby Sullivan on life as a Festival honcho and Michael Dalley on Melbourne’s comedy theatre scene, which is almost completely estranged from the stand-up scene.
How would you rate comedy coverage in Australia?
Kate: Underdeveloped. Comedy is just as an important art form as the better covered others. Comedy can not only give you a new way to look at the world, it can make a drink come out your nose.
Gerard: I long for a day when the Festival no longer has to align itself with one major daily to ensure coverage (and thereby be excluded by the other). In Edinburgh, newspapers compete according to who has more Festival reviews. I despair of Melbourne ever reaching that level of maturity. Outside of the Festival, mainstream coverage is almost non-existent. But the trick is to work with the system, to dance the publicists’ dance and appeal to the nation’s entertainment columnists, many of whose research extends to checking their email inboxes for press releases and invites. In that environment, local rooms are going to struggle to sell themselves, unless they make the most of it whenever they have a big-name headliner. But it’d be nice to be considered enough of an art form to have a reviewer along occasionally. Given the enormous profiles of the most popular comedians, it’s surprising the nurturing local scene doesn’t get more attention. New comedians just appear to spring, newborn and fully formed, onto a TV show.
It’s good that we have such a strong public radio culture, with shows that don’t have to worry about audience ratings and can poke into the alternative arts scene, and street press helps too. And online media, both podcasts and sites like the Squirrel, are the bright hope. For now, I fear we’re all preaching to the converted, but it only takes a few converts to recommend us, and we can start clawing our way into the public eye.
Listeners can subscribe to Comedy Obscura through a podcast search on iTunes, or at the Pocast website
Thanks to Peter, Kate and Gerard