“So why are you in Perth?” asked the little old lady manning the info booth at the airport. I explained I’ve come to do a show in the Wild West Comedy Festival. “Oh yes, I’ve heard all about that!” she replied. I was a bit sceptical, but she surprised me by rattling off details about local comedians and the dates of the gala. Wow, that’s a good sign; If this senior cit knows about the festival then the organisers have certainly done a lot of promotion (or she’s an unusually hip and with it octogenarian). “Enjoy the festival! You’ll have fun!” she shouted as I got on the airport shuttle bus. “Hmmn, we’ll see…” I thought.
Now in it’s third year, the Wild West Comedy Festival takes places across the end of May and boasts a hand picked array of shows from local, national and international acts. I’d come over to W.A. mainly to check out Perth’s comedy scene, which I’d heard was booming, and perform a small show in the festival. My plan was to do a festival show in an early evening timeslot, then do spots at clubs around town. I’d heard that the festival was quite small, and in its’ first two years had had a few teething problems, so I wasn’t sure what to expect.
I realised I should have had more faith in the festival’s organisers when I did a spot in the festival’s opening gala. I was expecting the gala to be in a theatre to a crowd of maybe a couple of hundred. It turned out it was actually at the Astor Theatre, a huge venue, and the crowd was over a thousand strong. I was impressed. Some of the acts performing that night I’d worked with/seen in Melbourne or Sydney so I was confident that with acts like John Robertson, Joel Creasy, Felicity Ward, Zack Adams, Justin Lodge and Mark Williamson on the bill, it’d be a pretty good show. However I was surprised at how high the standard was, especially the local acts I’d never seen before. Standouts included the hilarious emcee Werzel (“King of Perth Comedy”) who stepped in at the last minute to host after UK act Jason Cook fell ill, Jimmy James Eaton doing a bit on rapping babies, teen duo Pargin & Wilkie being funny beyond their years,Ben Sutton’s musings on drugs, Michael Workman explaining the difference between Goths and Emos, and Laura Davis’s tale of eating three pineapples.
The talk of this year’s Festival was comedian John Robertson who seemed to be everywhere. Not only was he performing his own solo show (A Nifty History of Evil), appearing in a play (How Satan Got His Groove Back), and staging a puppet show for kids (John Robertson’s Super Surprising Puppet Show Of Awesomeness), he was also doing guest spots in other comedians’ shows (including mine), killer spots in the gala and late night festival club, and even voiced the festival’s commercial. All through the festival I kept bumping into him as he ran from one gig to another. Hopefully after the festival he’ll get some sleep.
The day after the Gala I went to my venue to set up for my own show. I didn’t know what to expect, but was pleasantly surprised. The venue I’d been given was called “The Brass Monkey” and was a hotel in a suburb of central Perth called Northbridge. It sat around seventy people and had excellent sound and light equipment. There was a bar in one corner of the room so punters didn’t have to leave to get a drink, and a nice backstage/green room area had been set up to wait in before the show. Along with hiring the room I got staff to help run the show, each night I was aided by a tech, a venue manager, and a doorperson. After doing several shows where I’ve had to do these jobs myself, it was a real treat to be able to just focus on doing the show for a change. All up the venue was great, the only small complaint I could make would be that there was a lot of noise/music drifting up through the floor from the pub below. This wasn’t a huge problem, but did distract a bit from the quieter moments of the show.
Although the Brass Monkey is home to the Laugh Resort (one of Perth’s regular comedy venues) this was the first time it had been used as a venue in the Wild West Comedy Festival. Apparently the first two festivals had been held in Subiaco, but this year the festival had been moved to Northbridge. This move was explained to me as like moving the festival from rich/boring Toorak to funky/arty Fitzroy. Not having been at the first two festivals I can’t say what sort of difference this made, but local comedians seemed to think it helped ticket sales immensely. I did hear that the Festival lost a good deal of sponsorship by moving the festival out of Subiaco, but they did anyway because local comedians thought a suburb closer to the CBD would help them sell their shows. If that’s true I think it speaks very well of the festival management as it shows they’d put the interests of the comedians first.
This really positive and supportive attitude marked all my dealings with the Wild West festival management team. They were always asking how they could help with the show, or making suggestions for improvement. I regularly received the emails the festival publicist sent out to all the acts letting them know about publicity opportunities, contacts for local media, advice on attracting reviewers, etc. etc. Whenever I sent through an email with some questions, they always responded quickly with helpful answers. They really seemed genuinely supportive of everyone in the festival, from local up and comers to international headline acts.
I performed my show over four nights from the 20th to the 23rd of May. Some nights were better than others (in particular opening night suffered from a few glitches). Ticket sales were good but not amazing, the show being a bit over half full on Friday and Saturday, a little under half full on Thursday and Sunday’s shows. Reviews were really good, and I got a good deal of coverage in local media. All up I’d count the season as moderately successful. I do believe a large part of the success was due to the support I received from comedy festival organisers, as, being from interstate, I didn’t have the same networks and contacts many local comedians had.
Outside of my own show I had fun performing at the late night Festival Club and doing gigs at Perth’s many excellent comedy rooms. Places like Shapiro Tuesdays, Lazy Susan’s, Little Creatures and the Comedy Lounge all ran through the festival and got great crowds which were really fun to play to. The Festival Club was the scene of much wackiness, where comedians did stuff they wouldn’t normally do in front of a packed house of comedy fans. My favourite night was when Tim Fergusson took over the club and turned it into a Letterman style talk show. Tim interview comedians such as Felicity Ward and Sam Longley, and even asked me to be Paul Shaffer for a night and provide intro music with my harmonica.
All up the Wild West Comedy Festival was a really good experience. It was a fairly small festival, but the hard work and spirit of supportive camaraderie shown by the performers and festival management made it a great event to be a part of. When I walked back through the airport at the end of my time at the festival, tired after too much festival club fun, smelly from sleeping in a dingy backpackers hostel, and queasy from eating too much takeaway, I walked past the info stand and saw the same little old lady I’d met before. “Hey, you were right!” I called out, “I did have fun!”