Outgoing festival boss Susan Provan on elevating comedy to an art form
Crude Comedy, Class Clowns and Deadly Funny: “No NIDA [National Institute of Dramatic Art] or VCA [Victorian College of the Arts] or WAAPA [Western Australian Academy of Performing Arts] for comedy. It’s a bit like commercial music and you have to work for free for years to build an audience. “It’s a challenging road, and I like to think that our programs and the Comedy Festival environment help make that journey easier.”
Leader of the Comedy Festival: “Comedy is a very subjective subject, so you have to have a big program to suit all tastes. And you have to be prepared to wake up at 3 in the morning in terror because we rely heavily on the box office. [sales]; As anyone who works in the entertainment industry knows, this is not like selling toilet paper. “You feel like you’re jumping off a cliff every day, but that’s also one of the most enjoyable and exciting parts of the job.”
Attending comedy shows: “I really try to stay inconspicuous because you don’t want to stall the artists. I always wear comfortable clothes because you’re literally running from show to show.”
The difference between good and bad comedy critics: “A reviewer who’s seen a lot of comedy has better context; even if you don’t agree with them, it’s easier to police because that’s just the subjectivity of comedy. You can tell whether someone is writing from the perspective of having watched hundreds of comedy shows, or whether someone is writing from the perspective of having watched hundreds of comedy shows, or whether someone is writing their first review after being dragged out of gardening because which magazine doesn’t have enough critics.”
Technological change: “When I started we didn’t have email or a website and we certainly didn’t have social media. We had a huge box office with queues out the door. Now social media and online advertising is the thing; it’s much easier and cheaper to reach global audiences but it also means the competition has expanded massively.”
Online viral comedians: “There are a lot of funny and fantastic online artists, but there are also a lot of YouTubers and TikTokers who have built large audiences just by doing it a minute. [of material] on TikTok – but they don’t have what it takes if you put them in front of a live audience. To be a really good live performer you have to work in front of an audience and that doesn’t change.”
Comedy as an art form: “A lot of people think comedians just get on stage and make it up on the spot. It’s taken a long time for comedy to be recognized as an art form, and it’s something I’ve worked hard on. But Australia is ahead of the pack; the British comedy community is currently running a campaign to get comedy recognized as an art form, so comedians can get some funding from the government.”
Future: “I’m looking forward to a long rest, but I’ll still be involved. It’ll take me about a year to organize all the archives. This is one of my special projects; there’s years of programs, files, posters, press clippings, digital stuff, films, color transparencies and bromides – remember those? There’s an absolute treasure trove of things we want to sort through, so we can entrust them to people who might actually be interested, because it’s an important part of the history of our state.”
