2024 Billy T Award winner Lana Walters, and 2024 Fred Award winners Trygve Wakenshaw and Barnie Duncan. Photo / NZ Herald
2024 Billy T Award winner Lana Walters, and 2024 Fred Award winners Trygve Wakenshaw and Barnie Duncan. Photo / NZ Herald
Comedians Lana Walters, Trygve Wakenshaw and Barnie Duncan last night took home the biggest prizes in local comedy.
Walters won the prestigious Billy T Award, given to the best rising comedian, for her show Don’t Lick That, about her experiences raising her first child and their first overseas holiday through Eastern Europe. Wakenshaw and Duncan won the Fred Award for best local show in the festival for Different Party, a clowning show that parodies office life, following two hapless workers at a leather interiors company.
The awards were given out at Last Laughs, the final show of the New Zealand International Comedy Festival.
Walters joins a prestigious line-up of former Billy T winners, including Dai Henwood, Justine Smith, Paul Ego, Kura Forrester, Mel Bracewell and Abby Howells.
Lana Walters won the Billy T award for Don't Lick That. Photo / Supplied
She was previously nominated for the prize in 2021 when she was pregnant with her first child, and became pregnant again after getting the nomination the second time.
“I’m glad I can’t get nominated again because I don’t need any more kids,” she joked to the Herald shortly after winning. “It seems to be a magical sprinkle that whenever I get nominated, I get pregnant.
“I would love to be a role model to anyone pregnant or with young kids that it doesn’t mean your career is over, it can just be jumping off.”
Billy T Award winners have predominantly been male, with a 10-year stretch where women didn’t win. Now, Walters is the sixth woman in a row to win the prize, and she said it is another step towards rebalancing the prize.
“There’s so much strong female comedy in the scene at the moment, which is fantastic, and there’s a lot of strong male comedy as well. I think that the comedy industry is in a really good place.”
Trygve Wakenshaw and Barnie Duncan in Different Party. Photo / Supplied
For the Fred Award, Wakenshaw has become only the second person to win the prize twice, a feat previously only achieved by Dai Henwood. Wakenshaw won initially in 2014. Other former winners include Guy Montgomery, Eli Matthewson, Rhys Mathewson, Rose Matafeo and Chris Parker.
Now based in Prague, Wakenshaw said that Different Party was an opportunity to work with Duncan and reconnect.
“Working with Barnie is a dream. The whole show was created because of our friendship.”
The show was previously performed overseas pre-pandemic, but this was its first staging in New Zealand. And it proved to be a family affair with festival audiences, with many people bringing their kids to the show, which Duncan said has only happened here.
“I’ve spoken to people in the audience who go, it’s really cool sitting there and there’s a 6-year-old and everyone’s laughing at the same bit. That’s quite lovely.”
Asked for their advice for other comedians, Walters encouraged any up-and-coming performer to apply for it, as the benefits and support from the festival are invaluable.
Duncan said the show sparked a strong reaction from crowds simply because of how different it is to other shows out there.
“If you want to do comedy, just expand it out. It doesn’t have to be you in your T-shirt and a mic stand going, ‘Oh, well, I went on a date and it went bad’. There’s nothing wrong with that, but that’s not the end-point. And the end goal doesn’t have to be on a panel show and that you’ve reached the pinnacle of life.
“Explore all sorts of things and explore genres and forms.”
Wakenshaw echoed those sentiments. “There is a lot of untapped, mystical, dreamlike things out there. Try out your weirdest, craziest idea and it might fail and that’s okay, because everyone does.”
Also nominated for the Fred Award this year were Hayley Sproull and Alice Snedden, while the Billy T nominees were Advait Kirtikar, Liv McKenzie, Rhiannon McCall, and duo Tough Tiger Fist.
Other winners at the festival included Samuel Gebreselassie and Courtney Dawson for Best Newcomer, Rhys Mathewson for Director’s Choice, and Australian comic Rhys Nicholson for Best International.
