New Zealand comedy improv troupe Snort are bringing their live comedy to a screen near you.
Photo / Supplied
New Zealand comedy improv troupe Snort are bringing their live comedy to a screen near you.
Photo / Supplied
For more than six years, Kiwi comedy troupe Snort have been delivering sell-out performances every Friday night at Auckland's Basement Theatre. Lockdown forced the improv group into a hiatus, one of the longest breaks they have had away from the stage.
And while venues remain closed, performers – and fans – need to find something new to laugh about. Enter Snort: Live, an eight-episode series of comedy gold, now available on TVNZ OnDemand.
"We didn't make this show to come out in a pandemic," says Snort member Brynley Stent. "But people have now been missing out on theatre, so it's this beautiful fortuitous timing."
Brynley Stent, actor, comedian and writer. Photo / Supplied
"For anyone who's been in lockdown, it's going to be like porn watching people in a room together experiencing a live event," jokes Laura Daniel, one of the troupe's original members who hosts the first episode.
The TV show will be a familiar sight to Snort regulars. It follows the same format of a theatre-based live show – a series of sketches based around an improvised monologue shaped by audience interaction.
It's a format that has worked for the group since 2013 when comedian Donna Brookbanks realised Auckland was lacking in live improv.
She was working in Christchurch's Court Theatre at the time, where The Jesters have been performing since 1990. "I started thinking that it was weird there was nothing like this in Auckland," she says.
One of the Jesters, Kathleen Burns, put her in touch with Eli Matthewson and Eddy Dever, who collaborated with Brookbanks to set up a trial run.
Ten people were recruited for the first show, including Laura Daniel, Chris Parker and Guy Montgomery. It was a sold-out success, and from there, more comedians joined the regular line-up, including Joseph Moore and Rose Matafeo.
As the show took off, alongside the individual careers of the troupe, there were discussions around committing something to camera, but the thought of recreating Snort never seemed like an option.
"We'd pitched all these other ideas and none of them had really come to fruition," Brookbanks says. "We were quite nervous about putting straight improv on screen because we didn't think it would work."
Comedian Chris Parker is part of Auckland improv group Snort. Photo / Supplied
"We were all very scared because we truly believed that the success of the show was that you had to come and see it live," Parker adds. "We've tried really hard as a group to make this authentically Snort."
When the TVNZ project was commissioned, Moore says there was a strange feeling amongst the group. "A great part of the joy of improv is that it exists purely in the moment and you don't have to think about it again.
"To think of it as something that people will be watching months in the future was a different mental process.
"When we were filming, Covid wasn't in New Zealand yet but it was definitely a global story," recalls Moore, who served as post-production editor as well as a performer.
"There were a couple of moments in one episode where Guy Montgomery joked about it in his monologue, and in my notes to my editor I said, 'We should cut that out, it's topical and people probably won't remember that.'"
If only they knew.
Joseph Moore and Laura Daniel of Two Hearts, and Snort: Live. Photo / Supplied
The wider consequences of the pandemic – venues closed, comedy festivals cancelled - has forced comedians around the country to consider their future paths.
Moore and Daniel, who perform together as musical duo Two Hearts, are rethinking how they will approach their shows, which often feel more like pop concerts than stand-up.
"We always film our show to have it as a reference, but now we're thinking about investing the time to film it properly," Daniel says.
"If people can go to live theatre, they will go because there is something weirdly special about it," Stent says, "but I do like the idea of having archives for times like this."
