Annual comedy festival dares to win applause

Fred Dagg, real name John Clarke, was a famous New Zealand comedy icon back in the 1970s.

If it weren't for Fred Dagg's gumboots then New Zealand comedy would be nothing. And if it wasn't for Billy T James taking the mickey out of Maori - or should that be Maoris, teeheehee - then it wouldn't have come to much either.

In case you're wondering who Fred Dagg is - hey, he was famous in the 70s - then his real name was John Clarke, a comedy icon and patron of the New Zealand International Comedy Festival that starts today. When he sang, "If it weren't for your gumboots where would you be ... ", it plucked at the swanndri seams and apron strings around the country.

And the late Billy T James was the Maori bloke whose various characters and spoofs, like Te News and Turangi Vice, became folklore. Now, his name is associated with our premier comedy award, The Billy Ts.

They were important chaps. But talk to those in the comedy scene today and they'll say it's time to move on.

"Why haven't we had the next Billy T James and the next Fred Dagg?" asks comedy festival director, Hilary McMillan, with a cheery smile.

"It's because we're not going to have those people again. We need to say goodbye to them now and appreciate that there will be other people out there who are just as good.

"I'm not saying those people weren't amazing, they were amazing, and John Clarke is the patron of our festival, so of course we love him, but I get sick of people harking back to the past."

Comedian Michele A'Court agrees and thinks comedian Dai Henwood [aka P Funk Chainsaw, aka Brian Savage] should be allowed to be Dai Henwood.

"But New Zealanders are weird like that. We've done that with lots of disciplines. Where's our next Janet Frame? Someone will stab me in the eye for saying this, but if John Clarke and Billy T were still around they would've moved on.

"Obviously John Clarke is still working but he's not doing Fred Dagg, he's doing other stuff, and I think Billy would've moved on from reading Te News, too."

Even though the comedy festival is in its 12th year there is still the stigma that because it's New Zealand it isn't any good. It used to be the same with local music. Remember?

Ask A'Court about that stigma and she will say it's well and truly alive. "It's always fascinating to see at the Melbourne and Edinburgh festivals that comedians are revered and treasured. But here, for a while, there were rumours that standup comedians were prohibited from auditioning for TV comedies because obviously they were standups so they were s***. That's exactly the opposite of what happens overseas."

But McMillan believes that stigma is starting to die, thanks to mini-turning points like The Flight of the Conchords from Wellington getting international exposure, the success of bro'Town, written by the Naked Samoans, on TV3, and the appearance last year of 15 local comedians at the Edinburgh Festival.

She says bro'Town is a great example of how standup comedians can, and should be, making the crossover to TV. It's common at comedy festivals like Edinburgh and Montreal for comedians to be signed up to do pilot TV shows.

"There's hardly any feed-through of what's happening in the live scene to TV. It took a while [for the Naked Samoans] but they got a production team, and a network that allowed them to make what they did on stage, on TV, without the network getting frightened. I think networks get frightened of what comedians will do.

"It's about taking a risk, but that's how Monty Python and The Young Ones started."

Getting more comedy on TV is the key to breaking down that stigma, and McMillan uses the example of local music. She points to the introduction of NZ On Air's $5000 music video grants which increased the number of local acts on TV.

"New Zealanders have the mentality that if it's on TV then it's okay, or it's acceptable. And because there isn't a lot of New Zealand comedy on TV they have this cringe factor about it. But, when people go out and see it [live] they're actually surprised that it's really good."

What funding is there? "Bugger all, bugger all," laughs McMillan.

The comedy festival has sponsors, including principle sponsor Oddfellows, and gets funding from the Auckland City Council and Creative New Zealand. But performers pay to be part of the festival and put up money to produce their shows.

For example, out of the 10-or-so festivals A'Court has performed in, this is her first solo show because previously she's had to team up with other comedians to share costs.

The increased sophistication of New Zealand comedy could also help with getting it taken more seriously, by both funding agencies and the public.

When A'Court first did a show at the festival in the mid 90s it was called Ultra Super Vixen Women With Really Enormous Tits. That was back when the only outlet for comedy was a pub.

"But what has happened in the last three years," explains A'Court, "is that people have started to do concept shows, and that's what I'm doing this year."

A'Court's show, Heritage 101, takes the form of a "comedy lecture" about nationhood. "I would never get to do [Heritage 101] at the White Horse Tavern in Pakuranga. During the festival you're competing with a hell of a lot of shows, so you've got to make yourself stand out.

"Also, creatively, you need to take some kind of risk with a show that you do for a festival because it's your one opportunity in the year to challenge yourself."

McMillan agrees: "More and more, it seems, the dumbing-down of comedy is being removed from the market, but there will always be a place for Rodney Rude.

"The audience at the upper end, the more intelligent side, is where New Zealanders tend to sit. I think that's why we like UK comedy more than American comedy because we don't like being told when to laugh."

Performance

*What: The New Zealand International Comedy Festival
*When: Today until May 21