Festival's incredible Taika Cohen

Be afraid. No, really. Comedians Jemaine Clement and Taika Cohen, who work under the collective moniker the Humourbeasts, want to petrify their audiences in a future project. "We'd really like to do a theatre horror show - and make it real horror, not funny at all," says Cohen, sort of seriously. "We're really into horror and sci-fi, like all guys. It would be so good to do a show and make people truly scared."

It's a plan, but they'd have their work cut out. For a start, there's the issue of credibility. The Wellington-based mates are just too funny. The Humourbeasts' recent New Zealand International Comedy Festival show, the surreal Untold Tales of Maui, was relentlessly hilarious on opening night, even when hit by their video screen's failure during a crucial storyline.

It could have been a catastrophe but such is the strength of the writing - and their partnership - it simply didn't matter.

Cohen likes danger. Next week he returns to the festival with a new show - alone. He laughingly describes Taika's Incredible Show as "my premiere solo show", and it's full of possible hiccups as well.

"It's a mixture of standup and some set pieces and also some projections and video. Quite a mix, and also the potential for disaster, as people have come to expect from anything I do. Reliance on technology is always a problem.

"You have the best intentions in the world with projections and special effects but someone forgets to press a button [which is what happened at Untold Tales] or you trip over and knock over a screen. Well, if anything happens, I'll just keep going," he shrugs.

Although the show features Cohen playing some fictional characters - Derek the office jerk and Gunter the bucktoothed German "joke" teller - the 28-year-old plans to introduce some personal stuff.

"I want to talk a little bit about my life, my childhood, growing up in the 80s. It was so bizarre and confused. Being a kid was even worse. Parents weren't really PC, and they were still trying to work out how to raise children."

Cohen's childhood on the East Coast has already provided fodder for an earlier project, a short movie, which has won him international awards and made him eligible for an Oscar nomination next year.

His engrossing, 11-minute black-and-white film, Two Cars, One Night, about three kids left alone in two cars, was shot outside a pub in Te Kaha. Familiar territory, in more ways than one.

"I used to hang outside that pub when I was little, so it was quite appropriate to film it there. That's where I had set the script so shooting at the hotel was just perfect, exactly how I remembered it."

The film, in which the three youngsters form a bond while waiting for the adults drinking inside to take them home, reflects the lack of control kids have over their lives, says Cohen.

"It's not just about being outside a pub, It's anywhere, being left alone somewhere, the boredom, the feeling of neglect. But there's also the desire to make your own fun, endow the world around you with fantasies, the stuff you've got going on in your imagination."

After "world-premiering" in Opotiki, Two Cars, One Night has developed momentum. At the Berlin Film Festival this year it won Best Short Film in Panorama, and at Aspen Shortfest, Best Drama.

It screened at the Sundance Film Festival, which Cohen attended (as well as Berlin and Aspen). "So yeah, it's eligible for an Oscar nomination. I guess at some stage it'll be submitted to a panel who'll say yes or no. I think it's very funny."

But it's also significant that the name on the awards, and the nominations, is not Taika Cohen but Taika Waititi, his father's surname (his mother's name is Cohen).

"The Cohen side is more the comedy and the writing and performing," he reflects. "The Waititi is more the visual stuff, like the painting [he is also an accomplished artist], film and directing.

"Film-making for me is more a connection with artistic sensibilities, I guess. I'm really interested in the visual arts, so film-making has become quite a cool vehicle for the different things I'm into.

"It's a bit like making a painting frame by frame. Then there's the scriptwriting, creating the stories and the music, which I am really into, and the acting and directing. I really enjoy it."

As soon as he finishes the Auckland season of Taika's Incredible Show, Cohen is going back to Wellington to work on his next short film, Boys, about a group of six young soldiers in the Maori Battalion at Cassino during World War II.

"It's not based on any true story. In a way it's not about the war or even the Battalion but about Maori kids in a situation which is completely bizarre, country boys from Aotearoa forced to grow up."

Without any dialogue, Boys will focus on how young people behave in a crisis. "No matter what the situation is, they are kids. In a lot of ways it's about how these young guys would sometimes revert to being careless kids, mucking around, being mischievous."

Cohen has also just illustrated a book written by fellow comedian Jo Randerson, "quite dark tales told in a simple sort of Oscar Wilde style". His images are in a "Schoolboys' Annual style, etched, with cross-hatching".

And he is starting a fashion label called Waititi. "I've bought an overlocker. So far it's fashion for women, mainly making stuff for my girlfriend. She is my human mannequin."

In case that litany of accomplishments makes him sound too perfect, and the rest of us feel hopeless, exhausted, Cohen grins. After all, he does have to face the imminent challenges of Taika's Incredible Show.

"There are costume changes, but there's no one to cover for me when I have to go off to change and there's no way of going off and doing that in any effective way."

Yeah, but he doesn't even look worried. Well, how about Gunter and his stupid jokes? Cohen can't tell me any of the jokes, because he says he doesn't know what they are yet. "I'm just going to make them up."

Scared? Not really. Prepared? Maybe. "I'm not strictly scripted, no. Probably should be."

* Taika's Incredible Show, SiLo Theatre, Tuesday-Saturday, 8.30pm