JON & NATH LIKE TO PARTY
Thurs 3rd – Sun 13th August
Thurs 3rd – Sun 13th August
The Free Sisters (Maggie's Front Room)
13:30 (55 mins), FREE
What was the inspiration for this performance?
We were spending a lot of time producing video sketches. Then we realised how much we yearned to get on stage together again and we started working on a live show. Initially we were going to bring some of our YouTube characters to the stage, but we had so many other ideas that we wrote a brand new show. It happened very quickly and we launched at Camden Fringe last year. You can’t beat the visceral experience of live comedy, we love the connection we feel with the audience. Jon also loves the connection with Nath’s face when he slaps a demon out in our Jehovahs sketch.
Is performance still a good space for the public discussion of ideas?
This is a difficult question when it comes to comedy. For us, we write first and foremost with our audience in mind, and we do whatever we have to do to generate laughter in the moment. Sure we have social satire in our sketch about hipster restaurants, but we’re not deconstructing the issue of food trends, we just wrote it because it made us laugh a lot. On a wider scale, comedy often generates discussion through controversy. Say when a comedian is accused of being sexist or racist, this stimulates a public adjustment of the parameters of “good taste”. This kind of public discourse constantly reflects and defines social morality.
How did you become interested in making performance?
We met at the Melbourne International Comedy Festival and bonded over our love for sketch comedy. We had a lot of the same influences like The Young Ones, Blackadder, Airplane and Eddie Murphy. We planned to produce some video sketches to submit for a new TV show; that never happened because we ended up doing them for ourselves.
Is there any particular approach to the making of the show?
For us, everything starts with the script. We’ve always enjoyed writing together and we discuss an idea until we see the same picture, then we tackle the script in a linear fashion – we sit down and write it from the first line to the last. Then we have many edits until we have a refined script that still makes us laugh. Then we take it to the stage and work out what makes the audience laugh.
Does the show fit with your usual productions?
Yes, this show fits with the style of our previous work together in that it is uniquely Jon & Nath - anarchic, farcical, zany, surprising, slapstick, energetic and Tom Jones.
What do you hope that the audience will experience?
Laughter and joy, pure and simple. Occasionally, we like to sneak in a little shock. Everything we do onstage is very real.
What strategies did you consider towards shaping this audience experience?
We’ve both learned from doing and watching a lot of comedy (individually we’ve worked on many sketch comedy shows), so we understand pace and timing well. We structured our show very carefully so that we open with an act that puts the audience at ease and establishes a connection, then we
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