Young people on the South Coast will have four comedy workshops delivered by a professional to help hone their comedy skills. Photo: Envato @ benzoix.
Aspiring young comedians on the South Coast can step into the spotlight with a series of free workshops from 29 January led by acclaimed international comedian Marty Bright, offering the chance to look behind the curtain of stand-up comedy.
The LOL Summer Holidays Comedy Workshops, developed by Bright and partnered with South Coast Arts, aim to provide 12- to 17-year-olds the opportunity to hone their comedic skills and gain practical experience performing.
South Coast Arts executive director Louise Croker said the beginner’s guide to stand-up comedy workshops at Ulladulla, Nowra, Kiama and Shellharbour would cover how to write jokes that actually work and ways to deliver punchlines, through to owning the stage and pro performance tricks of the comedy trade.
Louise said participants would also get the chance to take the mic and try out their newfound talents.
“Even when things are on like this, a lot of it happens in Wollongong and at the northern end, so this is a real opportunity for people in the southern end to access a really skilled professional with a lot of knowledge and wisdom to share,” she said.
“We’d love to see people in those further regional areas there that often don’t have a lot of opportunities for these kinds of things.”
She said the collaboration between Bright and the regional arts organisation was part of its goal to enable a creative artist to get their work out into the region, while bringing quality programming to young people in underserved areas.
Bright’s experience is extensive, having been chosen for the prestigious Fresh, Breakout and Roadshow productions at Sydney Comedy Festival and performing in the US, Canada and New Zealand at clubs including the Comedy Store in LA, Caroline’s and Broadway Comedy Club in New York City, and The Comedy Next in Montreal.
“He’s a comedian himself, so the workshops are coming from lived experience as a comedian,” she said.
“He’s a regular facilitator, MC and frontman for the comedy shows that happen at Fillmores in Kiama, so he has a familiarity with the South Coast, even though he’s Sydney based.
“As well as being a comedian and doing his shows, he’s been running these workshops for some time.”
She said participants would have the opportunity to learn about different styles of comedy through the workshops.
“The workshops will cover the basics of being a comedian on stage, what all the different slang terms mean from a professional point of view and knowing all the technical terms of being on stage and being a comedian,” she said.
“There’s joke development and then practical experience getting behind a mic and doing some performing as well.”
Louise said the workshops were a unique chance for young comedians to kick-start their performance careers in a supportive, community-driven environment.
She said they would be joining a strong community of creative artists that already lived and worked on the South Coast.
“We do tend to get a lot of creatives in the South Coast area because of that easy reach to the main Sydney CBD and because it’s a more affordable area to live,” she said.
“It’s also a really creative area in terms of inspiration.”
Book tickets for the free LOL Summer Holidays Comedy Workshops on 29 January at Dunn Lewis Centre, Ulladulla, 30 January at Artie Smith Oval Pavilion, Bomaderry, 31 January at Kiama Library Auditorium, Kiama and 31 January at Blackbutt Youth Centre, Shellharbour.
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