The south-west has a strong history on the comedy scene. Now the Dirty Angel Comedy room is helping to promote the next generation of comedians, providing them with an encouraging space to learn their stage craft and hone their wit. ROB GUNSTONE talks to some of the new comedy talent getting their start.
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The godfather: Aidan Nicolson
The comedy bug bit early for Aidan Nicolson but he struggled to find an outlet.
"When I was about Year 10 I started thinking about having a crack at comedy and someone I knew was planning to go into Class Clowns," he said.
"But the internet didn't exist back then (in 1996) and there were certainly no comedy clubs in Warrnambool.
"I wouldn't have even known how to get a gig as a teenager."
While Nicolson was away from Warrnambool studying teaching at university and working overseas, he maintained a document on his computer with a list of jokes and ideas.
"I would email it to myself whenever I moved house," he said.
"It came with me for four or five years, I thought one day I will move back to Australia and do stand-up comedy."
Nicolson signed up to Raw Comedy, an open-mic competition run through the Melbourne International Comedy Festival, in 2013.
"I went down to Geelong and did my first five-minute set in front of about 280 people," he said.
"Because I was a school teacher I was confident enough to stand up in front of people and talking wasn't an issue. I just had the 'are my jokes funny' part to worry about.
"The biggest worry was remembering the set, trying to remember five minutes of dialogue is quite difficult.
"I print out exactly what I want to say on a piece of paper and I was sitting backstage just reading, and reading, and reading it.
"When I put it away I couldn't even come up with the first couple of words and I thought 'this is going to be bad'.
"When they called my name and I went out there, it all came back to me. But I didn't do another gig for a year after that."
After a second attempt at Raw Comedy, Nicolson decided to start a regular comedy room in Warrnambool.
"I didn't want to keep driving to Melbourne. So I created Dirty Angel as a way to help get people onto the stage, it's not a money-making thing that's for sure," he said.
Dirty Angel Comedy will soon celebrate its 50th show, although the exact date is unclear.
"There were a number of performances run under our banner that were not at the Mozart Hall so I don't know if I can claim them," Nicolson said.
"It's still surprising how many people don't know that we exist."
Nicolson said the Mozart Hall was the "perfect venue" for the shows.
"People who come to Mozart Hall are there for the comedy, no one turns up accidentally at the Mozart Hall. The audience is very understanding and they love new people taking the stage," he said.
Nicolson said when a local performs for the first time they were inducted into the 'Snow Dome Club', and presented with an individualised, numbered snow dome.
"It helps me keep track of how many local people have performed on the stage," Nicolson said.
"I have just given number 25 to Jordie Wanliss, I can't wait to give one to Tom Ballard or Dave Hughes. We will never say no to a local who wants to perform on our stage."
The Young Gun: Jordie Wanliss
Port Fairy's Jordie Wanliss is taking his first steps into the comedy world.
The 17-year-old has performed just twice on the Dirty Angel stage, but Wanliss regularly uploads his work to social media, especially his @jordulous Instagram account where he has posted over 200 short videos.
"I have really wanted to do comedy for about two years," he said.
"Originally I wanted to be an actor, then a director, but you don't get to create or do the fun stuff with those, then I came across comedy.
"I found a lot of comedy watching YouTube, and then in a podcast I found (US comedian) Bobby Lee and I just loved it and started watching the LA scene and what they do on stage.
"In 2018 I won the local heat of Class Clowns and then went on to the Melbourne final. I found that through the Dirty Angel Comedy club."
Wanliss likes to create characters and play out their often crazy stories on stage.
"It is a satire, I have jokes within the stories but it tends to be just a silly time," he said.
"It is often a very crazy point of view."
His main character is Patrice, who has a high-pitched voice and seems like a placid character but is "a bit psychopathic, with crazy insane ideas".
Wanliss said performing comedy could change your life.
"There is something about being onstage that is just indescribable, it's almost euphoric," he said.
For Wanliss, having a regular comedy night in Warrnambool is helping develop his skills as he prepares to head to Melbourne and then hopefully to America.
"All month you can be watching comedy, writing routines, and then go and test them out on stage," he said.
"If you are planning on going on stage somewhere else, and you have already had stage time as a teenager, not only is it less frightening but you know how to hold a microphone and how to connect to the audience better.
"I want to build and audience and then hopefully start to make some money from this."
The perfectionist: Donna Read
Donna Read first performed stand up comedy in 2014 at the Warrnambool's Seanchai Irish Bar. She didn't perform again for two years.
"I always though I should do it again but I had a baby in 2015 and didn't feel that funny," she said.
Read got back on stage at the Warrnambool heat of Raw Comedy in 2017, which gave her the confidence to know she could still perform.
"I won the Warrnambool show and went to perform in Melbourne. I haven't really stopped since then," she said.
"I have always loved comedy and always had friends tell me I should do it. But I never thought I could get a room full of strangers to laugh."
Read said she was continually working on new material and refining her old jokes.
"I run a lot of my old material at shows, you work on it, it takes a long time to perfect stuff. It's not just a case of writing a joke and getting up and doing it," she said.
"You deliver things differently, you have to keep testing it out until you perfect it. And then you get sick of it and drop it.
"When you do comedy you don't know what is going on in (the audiences') lives, and you have five or 10 or 15 minutes to take them away from whatever it is that is happening.
"Dirty Angel has a very really good following of very supportive people, comedy can be a little bit daunting but the audience is very welcoming and supportive of new people.
"Aidan Nicolson has created a safe community for comedy.
"Some people call Aidan the godfather of Warrnambool comedy, but I like to think of him as the Oprah of comedy.
"He welcomes everyone to the stage, and allocates gigs - 'you have 10 minutes, you have 10 minutes' - but he has created a good platform which didn't exist before."
Read said although performing stand up comedy could be daunting, once you tried it once you became addicted and wanted to keep going.
"The best thing about comedians is they are a weird mish-mash of people, they come from any background but get together through comedy," she said.
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