It's that time of year again: the Cranston Cup Theatresports grand final - in which some of the best improvisers you will ever see (until next year's Cranston Cup) battle it out for the prize of best people who can make stuff up on the spot and entertain you in the process - is taking place at the Enmore Theatre tonight.
In honour of it, I interviewed Bridie Connell - not just a brilliant player and performer (she was one of the multitude of talented Sydney Uni alumni Michael Hing produced at the recent Sydney Fringe Festival) but also a teacher of Theatresports. But I'll let her tell you all about itâ¦
The Cranston Cup
Dom Romeo: What do you do?
BRIDIE CONNELL: I teach a lot of impro, and Iâm an actor and writer.
Dom Romeo: When did you come to impro?
BRIDIE CONNELL:I was very lucky; I went to one of the few primary schools that had a Theatresports club. A lot of high schools have it, but I was lucky that I got a taste quite early. I did it all through high school and I really loved it. When I went to uni there was no impro and I really missed it, but then I moved to Sydney to finish my degree, and there was such a big scene over here for it that I fell back into it after a few years of having a break.
Dom Romeo: Were you mostly educated in New Zealand?
BRIDIE CONNELL: I did all of my high school and primary school there.
Dom Romeo: I do not detect a New Zealand âick-centâ.
BRIDIE CONNELL: My mumâs an Aussie so weâve always had a mixture of accents. Itâs weird because when I go home to New Zealand to see my family, they tease me for sounding like an Australian but some of my friends here still pick up on words that I say with a bit of a Kiwi accent. So no matter where I go, I get teased for my voice.
Dom Romeo: In a way itâs an advantage: to always be an outsider means you can always be making fun of something as an observerâ¦
BRIDIE CONNELL: Yeah, I guess so. Itâs not like we speak a different language in New Zealand but when I moved to Sydney there were a few moments, even on stage, where Iâd say something â a phrase that we say in New Zealand that just hadnât made it across here â and thereâd be an awkward moment where they were trying to work out what I was saying.
Dom Romeo: When you started improvising out here, you would have looked like an amazing newbie, when really you werenât a newbie at all.
BRIDIE CONNELL: I had done it all through high school, and it was quite fun because I had had a break for a few years, studying in New Zealand. It was one of those nice things, like riding a bike: I got back into it so quickly and I had so much fun immersing myself in it again.
I was really nervous to start again though. I felt really rusty. And I hadnât improvised with all these people at Sydney Uni before. It was scary going into my first jam, and my first time on Manning Bar stage because I just didnât know anybody. That was actually one of the reasons I picked it up again: to meet people.
Dom Romeo: Even though New Zealand and Australia are close in many ways, are there any differences in the way we improvise and in our senses of humour?
BRIDIE CONNELL: I think, in New Zealand, a lot of our humour is sort of even more laconic than it is here. Flight of the Conchords is very typical of the sort of thing that you see a lot in New Zealand: a lot of awkward humour, a lot of laconic stuff, blokey jokes. And that definitely happens here, but more so in New Zealand.
I think that because I had come from doing Theatresports at a high school level in New Zealand, it was totally different kind of standard, so when I moved to doing uni Theatresports in a different country, it was like being hit over the head: people were so much wilder and tackled topics that we never had in high school and the standard was so much better.
Content-wise, there was a bit of difference, but the main thing I noticed was that suddenly from high school to university, it was a whole new world: no holds barred, do what you willâ¦
Dom Romeo: You also do this for a living.
BRIDIE CONNELL: I teach Theatresports and host Theatresports at Sydney Uni, and I teach at quite a few high schools â I run Theatresports clubs and co-curricular drama. So I perform a lot, and I teach even more.
Dom Romeo: Does that mean youâre always working, or always playing?
BRIDIE CONNELL: Sometimes it feels like work! But Iâm quite lucky that it is so much fun that I do really enjoy it and it doesnât feel like work most of the time. There are some students who are more trying than others, but most of the time itâs just so much fun, particularly because I work with such a wide age range. I teach five-year-olds, right up to people in their 30s I get so many different types of students so itâs always really fun, and thereâs always something new every day, so itâs really nice.
Dom Romeo: And you run the University of Sydney Theatresports program?
BRIDIE CONNELL: Yeah, I took over from Steen Raskopoulos at the start of this year and I co-host with Tom Walker, whoâs in my Cranston team.
Tom Walker and Bridie Connell
Dom Romeo: I was on campus when Rob Carlton was handing over to Adam Spencer. I think it was Gabby Millgate before them. I donât know if there were many women in between (and apologise to anyone Iâve overlooked).
BRIDIE CONNELL: I was thinking about this recently â I know that Rebecca De Unamuno used to play, I donât know if she hosted. Still, itâs the first time a girlâs hosted in a while, so thatâs been quite fun, and a lot more women have been coming to the jams at Sydney Uni this year, so thatâs been quite nice.
Dom Romeo: Whatâs the difference between teaching adults who are doing it for the first time at 30, and teaching kids?
BRIDIE CONNELL: The wonderful thing about teaching at uni is that everyone wants to be there; theyâre there voluntarily rather than, itâs last period Friday and you had to pick an activity and you chose this. Everybodyâs there because they want to be there, so theyâre really passionate about it.
A lot of the time people get into it just for social reasons, or as an extra-curricular thing, to meet people â so thereâs a really, really nice environment at uni with the older group. Itâs almost like a friendship group hanging out and jamming every week, which is really nice. With my younger students, itâs a lot more structured and regimented. Itâs still a lot of fun, but there are a lot more structures in place around what we learn.
Dom Romeo: Is it harder for adults to free up part of their brain and indeed, their body, to accept offers and to play?
BRIDIE CONNELL: You see with a lot of older people, when they start out, definitely, thereâs a process. When they finally have that moment where something switches over in their brain where they really start to accept offers and understand it, itâs awesome. But there definitely can be a bit of resistance, and a little bit of holding back at first.
Thatâs whatâs so refreshing about working with the little kids. Even though, obviously, theyâre not hugely experienced and they donât have a lot of technical skill, they donât care: they will do scenes about anything and theyâll just take risks. I always come out of class with these amazing stories from all the kids. They have huge imaginations and just donât care what anybody thinks, which is nice, because the older people at uni are more conscious of what people will think of them or how theyâll be perceived.
Dom Romeo: What are the differences between playing Theatresports at a professional level in competition, and just playing for fun?
BRIDIE CONNELL: Thatâs a good question. First and foremost, if anyone was doing this purely for the competition then I doubt that they would make it into the final because one of fundamental principles of Theatresports is that you are just mucking around, having fun. I always tell my students this when competition time rolls around: the minute you start counting your points or focussing on the competition elements, itâs a big mistake because you stop focussing on your play and you stop taking risks and being free.
The competition is definitely fun and important, and itâs a great way to learn really quickly and get feedback from judges, but I think the more relaxed you can be about it, the better. All the teams that are playing the Cranston final this weekend are approaching it from a âletâs just have fun on big scaleâ attitude.
Dom Romeo: So youâre saying that once you start âcompetingâ, looking for angles to get ahead, youâre almost losing the whole reason Theatresports exists â to play and discover new things.
BRIDIE CONNELL: Absolutely. It just interferes with your mindset. And Iâve gone through that before. Iâve done shows where you really want to make it to the final round, and you start thinking about that. But as soon as you do that, you start to get tense, and relaxation is so important in Theatresports, to be in the zone. Thatâs not to say that people arenât competitive; everybody would like to win the Cranston Cup, and everybody wants to play as many rounds as they can without getting eliminated, because we all want to play. But first and foremost, we all want to have fun, and we all know from experience that the more relaxed you are the more fun youâre having and the better your score will be anyway.
Dom Romeo: One of the reasons Theatresports was developed was to get away from âshtickâ â the comfortable bag of tricks we all carry and fall back on. There are times, even when improvising in Theatresports, when players âget comfortableâ in the ways they play, sometimes to the point where you can almost certainly predict the character theyâll pull out and the way the improvised scene will play. Should they try to get away from that? And if so, how?
BRIDIE CONNELL: You definitely should get away from that because impro in its purest form would mean that we couldnât be predictable. And that can really be frustrating for a fellow player or the audience member when you can predict the way a scene will go because youâve seen a player bring out that character before. Thatâs one of the reasons I enjoy working with little kids, and one of the reasons theyâre so good at Theatresports: they have such boundless imaginations that every time they do a scene itâs totally different.
Iâve been thinking about this concept of patterns and habits this year with my students. One of the things we do at high school and university level is an exercise thatâs rapid-fire coming up with as many characters as you can really quickly: a set of two characters, then you change, and you change and you keep changing. Youâre meant to get to bare minimum ten characters. But after about four or five characters everybody started to falter. The exercise totally exposes the fact that we have default characters. I do too: I have types of scenes that Iâm more comfortable with, characters and accents that I tend to go to. But the more weâve done that exercise, the more weâve stretched our minds a little bit to find different types of characters to play. As well as that, there are some players who do the same sort of things physically, so weâve really focussed them on doing different things with their voices to get them out of their comfort zone a little bit.
Dom Romeo: There are times when there are props available on stage and there are players who always look for a prop for inspiration â sometimes, I feel, to the detriment of their improvising.
BRIDIE CONNELL: Iâm not really one of them. Sometimes youâll get the perfect prop and it will really help you, but I find Theatresports is so fast-paced that when I rummage through the prop box to find something perfect for the moment, the momentâs passed. Iâm not quick enough with the prop to do it. Some people just love them, particularly the physical players â they find things to help them be even bigger on stage. It works for some people, but it always just stresses me out.
Dom Romeo: Tell me about a time you did something on stage that not even you knew you were going to do â that took you by surprise, as well as the audience and the people you were playing with.
BRIDIE CONNELL: Those moments are the reason everyone keeps doing Theatresports! Itâs a bit like a drug: sometimes the highs are so good â those moments when the whole team just clicks and theyâre totally on the same wavelength.
I had a great experience about five years ago, in the final scene in the high school grand final. It was a plagiarism scene: all the lines, characters and settings are stolen from all the other scenes that had been played earlier that night. Itâs a bit cheeky and itâs so much fun. But towards the end of the scene â it wasnât a musical or anything but somebody started to sing a poem in a scene and everybody just got up. All the other teams got up and suddenly it was an impromptu musical. It got a great score and the audience loved it. I always remember it because to me that was the perfect summary of how important the concept of âthe teamâ is in Theatresports â everybody just supported each other and got up. It was amazing. The audience was floored that everybody in the space of about three seconds got on stage and jumped on one idea and took it to the extreme. It was so much fun.
Dom Romeo: Itâs amazing when everyone gets the same idea and is on the same wavelength instantaneously.
BRIDIE CONNELL: Itâs so organic, too: you canât force it. Itâs so amazing and itâs so much fun to play with people you meld with. Whether itâs because you know each other really well or you have similar styles, when that happens â when everybody just magically is on the same page and knows whatâs going on â you canât beat it. Itâs so rewarding as a player and as an audience member.
Dom Romeo: If you didnât have Theatresports in your life or as a way of life, whatâs one thing that would suck in everyday life?
BRIDIE CONNELL: In high school, if Iâm thinking back a bit, I was really grateful that I did Threatresports.
I actually started it because I was a debater, and I gave that up many years ago because I enjoyed Theatresports more. But I got into it because I thought it would help me with my debating, to think on my feet. And the more I did Theatresports, the better I was at thinking on my feet. So in high school, I would say the answer to that question is, I would have gotten so many more detentions. Because I could think on my feet I talked myself out of so many detentions and punishments in high school â more than anyone else in my year â which was great. But for now, the thing that Iâm most grateful for in terms of what Theatresports has given me, is just general confidence and playfulness in everyday life.
My first ever Theatresports coach, when I was little, said, the people who played Theatresports were just better at life for those reasons: youâre more playful and imaginative and have more confidence. Whether or not you want to be a professional performer, I really do think that what Theatresports gives you is really valuable.
âWill this end with me beind date raped?â Michael Hing responds to my initial offer of an interview
over a home-cooked meal. Instead, I make him the Mafia compromise: a meal he
canât refuse in a public place where neither of us has the clear advantage. Although
I have slightly more, since itâs a pizza place in the shopping strip where I
work. But as no firearm has, to our knowledge, been strapped behind the
cistern, and neither of us comes out of the john with just our dick in our hand, itâs
still clearly the right decision. (Iâll see your Gen Y ironic rape gag with a
Gen X pop cultural reference, Hingers!)
Although it seems like
heâs been around for a relatively short period of time, Michael Hingâs been
involved in various modes of comedy for ages; heâs done just about everything,
his disproportionate hunger for comedy seemingly outweighing any other need or
desire in life. If thereâs any
interesting new movement or trend happening in comedy, chances are Michael will
be somewhere close to the centre of it, since most if not all roads lead back
to Hing. Particulary at this yearâs Sydney Fringe Festival where Hingers seems
to be producing or appearing in some 20-odd shows, making it very much a Sydney
Hing Festival.
Stand-out elements of
Michaelâs comedy include his need to outline an informed socio-political
position. Heâll rant, but the rant will be backed up by facts. On a personal
level, however, he specialises in a line of self-conscious, nerdy absurdist
self-deprecation â but the self-deprecation is never racially based. That, he
eschews with an almost Richard Dawkins-like fervour. Which is where I most
often want to take issue, because even if the so-called âwog comedyâ and Asian
permutations thereof are unsophisticated, they still serve a purpose.
Unsophisticated people deserve to enjoy a laugh, too. But weâll get to that,
and just about everything else, in good time.
Raw Comedy
My first memory of
Michael Hing was of that self-conscious Sydney Uni kid with the dreadlocks,
giving Raw Comedy a go. Twice. Within weeks of each other. First as a solo
stand-up, then as part of a kind-of-âsketchâ double act with another Sydney Uni
kid called Neal Downward. The double act was more memorable than the solo
stand-up since it cleverly â perhaps too cleverly â deconstructed performance itself. Metacomedy. Earning Hing and his partner, Neal
Downward, a bit of coverage in MX when
they made the state semis. Next thing I know, Hing and Downward are producing a
sketch troupe consisting of a whole mess of Sydney Uni kids, called âThe
Delusionistsâ, in their self-titled show for Sydneyâs Big Laugh Festival and
the Melbourne International Comedy Festival.
The Delusionists, (l-r when they first appear): Ben Jenkins, Alex Lee, Steen Raskopoulos, Benita de
Wit, Paul Michael Ayre
âThat was all within the same six month period,â Michael acknowledges:
âa pretty quick turn-around!â
What happened was, a year earlier Ben Jenkins â who would become one of
the Delusionists â made it through to the Raw Comedy National Finals. Hingâs
housemate, a high school buddy, was friends with Ben, so Hingers ended up
seeing Jenkins in action and thought âI could probably do thatâ and gave it a
go.
âI didnât have the drive, performance ability, talent and experience Ben
had,â Michael recalls. âAnd I was really, really new and Raw might have been
the second time Iâd done comedy.â
The result?
âI forgot most of my set that night, and stood
in silence in the light.â
What was interesting was the nightâs feature act â the professional
comic who entertains the loyal audience as a kind of reward for having sat
through a dozen newbie amateurs â was Nick Sun. And he more-or-less âdid
exactly the same thing, which is, come on into the light and be silent and not
know his jokes.â
The difference?
âWhen Nick Sun did it, it was hilarious because it seemed like it was
deliberate. When I did it, it was like, âwhat are you doingâ¦?ââ
Delusionists
The rise and rise of Michael Hing began with a couple of improv classes
towards the end of 2005 â which makes complete sense since Theatresports and
the tradition of improvised comedy have been strong at Sydney Uni just about
forever. Peripheral involvement with that yearâs Arts Faculty Revue whetted his appetite; Hing directed the Architecture Revue the following year. âI
didnât perform, but I wrote a lot for it,â he says, admitting that his early
attempts at comedy are a little embarrassing now. âIt was terrible. I was
consciously trying to do stuff that was different to everybody else, but it was
a case of âyou have to learn all the rules before you can break themâ.â
Hingers did try to be different: whereas the first commandment of
University Revue seems to be âThou Shalt Taketh the Piss Out of Other
Facultiesâ, under Michaelâs watch, rather than take on Engineering, Education, Science and Arts, the Architecture Revue sought to be ââdifferentâ and âcrazyâ and âout
thereâ and âwhoooooaaaah!ââ Without sufficient experience the result, according
to Michael, was âthis weird mess of ideasâ where, of the 90-minute show, âmaybe
40 jokes were funny and 50 million jokes were terribleâ.
To be fair, every sketch show is hit-and-miss unless itâs put together
some five years into the participantsâ careers, where they can draw from the
best of everything theyâve done thus far. And even then, the best sketch shows
are the British ones where thereâve been several series on Radio 4 before the
best bits thus far are chosen for the debut television series. You donât know
that when you see that television series; it just looks like someone amazing
has come out of nowhere to work comedy magic.
Be that as it may, John Pinder â Aussie comedy pioneer whoâd helped
found the Melbourne International Comedy Festival way back when and was still
consulting for television producers and heading up one of Sydneyâs numerous and
disparate festivals (The Big Laugh Festival at the time) â happened to see the
show.
âI donât really understand what was going on,â Hingers says, âbut for
some reason, he liked it and gave me a bit of money to put together a sketch
crew to be a part of that yearâs Big Laugh Festival, and from that, do the
Melbourne Comedy Festivalâ.â
Thus, The Delusionists came into being.
Remember, by this time Pinder and producer Chris McDonald had created a
âbest of the university revuesâ live show called The Third Degree, which eventually became the Ronnie Johns television show.
âThe Third Degree already had
a format, so we came in at a time when the exact theatre that they were in â
the Kaleide Theatre at RMIT â was free, and there was what John described as âa
gap in the marketâ, which we filled,â Hing recalls. âPeople had heard of The Third Degree and wanted to be a part
of that experience in terms of sketch and discovering new comedy, so in our
first year, we had a lot of ticket sales that we didnât really deserve.â
Undeserved perhaps, but definitely earned. When you go down to Melbourne
with a sketch show, you have a mass of performers as well as crew â a small
army that can cover all the bases when flyering punters on the street in the hope theyâll come see your
show. And it did seem they knew what they were doing, even if it was mostly
front and bluster. But Hingers comes clean:
âThat was mostly copied from the model these guys were running. They had
all these rules and tips that they gave us, so we werenât going down completely
âfresh facedâ, although, to all the people who didnât know us, it was like,
âwho are these kids who have come down and sold 200 tickets?!ââ
Itâs not like they hadnât done it before, really. Theyâd flyered
strangers for their uni revue, and the had the likes of Dan Ilic and Jordan
Raskopoulos â Third Degree and Ronnie Johns veterans â teaching them
stuff. The result? A good first show that earned a three-and-a-half star review
in The Age. They were overjoyed. âThe Age! The paper! It came and saw our
show!â Michael recalls.
At this stage of his not-quite-career, despite an initial foray into Raw
Comedy, Michael Hing is sticking to writing and directing rather than
performing. And having cool dreadlocks, I suggest. âYeah, and just being a real
weird dude,â he adds.
Return Season
The following year, of course, the Delusionists return to Melbourne with
The History of Everything that Ever
Happened. Ever and sell out some 23 of their 25 shows, despite being on at a
ridiculously early timeslot. There are suggestions that TV is interested,
though nothing immediately comes of it. Although, the major difference this
time is âwe get a two-star review from The
Age, and they call us homophobic and racist and the rest.â According to
Hing, âthat really hurtâ because they were all âcrazy, left-wing, politically
correct peopleâ with âtotally innocuous jokesâ that âwerenât even about race or
genderâ. Indeed, Michael stresses, indignant, âit really hurt to be called homophobic when
weâre the type of people who go on marches for this kind of stuff. Weâre Sydney
Uni students. Donât you understand? We vote for the Greens!â
Ah yes. A half-decade or so earlier, theyâd be rich kids who could
afford, in time, to be âchardonnay socialistsâ. Understood loud and clear. But
that doesnât make them any less funny. Or politically incorrect necessarily (although,
I resist pointing out, this interview did begin with a date rape gag, âironicâ and/or
âabsurdâ as it may be). If the Delusionists were guilty of anything, it was of
being a bit too clever-clever.
Still, it served as a lesson to Michael Hing in
his formative years.
âThatâs when I first
started thinking about how careful you have to be with your comedy in terms of
what youâre saying and what youâre doing. The onus isnât on the audience to
interpret it. The onus is on you to give them a message that they couldnât
possibly misinterpret. You dictate how they interpret you. Itâs all on you.â
After that year, Hing quit the group to
concentrate on solo comedy.
âI was too insecure to work in a group,â he says. âIâm not performing,
so Iâm thinking, Iâm not the funny one; theyâre getting all the laughs, Iâm
just writing jokes.â By this stage, the Delusionists were a strong troupe of
performers, and as such, pretty much directed themselves. âIâm like, âyou know
what, I really want to do my own thing now. I want to go back to Uni and do
drama and some other stuff, maybe finish my degree, I donât know.ââ
Back to Uni
Thatâs an interesting diversion at this point. What exactly was Michael
studying? The plan out of high school was to follow Mama and Papa Hing into
medicine, because Michael was a pretty smart kid.
âBut then it turns out Iâm not smart enough to do that,â Michael says, âso
after six months of that I move to teaching for about three years.â
After teaching, Hingers tried his hand at counselling. âI go on a school
counselling prac and I expect it to be âoh like, hey, talk about your feelings
and stuffâ and on the first day it was, âmy mumâs an alcoholic, my dadâs a
heroin addict, what have you got for me?â I was like, âthis is out of my
league!â so I ditched that because there was no way that I could really help
these kids.â
Six months of architecture ensued. And then an
attempt at a philosophy degree.
âThe point is,â Hing says, âI never graduated.â
Hang on, Hingers. Youâre an Asian kid. You have an intellect. Both your
folks are high achieving doctors. How do they feel that you need to be a clown?
âThey are amazingly supportive of this unmitigated bullshit,â Michael
says. Although his routine is littered with jokes about his parents
disapproving of his life choices, âin reality,â he insists, âthey are just
amazing. For exampleâ¦â
Before he launches into his example, Hingers
falters and has a second thought.But then says, âYeah, Iâll talk about this,â and carries on.
âI had an opportunity two years ago to audition for a television show
which never got made. It was a sitcom. I got asked to audition for the part of
this Asian character who spoke in a weird accent and did a lot of Asian jokesâ¦â
If you know Michael Hing at all, or have seen him on stage, you will
almost certainly know that this is anathema to him â playing the
self-deprecating, comic-relief, cheap-laugh Asian. And yet â sitcom. Television
work. Income. Perhaps fame.
âI was kind of not sure about what I wanted to do or whether I should do
it, and my dad was like, âMichael, you didnât do uni because you donât want to
have a real job; if you start doing stuff like this that youâre not passionate
about and donât believe in, thatâs like having a real job. You need to do what
you want in the way you want to do it.ââ
Cool dad, huh!
âThat is one of the biggest influences on what I am trying to do,â
Hingers acknowledges. âMy parents are super, super supportive. Ridiculously so.
To the point where it is almost irresponsible. Now Iâm doing fine and donât need
support, but if I ever did, I think they would help me out.â
Project 52
Moving on from The Delusionists while remaining friends with the cast
and crew, Michael began to concentrate on his own comedy. He took another stab
at Raw, making it to the state final. âThat was when I realised stand-up was
the thing Iâm not terrible at,â he says. Still, his career trajectory was
somewhat bound to the sketch comedy troupe.
âAll the shows weâd done down in Melbourne, they were partially funded
by the University of Sydney Union,â Hingers explains. For the uninitiated, the
Union is the body that administers much of the cultural life of the student
body, and one way in which it does so is by funding cultural undertakings.
However, Michael says, after two years of financing a small armyâs interstate
incursion, the Union woke up to itself.
âThey were kind of like, âHey, youâre going down to Melbourne with
thousands of our dollars and weâre not getting anything out of thatâ. So for
2009 when we wanted to do it, we said, âYou know what, to prove to you that
weâre doing something for culture on campus, weâll start a comedy room on
campus thatâll do a show every week and weâll mix between doing stand-up and
sketch and improv and story telling and musical comedy and plays and everything
and weâll literally do a different show every weekâ.â
And so, out of the need to fund a final Festival foray in 2009, Project
52 was born. âWe didnât realise that what would become Project 52 would be the
greatest thing weâve ever done and one of the coolest things that weâve ever
been involved in,â Michael says, quickly pointing out that heâs ânot the only
personâ behind it. âI do a lot of the boring admin work for it, but it
certainly is a five-way group who run it.â The team includes Ben Jenkins, Carlo
Ritchie, Steen Raskopolous and Tom Walker. âCarlo and Tom are the people who
probably make me laugh more than anyone else in the world. I understand their
minds, and they still make me laugh all the time.â
It wasnât an instant success, of course: some nights were packed
out. Other nights the comics outnumbered the audience. âThere were some grim
times for us,â Hing acknowledges. âThereâd be eleven people in the room,
and ten comics, and itâs going to go forever and itâs gonna be terrible and
Iâve got to tell some first year Iâm really sorry, he canât go on because there
are too many comics. But by the end of the first year, a small crowd for us
became 60 people.â
It certainly helped Michael develop as a comic, having to front up each
week, often in front of largely the same group of punters. He had to have new
material each time.
âItâs perfect when youâre young and you have a million ideas and you
have to write them all down,â Michael reckons. âI say like Iâm some old guy nowâ¦â
I am some old guy now, and I can say the one night I got to perform
there, it was chockers. Admittedly, everyone apart from Hing â and me â was
some undergraduate doing material about Star Wars, Lord of the Rings and Harry
Potter, but it was a great night. And then I couldnât get another go, because
word got out that it was the coolest room in Sydney and visiting international
acts were climbing over each other to get some stage time. Although Michael has
a far more touching story about Project 52âs growth in prominence.
In Memoriam, Jordan McClellan
Some time into the roomâs second year, on the night of Sydney
Universityâs Theathresports Grand Final, a student called Jordan McClellan,
who âdid a lot of improv stuffâ with Hing and co, was tragically hit and killed by a taxi on his way home.
âIt was really serious and really, really sad,â Michael recalls. âThat affected
a lot of people and changed the way we did comedy. It really changed a lot of
stuff.â
One change was the renaming of the Theatsports Trophy. Steen
Raskopoulos and Tom Walker, who run the Theatresports program, renamed it The
Jordan McClellan Cup. But one of the âmore offbeat thingsâ to come out of it,
according to Michael, occurred as a result of them googling Jordan McClellanâs
name, to see how his death had been reported.
âWe found this blog by someone called Sidney Critic who had been writing
about us for 18 months. We had no idea. He reviewed all our shows. So there was
this great memory of our friend who had passed away. That was really cool.â
Sidney Critic went on to name Project 52 the best comedy room in Sydney.
âI think other comics must have read that blog or something, because when we
started up in the second year, the people who wanted to get on werenât just
open mikers and friends, it was proper comedian people.â
But thatâs just the stand-up night; there is far more to Project 52 than
stand-up, which takes place on night a month. Steen Raskopoulos runs âThe Impro
Denâ. âIt is â and I say this
having watched a lot of impro â by several standard deviations the best
improvised comedy youâll see in Australiaâ â Michael insists.
âStory Clubâ is the story-telling night run by Ben Jenkins. âItâs part
of a new trend thatâs been happening for a couple of years,â Michael says,
acknowledging story-telling rooms run by the likes of Kathryn Bendall (âTell Me A Storyâ) and
Michael Brown (âCampfire Collectiveâ). The point of difference for Story Club, Hingers explains, is
that people literally type a story and read it out of a giant book. âSo thereâs
no performance element to it the way you would tell a stand-up story. Itâs more
of a writing and performing process, and theyâre on a theme. Itâs as really
good way to break in, when people donât feel confident in performing, they can
just read.â
And, finally, there is a sketch night called Make Way For Ducklings.
âItâs probably the funnest thing to ever do,â Michael insists.
In addition, Project 52 runs other themed
nights where the comedy is about a specific â often nerdy â thing. âLike our Game of Thrones night. Recently we did a
âwould you ratherâ discussion. Itâs license to do whatever we want. Weâre not
locked into doing stand-up every week, like other rooms are.â
Makes me want to run away and join Michael
Hingâs circus. They have the most supportive milieu. âItâs not even just
students,â Michael insists. âItâs a specific kind of student.â The room has a
capacity of 130-odd. âWe donât like turning people away,â he says, âbut there
are nights when we say, âThere are people who shouldnât be here, could they
leaveâ¦â.â Such people, according to Michael, arenât going to âget into the
spiritâ of the roomâs comedy. He reckons theyâre people âwho want rape jokes
and âedgyâ comedyâ (said the man who suggested dinner-and-interview might serve
as the prelude to unwanted foreplay. And afterplay).
Going Solo
2012 was the first year Michael Hing took his own hour-long show, An Open Letter to Rich White People
Concerning Their Role in the Downfall of Civilisation, to the Melbourne
International Comedy Festival âbecause thatâs how the Australian comedy
industry works,â he acknowledges. Whereas in America you develop five minutes
of material, building it to 10 and then 15 and then twenty, on your way to an
hour, in Australia you âdo comedy for a bit and then you do an hour-long show
at a Festivalâ. Though not necessarily âreadyâ to take on the solo show, there
were indications that it was time â âa bunch of weird thingsâ starting to
happen from the beginning of the year.
âI broke up with a girl who
I had been dating for years. I started working at a university as an adult
instead of as a student lay-about.â It was, he says, part of that coupla-year
cycle where h panics a little and thinks he has to decide whether he should persevere
with comedy or pack it all in and try to get a real job.
âI gave myself to the end of the year to decide,â he explains: âIf Iâm
just doing one or two spots a week and only a couple of gigs a month are paid, then
Iâm going to focus on my career and do stand-up as a hobby. But if by the end
of the year Iâm doing stuff that I really like and Iâm really proud of what Iâm
doing, then comedy is the thing Iâm going to do.â
Focus on your âcareerâ, Hingers? What, pray,
tell, was the âcareerâ if it wasnât comedy, midway through 2011?
âAt the time I was booking bands and the
Roundhouse, at the University of New South Wales,â Michael says. âI was like,
âI can be a booker. And do comedy as a hobbyâ.â Of course, Michael gave that
all away, and his non-comedy employment nowadays consists of teaching digital
marketing and media at said university part time, âeven thought I donât have a
degree and Iâm not qualified at allâ.
Aiding the transition from part time amateur
comic to full time professional were the collaborative shows Michael had been
creating for earlier Sydney Comedy Festivals with Patrick Magee. A founding
member and stalwart of Comicide, the
other sketch comedy troupe operating around the same time as The Delusionists, Magee was in many ways
Hingâs perfect foil.
Their first show, 2010âs Illustrious Physicians of Romance, set out âto teach you everything
you need to know about love in an hourâ. A sample routine involved grabbing a
punter from the audience and calling up their ex-girlfriend in order to try and
win them back over the phone. The show arose out of Hing and Mageeâs respective
obsessions with women at the time. (What? And your long term relationship
faltered, Michael? How? Why?)
Their second show, the following yearâs Orientalism was a sustained ârallying
cry against ethnic comedyâ â one of Hingâs bugbears. Although Michael is still adamantly
opposed to ethnic comedy, he can at least acknowledge that â60 minutes is a
long time to be preachy about somethingâ.
These shows werenât necessarily good prep for
Hingâs one-man show. âThey were mostly improvised and they were more sketch
than stand-up,â Michael explains. âThey changed every night because Pat Magee has
an inability to maintain focus on stuff, which is what makes him super funny a
lot of the time. It also makes him highly emotionally volatile a lot of the
time, as well. He is seriously one of the smartest, funniest, cleverest people
Iâve ever met and worked with. If he ever bothered to commit to doing comedy
forever, heâd be great.â
Given that Patrickâs currently in the UK
pursuing comedy, chances are heâs well on his way to achieving that greatness.
As for Michael, the process made him realise he had a number of stories he
wanted to tell, and so it was time to do his own show. Its first incarnation was Iâm Only Doing This Because They Wonât Let Me Be A Rapper at the 2011 Sydney Fringe Festival.
Unqualified Success
Half a year on from the Melbourne Comedy Festival, Michaelâs attitude to
his season is telling.
âI came back from Melbourne with a good amount of money from doing
comedy,â he says, âwhich felt really, really cool.â
So comedy as career instead of hobby, then. No need to get qualified to
teach digital media and marketing after all.
âAt the same time, there was stuff in my comedy that I didnât feel very
proud of. I was doing some jokes that I thought were lazy, and some easy gags.
I felt a little bit guilty because I was using easy tricks â in about three or
four parts of my show â to get laughs.â
Oh, Hingers, ever the purist. He sometimes got laughs not by telling a
joke, but by using âjust the rhythm of a joke, and the word âf*ckâ.â What comic
has never been guilty of that? Your job is to make them laugh. Did you make
them laugh? Good. No problem. Unless youâre competing in a [Raw] comedy
competition, in which case, be concerned that the jokes are below your judgesâ
standards, rather than your audiencesâ. But even then, it doesnât matter: the
point of doing comedy is to make the audience laugh, not to win competitions.
And the point of doing comedy competitions is to make the audience laugh, not
to win competitions.
Still, Michael makes a convincing argument:
âFor the first three weeks, where Iâm selling out some nights and
getting great reviews, it feels great.â
Why wouldnât it? Thatâs every Melbourne Comedy Festival debutante â and
veteran â comicâs dream.
Uh-oh. Chortle is the über-comedy critic, the comedy critic sine qua
non. And Hing confirms that Chortle essentially said, ââHey, dickhead, youâre a mad, lazy writer who should be
trying harder, cos youâre cheapâ.â Hingâs paraphrasing, of course; Chortle is far more articulate than
that.
âI read that and I think, âHe sees through everything, and itâs
trueâ. And the reality is, any other achievement that I feel proud of, is
meaningless. So I come back from Melbourne with money that Iâm not
uncomfortable to have, but think I should put it towards something cool.â
Good man, Hingers. I think I speak for almost everyone when I say Iâm
never uncomfortable to have money, and I always think I should put it towards
something cool. But Iâm never as cool as Michael, who has put his money to the best
possible use, producing fringe festival shows of several of his comedy peers.
But thatâs the obvious, immediate penance â putting potentially
âill-gotten gainsâ toward a greater good. Michaelâs taking other initiatives as
well:
âI donât have a lot of strengths, but one thing Iâm quite good at is
learning. I flatter myself to think I can learn quite well, so if someone I
respect, whose reviews Iâve read, says to me âthis is a two-star show and you
need to work harder and not be lazyâ, then I can click onto that being a real
thing.â
And so for Hingers, itâs once more into the fray: among the multitude of
shows heâs involved with is the new hour of material, in development for the
2013 festival season.
All roads lead to Hingers
While âcoasting comedianâs guiltâ goes some way to explaining why so
many roads lead to Hing â the âSydney Hing Festivalâ part of it, anyway â there
are still all the other undertakings he is and has been involved in.
For example, a couple of years ago one of the new hot young things of
comedy was a svelte Sydney chanteuse called Gen Fricker whose sinister
world view with conveyed via punk ballads sugar coated with a thin veneer of faux-naivete bookended with some of the most hilarious off-the-cuff banter youâll ever have served up at you.
Another one of the many to arise out of the Sydney Uni milieu, Gen is clearly a
world-class talent in her formative years. Suddenly, Hingers was hosting the
breakfast shift with her on Radio FBi.
A couple of years previous, Jack Druce was the youngest Raw finalist
ever (dubbed âan embryoâ at the time by one slightly older â and possibly slightly jealous
comic). Now Hing is co-hosting one of the better comedian-fronted podcasts with
him.
Cale Bain hosts an brilliant impro night on Tuesdays at the Roxbury
Hotel (the second best in the known universe, according to Hingers â but he has
a vested interest in the Impro Den, so itâs hard to call) and Hing is one of
the regulars.
A bunch of brash alternate comics have a weekly package of performance
anarchy called Phuklub â of which Iâve written at length. Guess whoâs now a
regular there, tooâ¦
And virtually any cool newbie you see who is or was at one time a
student at Sydney University, rest assured, is a friend, was groomed by,
appeared in a revue with, or letâs face it, will one day regret never having embarked
upon a meaningful physical relationship with, Michael Hing.
Thereâs a reason why this is.
âIf I want this to be my job,â Hing explains, âif I talk to my friends,
most of whom are comics, and theyâre doing a cool thing, I want to be a part of
it. And I feel like I have a disparate amount of experience now that I can go
into any place and try and fit in with what theyâre doing.â
And, more than wanting the constant challenge of trying to apply his worldview
and talents to each new comedic undertaking, thereâs a far more fundamental and
obvious reason.
âThereâs no shortage of talented people in any comedy scene,â Hing says.
âAll that separates me or anyone from anyone else is the amount of work that you
do. If I think Iâm good and Iâm gonna coast this out, there are any number of
more naturally talented people who can take my place.â
One of the forces guiding Michael, particularly in the way he helps
administer comedy to university campuses and beyond, taking newbies under his
wing as he investigates new avenues for himself and others, is to provide the
means of access that didnât exist when he first hit the scene.
âWhen I was at uni and had a dream of doing stand-up, there was no way
that I knew how to go to the Mic in Hand on a Thursday night. If youâre a
student studying a science degree or whatever, you go, âoh, there are people at
my uni putting a show on every Wednesday night, and theyâve done shows in
Melbourne, and theyâre doing gigs at the Comedy Store. If I hang around with
them maybe I can learn how to do this â how to get it doneâ. Thatâs a really
attractive thing to be able to offer young people. When I was in high school
and at university I didnât know how to be a comedian. Now, if I can offer anyone
anything, itâs this: here is a night where you can get on and you can do
comedy, and if you like comedy, I can tell you who to talk to and who can help
you out. And now we get the people who run the Comedy Store coming by and
checking out our night. Thatâs really cool for me.â
Thus, Michael is producing 20-odd shows at this yearâs Sydney Fringe
Festival because when he was at Uni he didnât know how to do comedy, and now he
has a bit of an idea. Not just of how to approach it, but of the different
approaches you might choose to take. Indeed, Michael has several approaches of
his own that heâs putting into practice all at once â in a handful of shows.
One of them is a sketch show with Ben Jenkins, called Ben and Hing Do Sketches At You for the Better Part of an Hour. But donât
think, for an instant, that itâs another âMichael Hing and Patrick Mageeâ show
with Jenkins playing the role of Magee, even though Hing works as well with Ben
as he does with Pat.
âBen and I have been writing together for six years now, so we have a
catalogue of 100 sketches. Weâre gonna pick out 10 or 15 of them to call them a
show.â
And of course, thereâs the solo show, Occupy White People, thatâll be the prototype of his
2013 festival show.
But the most political and personal one, by far, is A Series of Young Asian Comedians not doing Asian Jokes, which
features Jen Wong, Ronny Chieng (joint Best Newcomer at the Melbourne
International Comedy Festival this year), Alex Lee, Jonathan Lee and Aaron Chen along with Hingers. âWe
all do 10 minutes each and no one mention race, no one mentions racism, no one
mentions immigration, no one mentions being Asian, no one mentions stereotypesâ¦
nothing. Itâs us doing jokes that have nothing to do with that.â
The stereotyped kid
Michael and I donât quite agree on the âwog comedyâ issue. Being
slightly older, and remembering what an amazing phenomenon Wogs Out Of Work was, I appreciate that self-deprecating humour was
the first opportunity certain audiences â consisting of huge cross-sections of
Australian society â got to see characters they could identify with on stage.
Performers were talking to them about their particular experiences in ways that
Ango Austalian comics and other stage and screen characters couldnât.
Furthermore, these non-Anglo Australian stereotypes werenât merely the âlowâ
characters, the comic relief, the butt of the Anglo Australiansâ jokes. They
played the gamut of characters, and where they were the butt of the jokes, they
were the butt of their own jokes: the humour was self-deprecating, so it wasnât
hurtful. Decades on, yes, that kind of humour is clearly less sophisticated;
society has changed enough (we hope) that itâs unnecessary. We see non-Anglo
Australians in the media representing more than the mere fact that they happen
to be people of foreign extraction. But in less enlightened times, self-deprecating
wog comedy was empowering.
âYeah,â Hing replies, âbut if the only way ethnic people can identify
with a character on television in the 1980s is through Con the Fruiterer,
thatâs a damning indictment of television. Itâs so rare, for example, to see a
Chinese person on TV where their defining role isnât merely being Chinese. Itâs
only now that youâre seeing hot Asian girls who are actually just âhot girlsâ,
rather than âhot Asian girlsâ.â
Somewhere, a Gen X woman â who probably reviews for The Age â is reading this and being annoyed at the objectification
of âhotâ and âgirlsâ when Hing clearly meant âwomenâ; is it a bigger faux pas
when special attention is being paid to the avoidance of racial
generalisations? His point stands, however: if the person of a certain race
appears in popular culture merely as a stereotypical representation of that
race, there is a tendency for kids engaging with that culture to define
themselves and others primarily by ethnicity. âAnd it is divisive,â Hing insists,
âbecause, growing up, you are no longer the kid who happens to be Chinese or
the kid who happens to be Italian. You are âthe Chinese kidâ. Or âthe Italian
kidâ. And for some people thatâs a really positive point of difference, but
there is no reason that they have to be that. Why not âyou are the smart kidâ
or âyou are the fast kidâ?â
âA lot of Asian comedians do it: âMy dad gets his Ls and his Rs mixed
up. Whatâs up with that?ââ Hing says, outlining why this line of humour fails.
âYouâre making fun of your dadâs accent. Number one: itâs very
well-trodden ground. You should be above that. If youâre holding a microphone,
you should hold yourself to be above that. Number two: if your parents have a
thick accent, chances are, theyâre first generation emigrants. They probably
made huge sacrifices to bring you here and bring you up in a country with
opportunities where they can give you the best life possible. And youâre gonna
get on stage and make fun of them because they donât speak English properly and
they have a funny accent? Go f*ck yourself. That f*cken annoys me. It enrages
me.â
The rage has its origins during Hingâs own childhood.
âGrowing up in the mid-90s in Australia, watching a comedian on
television who looks like me,â he recalls, âI get excited, and then he says,
âspring rolls⦠boogadah boogadah boogadah, whatâs up with thatâ¦?â (The
âboogadah boogadah boogadahâ is shorthand not unlike the Yiddish âyaddah yaddah
yaddahâ, serving here to dismiss facile observations.) âEveryone goes, âThatâs
amazingâ and they grow up thinking thatâs okay to do, and you think thatâs what
you have to do as a Chinese guy doing comedy. I just want to prove to people
that you donât have to do that.â
What it feels like, I offer, is that Michael saw Hung Le on television,
and irrespective of how funny or clever Hungâs observations were, later on at
school narrow minded people repeated them, seeking to tease Hing. âDefinitely,â
he admits. âBut this is what Iâm talking about. People take away the message
they want. Itâs your job as a comedian to ensure that nobody leaves your show
going, âIâm going to find the guy who that applies to and make him feel like
sh*tâ. You start a ripple effect where youâve hurt some guy you donât even
know.â
Iâm not sold on the argument. Part of me feels that Hingâs âbunging it
onâ more than he actually feels it, in order to create the context for his
particular brand of intellectually outraged stand-up to work. And mostly, it
seems, itâs for the edification of less privileged âoutsidersâ. I mean, the
open letter to rich white people has a different meaning coming from a rich
non-white person, than it does from a poor non-white person. Thereâs nothing
wrong with taking that position, it just takes more effort and more experience
to make it feel less âbunged onâ and more relevant and sincere.
âI donât feel disenfranchised,â Hing confirms. âIâm the Asian son of two
doctors who grew up fine. I was bullied a little bit at school, but there are
people who cop it much worse. But racial injustice angers me. And when I talk
about racist stuff in my comedy, itâs because I genuinely think there is something
funny to be said about it.â
But, Michael continues, the reason he finds âthe vast majority of ethnic
comedyâ loathsome is because âwhen youâre in a position of power â and I think
we can agree that having the microphone is being in that position of powerâ
your target â the butt of the joke, and the level at which you pitch your jokes
â has to be above your own level. This because, if you donât, âif youâve got a
microphone and youâre screaming about someone who has less power than you and
youâre aiming your anger and ridicule downwards, youâre just bullying someone.
Whereas if youâre aiming it upwards âtaking on the prime minister or people who
are muscular and rascist or people who are smart and rich â they can defend
themselves; they have a right of reply in a cultural capital.â
I agree with this philosophy. And I can see why it is such an
interesting comedic path that Michael Hing treads. Coming from that privileged
background, there arenât many targets above him. And the bullying canât have
been so full-on from fellow privileged lads.
âI went to the local public primary school, but because it was in a reasonable
area âIllawong, in the Shire â it wasnât a rough school,â Michael confirms. âI
was âthe Chinese kidâ. It totally influences my position. I hated being defined
as âthe Chinese kidâ because everyone else is pointing and laughing.â Perhaps,
Michael considers, thatâs where the comedy-as-defence-mechanism began because,
he says, âI grabbed the mic at talent quests and stuff.â
Talking out of school
After primary school, Hingers wasnât so keen to attend the local
selective public high school. âI didnât know what I wanted to do, so my parents
sent me to Trinity Grammar. I got involved in some dicey stuff. I joined a
gang.â
Dicey gang stuff at Trinity� Apple in the chapel, I enquire, getting my
posh private school scandals muddled.
âNo, Trinity was âThe Anacondaâ,â Hingers reminds me, adding, âand no, a
proper gangâ.
This was the key story of Hingâs Open
Letterâ¦and since heâs performed
it on stage, he doesnât mind relating it to me now. âThrough a series of
events,â says Michael, he âended up being friends with this guy whose older
brother was in a gang at Cabramatta.â Lonely and in need of friends â often a
characteristic looming early in a comedianâs life â Hingers ended up âdoing
jobsâ for these people that included picking up packages from the guyâs place
and delivering them to addresses in China Town.
âItâs hundreds of dollars every time that I do it, and I pretend I donât
know whatâs going on, but I know: itâs drugs and weapons and stolen goods in my
school bag.â
Dressing like the über-nerd he is â âtop button done up, tie done up,
socks pulled up even though Iâm wearing long pantsâ â Michael is the perfect
mule.
âI do this for between 12 and 18 months. Eventually my friend gets moved
to Hong Kong, to live with a disciplinarian uncle. I eventually quit, and
because Iâm a nerd and they know Iâm a coward, they donât hurt me. They let me
go.â
This is around 2000 when the âanacondaâ sex scandal took place, and
suddenly the schoolâs systematically searching every studentâs locker. âA lot
of people Iâm associated with are called to the principalâs office,â Hing
reports. âEventually, Iâm called. Iâm sitting there, crying and stuff. They
tell me Iâm not going to go to that school next year, and I think, âIâm
f*cked!â but it turns out that the reason Iâm at the principalâs office isnât
because of that stuff; itâs because about 6 months earlier, being a super nerd,
I made a website about my friend David calling him âgayâ because I was 14 and
thatâs what I found funny. They were like, âthatâs unacceptibleâ and I was
like, âyouâre right, it is, I need to leave the school; goodbyeâ.â
Hing ended up at Carringbah High, the selective high school he had been
trying to avoid, where he met all his nerdy friends, was mocked, got angry, got
to uni got into comedy and eventually ended up opposite me in a pizza place in
Manly Vale, where I ate most of his vegie selection after finishing my own
marinara, and after I swallow his last piece, I have to know: how the hell were
the doctors Mama and Papa Hing about all this?
âAgain, just stupidly supportive of everything,â
Michael says. âThat also contextualises what Iâm doing now: sure, Iâm not
finishing my degree or getting a job, but Iâm also not in a gang, which is a
thing I came very close to doing for the rest of my life. It makes the choice
of being a stand-up comic much, much easier.â