The Dog and Kony Show.

Authors note: This piece is inspired by this article and the events that led up to it. 

Melbourne Comedy Festival Review. 

The Kony Show.

Last night I saw some of the best comedy that I have ever witnessed, in print, in person, on film, ever. Although the crowd was small the message was poignant and most importantly, devastatingly hilarious. There were four main performers, a mother and her two children, Kaylan aged 8, her brother Dylan aged 10 and someone mysteriously referred to as Katheleen. Their lines were delivered deadpan and aside from a few smiles from the kids all the actors took about their task with an enthusiastic seriousness and without a single shred of irony. There were no pratfalls, no crazy antics, no one said the word ‘zany’ and no one got hit in the face with a pie. It was just a group of people going about their business with honesty and integrity with only some t-shirts and posters as props.

I swear, I almost asphyxiated I was laughing that hard. Their delivery was so natural and earnest that I almost forgot that they were performers. They walked that wonderful line that meant that no one knew if they were serious or not and it made the absurd sentences that came out of their mouths all the more amusing. At first the audience was silent, then a few smirks began to play out across the faces as people tuned in to this particular frequency, then the smirks gave way to giggles and before we knew it we were leaning hard on each other trying to breath through the hysteria, struggling to keep our feet.

Sometimes comedy is just comedy, and then sometimes, rarely, it breaks out of its zenith and throws itself out of our sphere of reference to become something else, something almost indefinable. It is sociopolitical, moral-ethic comedy. Because we can relate to what’s happening it makes us question our own lives and circumstances, because we identify with the comedian we can also identify with the subject matter of his jokes. We were laughing not only at the act but at ourselves, laughing at our wretched pathetic loneliness and the ways we try and combat it. Clicktavism, and Social networking, our need to grab on to a cause no matter how far removed or how relevant it is because of our need to feel validated in a digital realm.

The laughter we were laughing was the cathartic. It was laugh therapy at its finest. I’ll probably never get cancer now, no matter how hard I try. The audience became one, strangers were turning to each other and exclaiming, ‘I can’t believe it, how do they keep it up?’ whilst wiping the tears from their eyes. We knew we were part of something special, we knew we were witnessing the birth of something big, the next huge movement that would pick the world up and carry it to a better place. And we were there at its inception.

Later I got to catch up with the actors and they were as funny off stage as they were on. I asked the kids how they felt being involved in the show and they said that they couldn’t be happier, that it was good for children to experience adult situations because it gives them an opportunity to see what exciting adventures awaited them in their adult-hood. I told her that I, for one, can’t wait to see them either. I asked her how she was enjoying her run at the comedy festival and she said “It's bit sad more people didn't turn up, but I feel like I am doing the right thing.” I told her that indeed she was and that I would try and encourage my friends to see what all the fuss was about. “I'm hoping a lot of people see Kony, it is really important,” she said, and I told her that I couldn’t agree more.