THE STAGE
The MC, Benjamin
Steve Wrigley, Billy T Nominee
The Lonesome Buckwhips (Also Billy T Nominees): Gareth Williams, Miriama Ketu, Arthur Meek, Ben Hutchison
The Wellington Comedy Club presented two of the 2008 Billy T Nominees, Steve Wrigley and The Lonesome Buckwhips, hosted by MC Benjamin. Transforming the space with tables and candles for this stand up event was audience friendly. But you have to book a table in advance or sit on the side, which is okay, unless like my friend Kazz Funky Blue, you have no where to put your drink and wedges.
Wedges? That is funny to a North American like me because we call them fried potatoes. Or French fries. That is until the Iraq war in 2003 when France would not support the US, and in retaliation some restaurants changed the name of this carcinogenic food favorite to Freedom Fries. That's funny too. Why? I don't know. Eating grease-soaked potatoes named freedom as a patriotic act is just silly.
Comedy must be the hardest art form. The best comedians just tell the truth. We laugh despite ourselves, sometimes we feel uncomfortable and are relieved some one is saying what we know, what we feel. Like Lenny Bruce in the U.S. He wrote about everything, calling his scripts "bits." In 1964 he went to jail on an obscenity charge. But that was just an excuse, Lenny was a political artist and, after all, he was Jewish; and, he was jailed the same year the US passed the Civil Rights Act. Bruce died two years later at the age of 40 from an apparent accidental drug overdose.
To read more: go to Lumiere: http://lumiere.net.nz/reader/arts.php/item/1489
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