Stand up for NEW comedy
The new Irish comedians are fearless and pretty damn funny, so get ready to be entertained...
YEARS ago, the comedy circuit often involved schlepping from one dingy club to another, or — best case scenario — cutting one’s teeth on the bottom of a comedy festival bill.
But technology has changed everything. Now, with the right kind of incisive material, it’s entirely possible to forge a successful comedy career without ever leaving home. But wily performers can get the best of both worlds as these comedians will agree.
While they may have started out making videos at home, these comedy sensations have graduated to the live stage and will be standing up with the very best at this year’s Vodafone Comedy Festival in Iveagh Gardens.
TONY CANTWELL
IF you haven’t seen Dubliner Cantwell’s hilarious ‘Clongowes’ sketch, you’re missing out. It became the moment that Cantwell, who had been posting satire and impressions on his Facebook page, really became a force to be reckoned with.
‘I think even having the face filter on it made it even funnier,’ he recalls. ‘I wanted to pretend to be that jovial Southside guy. I couldn’t believe it when it got 800,000 views. People are still commenting on it — someone send me a meme just today.’
Cantwell believes that Irish audiences are particularly prone to appreciating and sharing online comedy material.
‘I found a massive culture shift in Britain, as they don’t like taking the p**s out of themselves like we do,’ he observes. ‘Here, it’s a real currency online. People tag their friends as if to say, “this is you, you’re an idiot”. It’s how we communicate.’
Initially, Cantwell tried his hand at live comedy in Britain while working in sales.
‘In London you’re the new person, and you can shake the identity you have for yourself,’ he recalls. ‘I was like, “Oooh, I can be the guy who does comedy here”. I thought I’d differentiate myself by being the Irish guy and making IRA jokes, so that didn’t go down well.’
In the end, Cantwell’s big break came almost by accident, thanks to GAA star Bernard Brogan.
‘I was making silly videos with my friends, and we found this lost passport of a guy called Bernard Brogan. We didn’t know at the time he was a GAA player,’ recalls Cantwell. ‘We made this little film about the superpowers of his passport, and funnily enough, it blew up. It was just a mad coincidence.
‘The great thing about the videos is that they’re really disposable,’ he adds. ‘As a comedian, there’s no pressure, and there’s no real cost involved. You could shoot them in the jacks if you wanted.’
And Cantwell is aware that any material conjured up in the bathroom, as it were, could lead to a lucrative career.
‘There’s elements to it where you could grow it to a sponsorship level,’ he explains. ‘You could have it where 80 per cent is brand new comedy and 20 per cent could be an ad. I’m not in that percentage but I know it can be done.’
The orthodox comedy circuit beckons, but Cantwell is happy to concentrate many of his efforts online. ‘I think most comedy will be online soon – it’s the way it’s going to go,’ he notes. ‘If I did something on RTÉ, could my fanbase even see it? At least this way, I know where people are looking for my stuff.’
EMMA DORAN
WHILE Dublin comedian Emma cut her teeth on the stand-up circuit, she is evidently in her element online, where her YouTube videos — full of Irish truth-telling and brilliantly sly humour — often go viral. The cliché of the martyred Irish mammy also comes in for a regular skewering, too.
And no topics are off-limits: the video topics on Emma’s YouTube channel run the entire gamut from “Bumping Into An Ex Makeup Tutorial” and “Going To Mass — Get The Look” to “Sure The Nuns Are Sound” and “Understanding Auld Fellas”.
Her initial break — which then led to a part in a TV pilot — came about because of those YouTube videos: the self-starting easiness of it all emboldened her to keep trying. And it paid off handsomely: after performing stand-up for years, Doran appeared in Republic Of Telly, and had a role in RTÉ’s Bridget and Eamon.
‘I think in the beginning I might have just done a few promo videos for the upcoming Fringe Festival, and some of them took off,’ she recalls. ‘The thing is, it could take you a year to come up with 20 minutes of standup material that will raise the roof, versus a 60-second video that could be little more than a fleeting thought.’
The immediacy of connecting with the online audience is a huge bonus for Emma… even if the negative commenters occasionally take some getting used to.
‘When you put stuff online, you get the feedback right away, and it can be quite harsh,’ she admits. ‘I remember seeing comments under one of my videos about my garden before, something like, “someone needs to get the lawnmower out”, and I thought, “well, fair point.”
‘There is a troll element, which is obviously quite different to the feedback that people give you to your face at a gig. I don’t see it as necessarily a positive or negative thing — I try to see the overview.
‘My favourite message to get is a person who says, “you know what? I was having a s**t day, and you gave me a giggle”.’
Doran’s comedy skates quite close to the edge; something that she has noticed, in a wider sense, has been blunted in comedy by the permanently outraged online brigade.
‘On the one hand, it can be annoying,’ she says. ‘But on the other, it does force me to be a whole lot more clever with the jokes.’
ENYA MARTIN
THANKS to a carousel of hilarious characters, 25-yearold Enya Martin has started to command huge numbers for her videos.
‘When I started in 2014, “going viral” to me meant 5,000 views,’ she smiles. ‘Now, if I only get 100,000 views, it feels like a case of going back to the drawing board. Nowadays, the videos would get a good few million views. It’s never the ones you plan for — some you put your heart and soul into only get 100,000 views, and then something else would get a million views within 24 hours.’
Such numbers means that she has been able to leave behind a career in marketing and pursue her dream of being a comedian full-time.
‘I was doing marketing internships back in 2016, and at the same time, I signed with a live gig agent and an online agent,’ she recalls. ‘My online agent said, “we’d love to work with you in terms of brands”. I made one video, and it was like a month’s wages.’
On Enya’s Giz A Laugh Facebook page, among her most memorable characters is Shardon, a loud Northsider.
‘She’s loud and chavvy, and fairly stereotypical. She met her boyfriend
Anto in a bingo hall,’ smiles Enya. ‘People found it hilarious and could relate to her and to the culture.’
Enya has noticed a groundswell in funny types trying their luck on social media, but, as she observes, if you start doing comedy purely for the likes, you’re already dead in the water.
‘I see it all the time with people messaging me,’ she says. ‘They say, ‘‘I want to have a page like yours, tell me how to do that.” But you can see straightaway if someone is talented or not. There are people who don’t put the effort in, and it’s pure attention seeking.’
Even comedians who have already flourished on the traditional comedy path are now asking Clondalkin native Enya for advice on how to break the internet.
‘A lot of the current comedians want to make funny videos now,’ she says. ‘Fair play trying to stay current, but I’ve found that people are really picky who they respond to. You can just have the gene to entertain on stage, then the gene to be able to entertain on screen. They’re not necessarily the same thing.’
For now, Enya is trying to explore whether she is one of the lucky ones with both genes.
‘I do prefer the stand-up as when you’re on stage and you hear that laughter live, there’s no better feeling,’ she says. ‘With some jokes, you’re really taking a risk, and there’s a split second after you tell it where you don’t know if people will laugh or not. When they do, it’s an incredible feeling.’
SHANE CLIFFORD
THERE’S a very good chance you’ve already come across this 32year-old’s offbeat comedy videos. The Tralee comedian arrived on-radar in 2014 with his ‘Aw, Class’ clip, which has to date amassed almost 200,000 views. After that, the surrealist comedy kept on coming, leading heavyweights like Limmy and the Rubberbandits to profess their admiration. Yet Clifford admits that he initially took the online route into comedy due to overwhelming shyness.
‘Comedy was always in the back of my mind, but I came to it pretty late,’ he admits. ‘I was too shy and nervous to do anything about it for a while. I did a standup gig in Killarney to about four people — two of them were American tourists and one was asleep. I realised I was way too nervous for stand-up, and even a little nervous about putting videos online.
‘But I started putting the videos online, out of boredom really. I didn’t really mind so much if people saw me, although I did worry if people I knew would see them, and be like, “What are you doing?”’
Yet what started as an amusing hobby soon started to single Clifford out as a talent to watch, with his Facebook page ‘Shane’s Comedy Videos’ soon gaining traction with fans.
‘When the Rubberbandits shared a video, it was a crazy moment,’ admits Shane. ‘People from all over the country were recognising me — at first I hate it because I didn’t know how to act, but I started to enjoy it.’
Yet as the positive plaudits poured in, there was the odd online naysayer. ‘I don’t really care about any of that,’ admits Clifford. ‘Sometimes I think it’s funny. Most of the time, the people who are trolling you are idiots anyway.’
The entire experience appears to have fortified the comedian — so much so that he has even begun to enjoy live gigs.
‘I really enjoy it these days,’ Clifford notes. ‘My first headline stand-up show will be in Whelan’s (in Dublin) in October. I’ve started concentrating on standup more — there’s nothing like a live audience.’
The Vodafone Comedy Festival is taking place in Iveagh Gardens, Dublin this weekend with Tommy Tiernan, Alison Spittle, Joanne McNally and more. See vodafonecomedy.com for info.