The bit on the stage is easy; setting up’s hard
THE stage bit is easy. Everything else is hard. Wellington comedian Robbie Nicol last night began a threeshow stint at the Hutton Theatre after this year moving fulltime into his craft.
Nicol (24) is best known for White Man Behind A Desk a satire series broadcast on YouTube.
Running in Dunedin this week, Idea Worth Spreading, is that idea turned into a onehour performance.
The show for Arts Festival Dunedin was, Nicol joked (perhaps) ‘‘us giving up on comedy, turning our backs on comedy; we think political comedy is morally evil, morally reprehensible’’.
Idea Worth Spreading premiered at the New Zealand International Comedy Festival in Wellington in May.
Nicol won the best newcomer prize at the 2017 comedy festival.
Nicol’s earlier years included school drama and musicals, work with Shakespeare Globe Centre New Zealand, and a university semester in Edinburgh where he did theatre.
His YouTube series started after he worked on a web series put together by friends.
‘‘They were all just as young as me, in their early 20s, and they were making it work, getting quite a few views, and I just realised this is a possible thing.’’
After that he suggested to friends ‘‘a Jon Stewarty type thing’’ — Jon Stewart is an American satirist — and that became White Man Behind a Desk.
Nicol started off ‘‘just giving it a go’’, and it very quickly got thousands of views.
‘‘We were like, OK, I guess this is working, we’ll just keep doing it.
‘‘That’s our job, to take apparently boring topics and try to make them as interesting as possible so young people will watch them for seven or eight minutes.
‘‘We’re trying to get more funding for more web series so we can keep doing it, keep making funny educational content.’’
Developing the stage show was an opportunity to do different types of comedy.
He wanted to branch into sketch comedy and ‘‘stretch our comedy muscles, basically’’.
Was his new fulltime career was enjoyable or stressful? ‘‘It’s both actually.
‘‘My mum dropped me off at the airport’’ to head to Dunedin.
I said: ‘Tomorrow night I’m going to get to just play silly games with the audience for an hour and it’s going to be extremely fun and that’s our job’.’’
That it was fun was a good thing, as ‘‘the rest of it’s so hard’’.
‘‘It’s so hard to get work, it’s so hard to bring it together, and it’s so hard to get things across the line.’’
There was one benefit though: ‘‘It’s a good thing the rest of the business is so hard, otherwise everyone would be doing it.’’