Getting the joke
Imbewu is going where few soapie’s dare to tread – into the deadly serious world of stand-up comedy.
When we saw that Imbewu was planning a storyline that involves stand-up comedy, we stood back in awe of the writing team’s guts. If you think that making people cry is hard – and we’ve seen how brilliantly Imbewu does that – try making them laugh. And they weren’t just going to go for the easy ha-ha. The storyline needed to touch on many types of humour, including the brilliant kind that gets everyone laughing, the dreadful kind that leads to awkward silences and embarrassment, as well as the kind that starts off funny and then just gets mean. We asked the headwriter Carrie Doherty and Raphael Griffiths, who plays events promoter Zithulele, how they told the epic upcoming story of Emsamo’s comedy nights…
A COMIC COLLABORATION
The stand-up comedy scripts were an unusual collaboration between the regular writers and local stand-up talent. “Our biggest concern was, of course, writing comedy as writers are not necessarily comedians. None of us were under any false illusions that we were actually that funny,” says Carrie. “We loved the concept and the idea of showcasing local talent and auditions were hysterical! Once the writers had written their scripts, we sat down with the comedians and explained what we wanted to achieve from the scene and the emotion and humour we were going for from the different actors so that they knew exactly what role they were playing. With the script as a guide, the comedians were given room to experiment and ad lib until the scene felt right. If it worked, it stayed. I think that we got a good mix of the comedians’ own flair and the script.”
WORDS AND MUSIC
Interpretation is everything in comedy – it’s the difference between knowing the words of a joke and having people laugh when you tell it. “Normally the performers are given their scripts and they follow it as it is. It’s pretty locked down. With this process, we allowed more freedom to the actors and comedians as good humour is often spontaneous and not scripted,” says Carrie. The process allowed for the comedians and cast to work on timing and a precise touch with language. The entire storyline promises to keep Imbewu’s onscreen translation team on their toes for those English subtitles. “The fact of the matter is that you can’t translate directly from one language to the other,” admits Carrie. “Very often the message is lost in translation, but we work hard on getting the meaning of the dialogue across rather then a direct translation.”
PAUSE FOR LAUGHTER
The cast meanwhile had their own concerns. “I’m a stand-up comedy fan. I watch a lot of comedy on Netflix on my own time when I am at home chilling, so my concern was firstly, was it going to be authentic?” says Raphael. “And then what kind of comedy would they go for? Would they go for intelligent, over-your-head type comedy or would they go for something generic?” And I wondered which comedian they
were going to get or what calibre of comedians they were going to get. So I was like, ‘Eish, okay’. And then how was I going to play this as Zithulele? Would I just be neutral as an events promoter or would I also come with that comical element? Then I found out who was coming onboard as the main comedian for the episode. He’s a friend of mine who I worked with on [radio station] Gagasi FM – Flymotion, a very funny dude. Then I was like, ‘Cool. Concerns out the window’.”
HE’S SO FLY
Flymotion Makhanya can skip across the funny-stupid tightrope in his sleep, which is exactly what Imbewu needed for their script as the storyline truly kicks in during the first week of March. “He doesn’t take himself too seriously. He’s got stupid jokes! And that gets you laughing. Sometimes they’re not even funny but the fact that they are not funny makes you laugh – they’re not funny to the point that they’re funny,” says Raphael. “Eish, Flymotion is fly. He is the craziest guy you’d ever meet. You’d swear he is on a constant high. He brought his natural element, so anyone who knows Flymotion, they will be able to tell that was Fly on TV.”
SERIOUSLY FUNNY
Alas, there is another fly buzzing about – the annoying kind. Emsamo’s waiter-turned-assistant manager Lindo (Anathi Gobeni) is thrilled when he finds what Zithulele has in mind for the club towards the end of February. And he’ll give the go-ahead for the event if Zithulele puts him on the line-up. There’s nothing Lindo loves more than a good joke… If only he could tell one. How bad is he? “This guy is terrible!” Raphael laughs helplessly. “The other comedians are like, ‘Dude! We are not going to come do your show if you have an amateur like Lindo opening up for us’.” When it came to filming though, Lindo was so dreadful that the cast couldn’t help breaking character. “It’s those typical low-budget knock-knock jokes. Knock knock, who’s there? Uh Lindo, Lindo who… the typical nursery rhyme type of joking. I don’t know how the writers pulled that off. It was weird because we kept laughing but we knew very well that these jokes were terrible. The first few takes we would laugh, then we would pull back the laughter. Well, we tried. But then we’d end up just laughing again.”
KEEPING IT FRESH
At other times it was getting the cast laughing at a really funny joke that was the problem. Take #1 might be funny, but the joke would have to be re-told several times to get the shot from its various angles. The first time, the joke kills. The fourth time, it gets killed. Imbewu was prepared. “The most fun shoots were when we’d do a shoot that was off record, when we’d just let everyone loosen up. We had four stand-up comedians and they gave us some fresh material that they weren’t going to put on the show. That was fun! They kept coming with new jokes while we were filming. Onscreen when they [post-production] edit it, you guys will see one joke but we got like eight, nine, ten jokes,” says Raphael happily. We can’t wait to see this March madness!