Comedy Festival 2007

Courteney Hocking

Courteney Hocking is appearing at the 2007 Melbourne International Comedy Festival. I caught up with her after work one night to discuss her upcoming show.

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Following her success last year with her solo debut show ‘Foolish Ideas and Crackpot Inventions’ at the Melbourne International Comedy Festival, Courteney Hocking returns this year with her new stand up routine ‘Un-Australian’.

For 2007, Courteney has chosen a completely different topic. “Un-Australian is certainly grounded in my experiences growing up in Australia and where I fit in. It’s about the notion of trying to work out what is Australian from what we call un-Australian using examples such as [Australia] being built from convicts, growing up in Nunawading, football, cricket, David Hicks, and the Head Mufti on Dancing with the Stars.”

Walking into the Corner Hotel in Richmond, Courteney doesn’t stand out as a person who likes to throw herself on stage and be the centre of attention. If fact, she is almost the complete opposite, dressed conservatively with neat hair and make-up, looking like she could have left any office building in Richmond.

Courteney admits that she is not “a wacky, zany comedian” and that she takes her comedy very seriously. In fact, it’s fair to say that there are two Courteney Hockings. A shy, serious person off stage, who works a nine to five job, and a stand-up comedian taking on issues close to her heart in the name of comedy. “It's a bit of an art form taking that sadness and making it into comedy or satire, so I guess that makes me a little bit of a split personality. I spend time watching the news and having a cry over things like David Hicks which probably wouldn't make for much of a live show. Girl sits in underwear crying while watching ABC news wouldn’t make much of a comedy show.”

At 24, Courteney is well known having only been in comedy for a short time. She received very positive feedback from critics on last year’s show that explored the world of patented inventions. Her show was highly structured and included a slide show of some of the most useless patented inventions. Courteney even went as far as constructing one of the inventions: a mechanical ‘high five’ contraption to allow friendless people to share a ‘high five’. The contraption was passed around so the audience could experience loneliness.

Courteney feels that this year’s show will be more true to her. “I prefer to perform topical stuff than to talk about myself but it's important that people get a feel for and connect to you”. She agrees that writing political satire can be difficult as it needs to be constantly updated. “A gig can be really good one week, but then I can’t use it the next, so I need to re-write half the show. But also I feel it's important to be engaged with the world around me on my own terms. I think our society encourages people to be me-centric. I just want people to realise that it's not all about them. I think I've worked out what my voice is and now I know how to use it.”

In 2001, Courteney was a Victorian finalist in Raw Comedy, a national search for stand-up talent. In the same year, she was the co-winner of Campus Comedy a competition to find the funniest university students in the country. “[Winning] put a bit of pressure on me in that I won with Hamish Blake who’s [now] famous and I’m not, so that’s a bit disappointing.” But this provided Courteney with an opportunity to improve her comedy through Comedy Zone at the 2002 Comedy Festival - a chance for up and coming Australian comedians to perform at the Festival. “A month of shows that someone else pays for is definitely really handy and it’s a good thing to have on your CV.”

Since last year’s Festival, Courteney has been busy fusing two of her passions – comedy and music – by initiating Loungeroom Fancies at the Glitch Bar in Fitzroy. It’s a get together where “some of your favourite international and local comedians put together their list of all-time top five songs but would never get played in your local nightclub. This is music for people who love music, but can’t dance. We’ve had songs people have written in their bedrooms revealed for the first time.”

Courteney has also been hard at work putting together a podcast, Nonstopical, with comedians Andrew McClelland and Lawrence Leung. In 2005/06 Andrew and Lawrence were putting together a radio program and asked Courteney to join them. The podcast was a natural progression. It is produced in Courteney’s lounge room, and is listed in Podbean’s 100 most popular podcasts.

Courteney wants to make a career out of stand-up and hopes that “ego surfing” on Google will link to “[a] good review, something that has the words ‘political satirist’ and ‘new generation’.” Yes, a blatant plug, but what else do you expect from someone who is so serious about her passion? If Courteney could predict the future, she would have herself “with my own TV show, touring round making enough money to put on the shows I want to put on”.

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Courteney is appearing at the Trades Hall until April 29. Show starts at 8:15 and tickets are available from the venue.

Nonstopical can be found here