Matt Kelly has found fame and fortune as one half of the children's comedy duo The Listies with co-writer and fellow performer Richard Higgins. But Kelly got his start as a performer in Canberra - more on that soon.

Bringing a show to the Queanbeyan Performing Arts Centre is a bit of a homecoming for Kelly, who still has extended family in Canberra. It's the duo's first time at the Q and their first time in the ACT region since a show at the Canberra Theatre a couple of years ago and Kelly is looking forward to coming back.

They'll be performing The Listies 6D - "It's twice as good as 3D," Kelly says.

The show is billed as being for ages "four to 400 million, dinosaurs allowed" (the latter, presumably, so parents and grandparents feel welcome). Kelly says the typical age range for children is between about four and 12 though the aim is that The Listies be very much an experience the whole family can share together.

"It's not one of those shows where the kids are packed in a mosh pit up the front while the parents are checking on Facebook in the background - kids and parents sit and laugh together."

The duo took their name from the fact that they make lists at the start of the show to draw inspiration for much of their material. In this case, thematically, it's the silver screen that forms the basis of the show.

"All of the sketches are about movie-based things," Kelly says.

The Listies have performed The Listies 6D at the Sydney Opera House, the Melbourne Comedy Festival and at the Busan Comedy Festival in South Korea and always ask the children in the audience what their favourite movies are. Kelly says kids often name an "obscure" movie like Star Wars, "a little indie film" like Frozen or "a foreign subtitled film like Minions, about mini onions".

But, he says, "Occasionally you get parents who've given their kids a proper education by showing them The Princess Bride or Labyrinth or The Dark Crystal ... hoping their kids will love them as much as they do."

Such lists give The Listies subjects to riff on and use for audience interaction - getting them to recite favourite movie lines, for example, and getting them humorously mixed up.

Other skits include Curse of the BackPack - "it may or may not have a vomiting puppet inside it" - and The Listies even make a movie as part of the show. Kelly stars in Ninja Nan as his own Nan, who gets blasted into space to fight vicious bloodsucking aliens. But it's far from a solo turn.

"Everyone gets to star in it," Kelly says. Like the rest of the show, it's an interactive experience, and afterwards the audience members can download it as a souvenir of the occasion.

Originally from Gunnedah in northern NSW, Kelly came to Canberra to study marketing at the University of Canberra. Then an experience in second year, about 1999, changed the course of his life.

"I didn't have any friends so I auditioned for a show at The Street Theatre."

It was Alpha Theatre's production of Terry Pratchett's Mort produced by Robert Bunzli and directed by Debra Anderson, from both of whom he says he learned a great deal. He landed the title role and made contacts that that got him the role of an Excited Particle at Questacon.so he left university and worked at the National Science and Technology Centre for 18 months. He was encouraged by Stephen Barker - "the first professional actor I met" - to move to Melbourne and train as an actor so he did, studying at Rusden College, then returning to Canberra regularly to work at Jigsaw Theatre Company and the Street Theatre as part of his acting career.

Kelly and Higgins met in 2002 while performing in an adaptation of one of Australian author Andy Griffiths' books and also worked together in a stage version of Roald Dahl's The Twits. They found they shared a similar sense of humour and in 2009 became The Listies.

They had found that many children's theatre shows were literary adaptations, often of overseas books, and wanted to create original work that would relate to kids' experiences about what it was like to grow up Australian. Out of that came The Listies.

Their first show, More Fun Than a Wii, premiered in 2009 and was nominated for best show at he Melbourne International Comedy Festival.

"It's the only kids' show ever to be nominated for that."

The Listees have performed around Australia as well as internationally, in New Zealand, Edinburgh, England and south-east Asia - "the only thing we have to change are the fart noises", Kelly jokes.

While writing and performing as a duo is essentially a full-time gig, both men have side projects in Melbourne: Higgins is a clown doctor at the Royal Children's Hospital and Kelly does work for Polyglot Theatre, a company that creates interactive and participatory theatre for children and families.

All their work is about creating live performance experiences, primarily for children, and they've created a niche for themselves in the world of kids' theatre.

"I know people who drive up from Canberra to Sydney to see us," Kelly says.

This time, they'll only have to go as far as Queanbeyan.