Koori Comedy: a laughing matter with serious intent

And so it is with a new band of Indigenous comedians, Koori Comedy, who will make their first appearance together as a troupe at the Canberra Comedy Festival. They make you laugh as they make a point.

But the laughter comes first - no laughter, no point made.

"It's about reconciliation," troupe member Cy Fahey says.

"It's not just a show for Aboriginals. If we learn to laugh together, we can break down walls and prejudice."

"It's about raising the awareness that there are a rising number of Aboriginal comedians," says Jacob Keed, another one of the group of four.

The comedy is sometimes edgy, veering towards politically incorrect at times - but good comedy is often edgy. And good comedy is always intelligent. It's often a wry look at absurdity.

Fahey continually prompts both a smile and a thought. He's one of those reflective comics who spots the incongruities of life, including Aboriginal life - his life.

He tells a story, for example, about someone who parks in a spot for people with a disability, only to be reprimanded by a passer-by.

"But I'm an emotional cripple," says the bad parker.

"I don't care," responds the do-gooder.

"That's the problem," the parker wails. "Nobody cares!" He delivers the punch line in a welter of tears and hyped up emotion.

Fahey is a Canberra garbo by day and a stand-up by night, an incongruous combination. The first time he walked out on that unforgiving stage was eleven years ago in Melbourne. He had gone back to his mum to sort his life out and happened to meet an Aboriginal comedian who said that he also had the comic gift.

It prompted him to work on material privately - and after three months he decided to give it a go for real.

"I walked out on a stage to 500 people. From the first moment, I was hooked," he says.

"It was so surreal that I was making so many people laugh. It's like a power, but it's not a power to lord it over people. You're just giving so much to them.

"The day that my daughter was born was the happiest moment of my life but the day I walked out on the stage was the greatest moment."

Making people laugh is hard work. Routines have to be honed. Nerves have to be overcome. Gags have to be smoothed. Timing has to be perfected. Fahey likes to quote American comic Reginald D. Hunter, who said that "it takes ten years to be an overnight success".

Not every performance gets them laughing in the aisles. He admits he has gone down like a lead balloon on occasion.

"If you haven't bombed, you aren't a comic," he says.

"It's the most soul-crushing experience but that's where the love of comedy comes out. True comedians keep going back for more. It's a bit like drug addicts chasing that high of big laughs."

Analysing comedy can be deadly dull so ...

Different groups have different styles. It's been said that English comedy often has an obsession with class differences - think of the great British sitcoms, from Fawlty Towers down. And Jewish humour has a strong dose of self-deprecation - of the gentle self-mocking of foibles within the community.

So how is Koori humour different?

Fahey says the routines often involve story-telling - episodes take unexpected turns and that is in the Aboriginal tradition.

Another of the comics in the group, Bill Makin, says it's "very working class".

"It's not aimed at the posh section of society," he says.

Keed says they often make fun of racism and racists.

Above all, it's about personal experience. Audiences need to identify with the situation.

"It's about navigating your mum throwing a phone at you!" Makin says.

One joke is about being mistaken for other downtrodden groups. Fahey, for example, was born in Malaysia on an RAAF base. As the son of a Djadjawurrung mother and a white father, his skin tone means he gets mistaken for an Italian. That prompts his dry joke about his own apparent European/Australian/Asian background, with the punchline: "Do you know how hard it is to eat kangaroo lasagne with chopsticks?"

There is an element of "laugh or cry" to a lot of humour - the comic who laughs on the outside but cries inside.

Fahey says he has suffered from depression in the past but "comedy has helped".  He quotes the maxim that "tragedy plus time equals comedy" - that sadness, healed over time, leads to humour.

The result of the comedic therapy is that he now exudes self-confidence, at least on the outside.

The troupe has a confidence, too. "We are stronger as a group," Makin says.

The quartet plan to continue and take their routines from the Canberra Comedy Festival to smaller towns in country Australia like Wagga and Dubbo.

As Fahey puts it: "We are planning to build something together... It's the first but not the last you'll see of us."

Koori Comedy will be performing at the Street Theatre in Canberra at 9.30pm on Thursday, March 21.