Latest news with #MelbourneInternationalComedyFestival
The Age
7 days ago
- Business
- The Age
‘Everyone wants a piece of Barry': Humphries' art hits auction highs
Two years after his death, the creator of Dame Edna and Sir Les Patterson can still pull a crowd and steal a show. Some 98 objects, mostly packed up from Barry Humphries' Sydney home, went under the hammer on Monday night in an Australian auction of his personal art which exceeded auction house Leonard Joel's most optimistic sale expectations. All up the Australian sale netted $477,112 including buyers' premium. 'He'd be saying, 'I told you I was good!', and he'd be planning an exhibition,' said son Oscar, from London as he watched the auction live. With his share of the proceeds, Oscar Humphries said he would frame works he held by his father and raised the idea of funding a comedy prize in Melbourne 'for people who are actually funny'. In 2019, the Melbourne International Comedy Festival stripped Barry Humphries's name from the festival's biggest award, following furore over the performer's comments about transgender people. 'If someone wants to match me we could talk,' said Oscar. 'We could recreate the Barry awards. I'm good for $50,000, but I have got to find a partner.' The opening lot at the auction was a framed watercolour and pen likeness by Humphries of his comic creation Dame Edna. It signalled the excitable buyer interest that was to come for works by the comic, selling for $17,000 under the hammer or $21,250 with buyers' premium. It had a top estimate before auction of $3000. Caricatures penned by Humphries while on the road in Australia, the US, Greece and elsewhere fetched several thousand dollars a piece.
Sydney Morning Herald
7 days ago
- Business
- Sydney Morning Herald
‘Everyone wants a piece of Barry': Humphries' art hits auction highs
Two years after his death, the creator of Dame Edna and Sir Les Patterson can still pull a crowd and steal a show. Some 98 objects, mostly packed up from Barry Humphries' Sydney home, went under the hammer on Monday night in an Australian auction of his personal art which exceeded auction house Leonard Joel's most optimistic sale expectations. All up the Australian sale netted $477,112 including buyers' premium. 'He'd be saying, 'I told you I was good!', and he'd be planning an exhibition,' said son Oscar, from London as he watched the auction live. With his share of the proceeds, Oscar Humphries said he would frame works he held by his father and raised the idea of funding a comedy prize in Melbourne 'for people who are actually funny'. In 2019, the Melbourne International Comedy Festival stripped Barry Humphries's name from the festival's biggest award, following furore over the performer's comments about transgender people. 'If someone wants to match me we could talk,' said Oscar. 'We could recreate the Barry awards. I'm good for $50,000, but I have got to find a partner.' The opening lot at the auction was a framed watercolour and pen likeness by Humphries of his comic creation Dame Edna. It signalled the excitable buyer interest that was to come for works by the comic, selling for $17,000 under the hammer or $21,250 with buyers' premium. It had a top estimate before auction of $3000. Caricatures penned by Humphries while on the road in Australia, the US, Greece and elsewhere fetched several thousand dollars a piece.
Sky News AU
01-06-2025
- Entertainment
- Sky News AU
‘The laughs aren't there': Woke Melbourne comedy festival facing financial challenges
Sky News host Rita Panahi has slammed the Melbourne International Comedy Festival amid financial woes. 'The laughs aren't there like they used to be, the money isn't there – they're getting quite a big handout from the state government, and yet they're still recording losses,' she said. 'So, there's a question mark about will the comedy festival have to be scaled back.'
ABC News
28-05-2025
- Entertainment
- ABC News
Comedian Garry Starr takes his award-winning nude clown show Classic Penguins on tour
Imagine a man crowd-surfing wearing nothing but penguin flippers, a top hat and tails. That's Damien Warren-Smith as his comedy alter ego, Garry Starr, in his now-award-winning show, Classic Penguins. In the show, Warren-Smith tries to perform every Penguin Classic novel ever written. And he does it (mostly) nude. The crowd-surfing? It's a reference to one of those novels, The Bodysurfers, by Australian writer Robert Drewe. And Warren-Smith assures audiences participation is optional. "I'm really, really clear that you can opt out," he told ABC Radio National's The Stage Show. In April, Classic Penguins took out the top prize at the Melbourne International Comedy Festival, an accolade previously won by some of Australia's most successful comics, including Sam Campbell (Taskmaster UK), Hannah Gadsby (Nanette) and Rhys Nicholson (Drag Race Down Under). The show is about to arrive in Sydney, before touring to Wagga Wagga and regional Victoria in June, then to London and the Edinburgh Fringe. But it's not the first time Warren-Smith has crowd-surfed nude. That was last year, at the variety show Stamptown, at Edinburgh Fringe, following the lead of host Zach Zucker. "I came away from that thinking, 'Wow, that was really fun. I wonder if I'll ever get a chance to do that in my own show.'" Warren-Smith was born in the north of Scotland, but moved with his family to Cooma in regional NSW when he was a kid. After high school, he went to acting school in Sydney, and soon landed a small role on classic Australian drama Love My Way. He quickly realised his heart wasn't in screen acting and relocated to London, where he tried to make it as a theatre actor. "I was living on a friend's couch and rehearsing one Fringe play during the day while performing another one at night," he says. It was after 12 years of trying to make it in theatre that Warren-Smith discovered clowning at the Edinburgh Fringe, where he watched Brighton-based physical theatre company Spymonkey perform their show about Moby Dick. "It had absolutely nothing to do with Moby Dick, and I laughed more than I ever had in my life," Warren-Smith says. He discovered many performers in Spymonkey had trained under Philippe Gaulier, at the French clown master's school about an hour outside of Paris. It's the alma mater of international stars Sacha Baron Cohen, Helena Bonham Carter and Emma Thompson, as well as much-loved Australian performers Tom Walker and Laurie Luxe. Warren-Smith hopped on a train to France to learn from the master, who is known for insulting his students. "[Gaulier] will choose something about you — a vocal quality, a physicality, a character trait that you have — and put the knife in and twist it to really make you vulnerable," he explains. "[But] by that point in my career, I was OK with that because I already had enough proof for myself that I was a good performer." Gaulier's training taught Warren-Smith the thing that is funniest about you is the thing you might have hidden, or feel ashamed of; the thing a horrible person would say about you after you left the room. So, Warren-Smith asked someone at clown school what she noticed about him. She replied: "You think you can do everything." It's a quality he thinks comes from being mostly raised by a single mum, after his dad died when he was young. She encouraged him to do whatever he wanted to do, whether that was play the trumpet or ski cross country. "I do have this in-built belief that I can do anything, but it hurt at the time to hear that," he says. Fast-forward to 2018, and the clown school comment became the title of his debut solo show: Garry Starr Performs Everything; and landed him rave reviews in Melbourne, Brighton and Edinburgh. "It was me saying: 'The performing arts are going to die if I'm not involved, so I'm now going to do every single genre of theatre,'" Warren-Smith says. "It didn't seem too far removed from who I was as a performer." It was the start of Warren-Smith trying to perform "all" of something. He took on Greek mythology in both Garry Starr Conquers Troy and Greece Lightning, and now, those beloved orange paperbacks, Penguin Classics. Garry Starr Performs Everything, which featured a nude ballet sequence, was also Warren-Smith's first time clowning naked. It's something he's taken into all of his shows since. "After my first two shows, where I would get naked at one point, some people would roll their eyes and be like: 'Are you going to get naked in your new one as well?' "I went, 'Yeah, OK. I'll just start the show naked.'" It makes Classic Penguins Warren-Smith's most naked show yet. But he doesn't "really think about it much". Audiences don't either. Some people have told him they forgot about his nakedness through the course of the show — until they remembered. "You forget that I'm naked until the moment comes where it's important again, like if I'm hugging somebody or jumping up and down or doing a cartwheel," he says. But Warren-Smith didn't initially set out to make a fully naked show. He knew early on he needed to dress as a penguin. (Starr tells audiences he thinks Penguin Classics are literally written by penguins.) Looking at penguin costumes, the comedian realised he would have to wear a white lycra material, which would quickly get dirty and restrict what he'd be able to do on stage. "I said, 'What if I paint myself white?'" he recalls. "Then someone said to me, 'But you are white. Why don't you just not wear anything?' "It just heightened everything." Audiences have praised Warren-Smith for his body positivity, but he's not deliberately including messages in his work: "I don't want to lay [particular meanings] on too thick, because I think everyone gets something different." The other theme audiences talk to Warren-Smith about is the need for joy and silliness. "Clowning really crosses all of the social, political language, all the barriers, and it brings people together," Warren-Smith says. "It's the oldest form of comedy: We were tripping over for other people's amusement before we were talking." Garry Starr: Classic Penguins is at Bondi Pavilion from May 29-June 1, before touring to Wagga Wagga, Wangaratta and Cowes.
AU Financial Review
27-05-2025
- Business
- AU Financial Review
Melbourne records busiest month on record for hotel rooms sold
Melbourne experienced its busiest month on record for the number of hotel rooms sold in March, a take-up rate that analysts say dispels lingering concerns that the market is oversaturated after a big lift in supply over the last five years. The Formula 1 Grand Prix, Melbourne International Comedy Festival and a swathe of international stars performing concerts in March trumped the impact of even Taylor Swift's Melbourne visit in February 2024 for the city's hotel market.
