JOSEPH HARPER
Joseph Harper is performing his third show at this year’s NZ International Comedy Festival and he apologises if his show isn’t funny enough for you. He’s dealing with a wonderful mix of subjects – Billy Pilgrim (a character from a favourite Vonnegut book), velociraptors (those small dinosaurs) and death. It’s a bit of a divergent angle from his past two shows which have been about bicycles – one of which was titled ‘Bikes I’ve Owned Versus Girls I’ve Fallen in Love With’. The Billy T. Award nominated Harper has received some great reviews for his likeable and self-effacing style of comedy. He talks to debate about his latest show.
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NIGEL MOFFIET How did you get into comedy? “I studied playwriting. So I wanted an outlet to perform work and have a stage. At the time I saw a current affair show on stand-up comedy and I thought the ones that I saw were just grim and that I could do a better job so I thought I’d try and do that. So I started at the Classic like everyone else and I just wasn’t very good, just huge continual failure, so I stopped and started doing more monologues.” Does it scare you when you get up on stage and it doesn’t go well? “Well it wasn’t awful, I wasn’t that bad. I’ve never found it that scary. I find it harder to talk to people in real life than talk to people on stage. I mostly enjoy it.” Your latest show sounds quite bizarre (Billy Pilgrim or marching toward death with wobbly legs like a velociraptor) can you tell me what audiences can expect? “No one can pronounce velociraptor, it’s a huge mistake. I thought velociraptors would be more in the common vernacular but evidently not. It’s a show that I’ve been working on for about a year now. It’s a show about death and trying to negotiate death and it’s loosely based on Kurt Vonnegut’s Slaughterhouse-Five which is where Billy Pilgrim comes from. It’s basically just a theatre show of me talking.” How are you exploring the theme of death? “It’s about how you can cope and how you deal with
Interview
the fact that everyone and everything is dying. Eventually everything is going to be gone and everything is going to be forgotten, all the great books, all the great movies, everything that is fantastic and that we love is going to be gone. With that knowledge in your head how can you do anything when it’s evident that it’s kind of a waste of time.” How difficult is it to turn this content into comedy? “I’m not sure I’m successful at that, too much of a challenge for me. I’m not sure the show will be funny. I’m not very funny. The show doesn’t have a lot going for it to be honest. I just try my best, try to be affable, maybe I’ve got some good turns of phrase.” Your style is more laidback rather than the boisterous, confrontational humour of other comedians. Can you tell us about your style? “Yeah, it’s extremely unconfrontational. I hate that so much, I’m so afraid of that because everyone would just beat me up. I’m not a big guy, I’m a weakling psychologically and physically. Any heckling and I’ll just fall to pieces.” Have you had much heckling? “When I first started I did this competition, The Raw Stand Up competition, which is national themed to see who is the best newcomer in comedy and I was in the final and I felt like I was doing real good and I was going to win and I got heckled about four minutes into my thing. It was some women yelling ‘take your pants off’. I don’t know if she was just drunk or she was trying to be nice or
she generally wanted me to take my pants off, but it just completely threw me. So even a positive heckle is bad. I like talking to people. If someone wants to talk or ask questions, that’s fine. I prefer a more school-type environment where people are like ‘I’ve got a question, can you answer it?’, rather than yell something out. I don’t think it’s really a heckler kind of show. There’re other comedians who’ll do that stuff better than me.” Are there any comedians who inspire you or who you feed off? “I like Woody Allen. Woody Allen is a big inspiration. I kind of see the show at the moment as being a really shit Woody Allen movie.” One reviewer has said your show could easily be turned into a book or a film. Would you agree with that? “I guess most of it should just be written and read but instead I’m cocksure enough to go on stage and talk to people. Also, I’ve got bad grammar and don’t have the patience for editing.” Your work also sounds very personal, is it difficult revealing your fears and anxieties to a strange crowd? “Sometimes, it depends who’s there. It’s less difficult in front of an audience of strangers than it would be in front of my aunty Susan. But yeah, at times. I always think the best art is fairly personal and I always feel a show can do more than just make people laugh.”