BEN HURLEY

The comedian’s guide to staging a DIY festival.

PHOTO SALINA GALVAN

Meet the Mount Comedy Festival’s Best New Act, Jonathan Falconer…

About four years ago, I had a thought: ‘How hard could it be to put on a festival?’ I have ‘How hard could it be to build, plant, fix, demolish… ?’ thoughts all the time, and not all, if any, of them work out positively. However, there aren’t any YouTube videos to tell you how to put on a comedy festival, so I have to feel my way through it and hope it doesn’t all fall down around me.

Tauranga and the Mount are such vibrant and exciting places but, for the most part, life revolves around the beach and other outdoor locations. And why not? The climate is great and the outdoor locations are world class. However, when the day is done, there must be more options for a cool-off than just the ubiquitous pub. People like options, and I’ve noticed that live entertainment has become a bigger part of New Zealand culture with every year of my adult life.

In the 1980s and 90s, home-grown live entertainment was a bit rough and ready. It’s not that the quality wasn’t there, but I interviewed Jordan Luck a few years ago and he recounts the violence and danger that existed on the local music scene when The Exponents were first touring pubs. Live comedy wasn’t much different – perhaps not violent, but it certainly was a fight for the local comics who first forged their way on the microphone. Maybe we’ve matured a bit as a society, or maybe we just accept our local entertainers with more grace these days, but whatever has forced the change, live entertainment is as synonymous with a Kiwi summer as burnt sausages and retrieving tennis balls from over the fence.

So, I reckoned I could do it – a DIY festival. It’s definitely more in my wheelhouse than re-gibbing a room or painting a roof. I found the Mount Social Club and a couple of great venues in Totara Street and, of course, had plenty of comedian friends who fancied a few nights at the Mount in January.

Not only that, I had my own family to call on. My wife used to work in events and for the New Zealand International Comedy Festival, so I had someone to

N O T T O T O O T M Y O W N D I Y H O R N , B U T T H E RESULT WAS FAR FROM CATASTROPHIC.

do front of house and ticketing. My kids are pretty young, but they can ride bikes, so we went out a few times to deliver flyers to letterboxes. Sorry if your letterbox doesn’t allow advertising material, but my youngest didn’t know what the word ‘circulars’ meant.

Not to toot my own DIY horn, but the result was far from catastrophic. In fact, it was a wildly surprising success. Seven sell-out shows, hundreds of happy punters and thousands of laughs. Sure, The Mount Comedy Festival’s not Bay Dreams; it doesn’t cause State Highway 2 to basically close for the weekend. We did have a line out onto the footpath every night, though, so I guess we all have logistical issues, and there may have been fewer substances ingested by the audience as well, although I couldn’t possibly comment about the artists.

We get told all the time that DIY is quintessentially Kiwi and although that’s a bit of an overused notion now, maybe there’s some truth in it. However, we might think we’re doing it ‘ourselves’, but without a uniquely skilled team of family and friends, it’s a lot harder than it looks.

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