Comedy Fest Q and A: Alan McElroy

Comedy Fest Q and A: Alan McElroy

1) Tell us what your show is called this year?
One Bucket, Two Comedians

2)  Why?
Vaughan King and I were awarded the Creative Comedy Incentive for our idea to create a show about funny bucket list ideas.  We wanted to avoid calling it, ‘Bucket List’ because that’s crap.  The original name was ‘Two Comedians, One Bucket’ but as that was too similar to that famous internet video featuring three classy lady friends so we were encouraged to change it.  Our director, Ben Crowder, suggested we flip it to appeal to theatre goers because it’s similar to ‘One Man, Two Guvners’.  So now we have no idea what eclectic mix of an audience that we’ll get

3) Can you give us a few hints as to what broadly your festival show is about?
It’s a comedy variety show and Vaughan and I will be hosts.  There will be sketches and a small bit of audience participation.  We will be trying to fulfill our own bucket list ideas on stage and also taking ideas from the audience.  If anyone has any suggestions, go onto our Facebook page and leave a comment and we’ll try work it in the show.  If anyone has any bucket list ideas that they would like us to help with, leave that comment and we might give them free tickets to our show and we’ll help them out.

4) How much time have you spent crafting the show over the past 12 months since the end of the last festival? A lot of time, several months, more even, we’ve had a lot of fun doing it.

5) The comedy festival is turning 21 this year – it’s a big age 21 – what are your memories of being 21? Or if you’re not old enough yet, you lucky person, what are your hopes for being 21?
Highly intoxicated playing in goal in a football tournament, flopping about like a fish on the goal line as we lost, then going out celebrating with friends and family at my party and getting messy and silly!

6) The Comedy festival is one big party and catch up for a month - is there anyone you’re looking forward to seeing over here either socially or on stage?
I’m in Wellington for the first time ever, I’ve never even been there so looking forward to having fun with the comics and friends there.  The festival is great fun, usually when your show is over and you get to relax and enjoy the other shows.  I can't wait for it.

7) What’s the comedy scene like at the moment who do you rate and why?
It’s really strong, there are a lot of good new comedians too, but Vaughan King is the man you should go see, his show looks great.

8)  What’s the best piece of audience interaction you’ve had?
I helped a woman eat a bowl of chips before that she wasn’t expecting to eat.  What I like to do when it is someone's birthday, I get the crowd to sing Happy Birthday but I purposely don’t get their name so when it gets to the ‘Happy Birthday (name)’ bit, it usually dies off like a bad Mexican wave. Then, depending on the crowd, you can usually joke around the fact that what happened in the song symbolises the rest of their life.

9) What’s the most memorable part of performing for you within the last 12 months? 
Selling out last year’s festival show was cool, it was my first show too so it was a massive relief!  It was great.  On the last night too, there were a lot of friends and family in and against my wifes wishes, I announced that she was pregnant.  She was snapping at the time but it’s great when we look back on it now.  She was just fat by the way, so she jumped on a treadmill and we rented a kid from Zambia, just to keep the story going.

10) When we say New Zealand International Comedy Festival to you, what’s the first thing you think of? Going to see ‘One Bucket, Two Comedians’ starring Vaughan King and Alan McElroy, directed by Ben Crowder!

11) How would you persuade people to come and see your show?  
Well, we did try to get cookies from Cookie Time to give to the audience but they wouldn’t give us any so we might just give the audience empty paper plates to go along with the gazillions of laughter that they’ll be doing at our show.