PIVOT
Schedule
Thu Oct 06 2022 at 07:00 pm to Thu Oct 20 2022 at 07:00 pm
Location
Speakeasy Theatre | Melbourne, VI
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With the advent of visual devices and short-form entertainment, particularly through handheld devices, a new need has emerged amongst folk for visual rewards. Standup comedy needs to PIVOT.Bradford Oakes has been performing standup comedy since 1989, and he has seen the way the zeitgeist has changed across those times. Nobody had a mobile phone to distract them back in 1989. Then in the early nineties when the phones started appearing they never rang - nobody else had one. Or if it rang it only rang three times before needing recharging. After 30 years as a professional comedian Bradford found he was forced to pivot when work dried up at the onset of the pandemic. Eventually he took a job in the Dept of Health working as a phone advisor in the Covid Safe Advice line.
Something he couldn’t ignore, was the fact that audiences seem to be changing too. After a series of lockdowns, audiences started to drizzle back, and there seems to be a change. People are expecting their comedy to have pictures and vision. Further to that, so many have been getting their comedy online and have been viewing it alone. This has affected the way they react. They are amused but they are amused alone. The art of out loud, all encompassing laughter seems to be dwindling.
PIVOT will address these factors. Bradford is combining traditional standup comedy jokes and storytelling with visual and audio elements. He has reworked some of his classic material to include visual punchlines and has created exciting new works that have been written with the idea of visual/audio enhancement. It’s all a bit meta.
Our visions of the future haven’t always played out. No hover cars, no in-home food dispensers, and what was with the fashion predictions?! And yet we are changing. Stand up comedy must reinvent itself to remain a relevant performance art.
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Where is it happening?
Speakeasy Theatre, 522 Flinders Street,Melbourne,VIC,AustraliaEvent Location & Nearby Stays: