The world of stand-up comedy means you have to be able to turn on the funny and fine tune it each night to your audience. KATH TOUMBOUROU meets an Australian Cypriot now plying the circuit in the UK

 

It’s one thing to think you’re funny but there’s an entirely different confidence that fills your sails to the point where you believe you can entertain a room full of strangers. Stand-up comics are a strange breed: climbing under the lights night after night, lured by the hope that the way they see the world will pull a laugh – and it’s all about the laughter.

I do a YouTube search on Australian Cypriot stand-up comic Yianni Agisilaou before heading out to interview him, just so I can get a vague idea of what his comedy is about but as I watch the videos, I realise that talking about a comedy performance is like trying to describe a snooker match: you really have to watch it to get excited.

I could talk about the sketch where he talks about hiring a Portuguese man to be his personal watch, the way British people cheer, or the one where he creates a nerdy dinosaur out of a thesaurus but stand-up simply wouldn’t exist if the vibe could be captured easily in words.

So what is actually funny?

Agisilaou believes you can find humour in everything from the price of lemons to random violence – the key is to highlight the weirdness.

“Everyone has a radar for funny things – not the obviously funny things that we can all see but the quirky inconsistencies, the differences, the hypocrisies...

“People being idiotic is always funny, whereas someone doing well isn’t.”

On the one hand you have to make them laugh; on the other you have a captive audience sitting in front of you, having paid to have night out and a laugh. So how do you do it?

“You make eye contact and really believe what you’re saying – which is where rehearsal comes into it. If you come up with a good, new joke and just barge onto the stage without practising it, chances are you’ll make a mess of it.”

In charting how he travelled down this curious career path, Yianni Agisilaou tells the story of discovering some old VHS tapes from the 80s. His brother was three years old and twirling in front of the camera.

“You hear dad ask, ’What are you doing?’ and Stephen says, ‘I’m dancing’.”

And, true to that snippet of footage, Stephen Agisilaou has his own dance company back in Yianni’s hometown of Melbourne, Australia.

“There’s another video of me at my tenth birthday,” he continues. “It’s of me blowing out the candles. I’m standing there, surrounded by my friends and doing an impersonation of Bob Hawke (the then Prime Minister of Australia).

“It was a good impersonation; I was pretty funny.”

The truth is that there’s no home video out there of a 10-year-old trying to be a lawyer, which is what Yianni started out doing before he followed his calling. Watching the likes of Jerry Seinfeld on TV helped convince Agisilaou that a person could build a career as a stand-up comedian. Much like his high school years, the Commerce Law studies at Melbourne University were always peppered with performances at the Melbourne Comedy Festival, an appearance at the annual Law Revue and joining a high-impact improvisation group.

The improv experience is evident; Agisilaou exudes the exact confidence that comes from hopping on a stage with 10 other people and taking direct orders from the audience. He says stand-up is the inverse of this.

“With improv, you have 10 people to catch you when you fall, but with stand-up, when you’re on the stage you’re all alone.”

It’s fair to say that Yianni’s heart just wasn’t into the law degree but that doesn’t mean he didn’t give it his best shot. After graduating, he joined a major company to complete his articles of clerkship but from the very first day, the lure of the stage was far too strong.

“I was three weeks into my job when the Melbourne Comedy Festival started. I turned to my bosses in this big law firm and said, ‘Well guys, you have to understand that I’m going to be knocking off at exactly 5pm because I have a gig starting at 6.15pm’.

“I guess that showed my mind was already made up.

“People just kept telling me I was funny and I kept seeing other comedians and I realised I wanted to do that.”

Was it tempting to take the day’s events and parody them on stage?

“It’s not what I do,” the London-based comic says with a shrug that betrays more about his guarded personality than a love of the profession. And anyway, stand-up comedy, it seems, is a little more complicated than that.

For starters, there are many different types of comedy acts. Like compèring, in which you host an evening where several comedians are appearing. Your role is to hop on stage and warm up the room, share some jokes and get the audience ready to laugh at the others. You might share some short material you’ve written but the jokes are mostly improvised as you mingle with the patrons and prepare them for the night ahead.

“I’ve certainly sucked at this a couple of times,” says Agisilaou. “Much as I love the improvisational element, I remember this one time where I really just didn’t connect with the room. Towards the end of the evening, I got on the stage and there was just silence; I said to them ‘I know you don’t like me, so how about I just send on the next act?’... and they all cheered.”

Then there’s an actual spot on a night (the one where a compère warms up the crowd for you). This involves around 20 minutes of material but as long as you keep them laughing, you can perform pretty much any material you want.

Improvisation skills are what save you when you get into a dead-end, but the material is what really drives you and if you know what you’re doing that’s pretty much all scripted.

Ideas pour in hard and fast for Agisilaou, who stores his joke ideas and material in neat little lists on his mobile phone (the legal skills seem to have come in handy, after all).

Is there a litmus test for funny? How do you know something is ready to take on stage? Do comedians record themselves? So many questions...

“Watching yourself back on video is really tough but you find it’s like jumping in a swimming pool. Once you get over the initial shock, you really start to enjoy it.”

And what about rehearsing?

“If I’m smart and well organised, I always rehearse new material – and usually in front of the mirror at home. It’s hard at first but it really is the best way to work up the confidence it takes to put a show on stage.

“A joke can be great but it’ll definitely fall flat if you haven’t worked out the right hand gesture or if you haven’t figured out where to put the punch line”.

Is everyone funny?

There’s a university in England that offers a Masters degree in stand-up comedy for post-graduates in Theatre Studies. Agisilaou says that while there’s value in it – knowledge about theory and structure is important and there’s always something to be learned from people with more experience than you – there will always be an element missing that just can’t be taught in a university.

“You’ll never be able to walk into a comedy club, slide your degree across the desk and say: ‘Can I have a booking? I’m qualified...’.”

Beyond the 20 minute appearances with a team of other talent is the call of the real, festival show.

Agisilaou’s two great loves are his one-hour solo shows at the annual Edinburgh Fringe and Melbourne Comedy Festivals, where he gets the audience all to himself. Yianni pretty much spends a year honing a particular act for these three weeks in April and August.

He says there’s not much money in festivals but if you make enough of an impact, you might get invited on a couple of television shows, which leads to better exposure, bigger audiences and ultimately more gigs.

His recently completed show in Melbourne has now been divided into two separate pieces, which Yianni will be performing at this year’s Edinburgh festival.

The first is a performance about his family, which he says will feature a greater amount of character work; a show partly inspired by audience feedback on his ability to conjure characters in some of his acts. It begins with the ‘yiayia’ character and ends with his father.

The second act is about the Universe. He says the performance didn’t quite fit together when the two were part of the same show.

He’s in Cyprus to compère a comedy night featuring three other comedians. Is there a lot of competition between different performers or is there a level of camaraderie?

“You never really see each other because you’re always moving around. It really does depend on how you want to view the world. If you’re constantly looking at the people ahead of you and running from the people behind you, your nerves will shatter.

“I wouldn’t want to live that way, it’s not healthy.”

The night is mostly about keeping the audience energy levels high but you have to be armed with a certain amount of knowledge about the crowd and using some prepared material depending on the length of time on stage.

I look at his mobile phone, will there be a couple of lines pulled from the little file?

“It’ll be a mix, but it depends on the crowd.”

This reminds me of a joke about the new nurse who arrives at the old people’s home, only to be confronted by a group of patients sitting on the veranda yelling out numbers and, after a pause, laughing hysterically.

The new guy turns to the head nurse and asks what the deal is.

‘Some of the oldies have been here a very long time. They’ve been telling the same jokes for so many years, they’ve just cut out the middle man and assigned them numbers.’

Wanting to endear himself to the crowd, the fellow takes a look around and proudly announces, ‘Two hundred and sixty-five.’

There’s an awkward silence as the oldies exchange glances.

‘What’d I do wrong?’ hisses the newbie.

‘I don’t know,’ shrugs the head nurse. ‘Maybe it’s the way you tell them...’

 

Yianni Agisilaou was here performing at the launch of a new venture called SunShine Comedy Cyprus, which hopes to bring top comedy acts to tour the island. For more information, join their Facebook group or call Georgina on 97 758049