James Acaster had decided how his life was to play out. He left school at 17 to be a drummer in an experimental jazz pop band and that was that. Future sorted. So how does a musician come to be making his Melbourne International Comedy Festival debut, arriving on the back of not one but two consecutive nominations for Best Comedy Show at the 2012 and 2013 Edinburgh Fringe Festivals?
Acaster has been doing stand up for six years now, but it was never his plan. “I had this whole future planned out of being a musician and releasing albums and having that as my life,” the 29-year-old South Londoner tells Beat in a Melbourne café.
He’d dropped out of school and didn’t bother with university, deciding instead to throw himself into music but after six years (“we didn’t really get anywhere”) the band broke up. “Because I was the drummer, I couldn’t really go solo and then I couldn’t be bothered to form another band, because there’s a lot of motivating other people to do work and I didn’t really want to do that anymore,” he says.
Acaster was at a loss as to what to do next with his life and comedy originally began as a means of keeping him occupied in the evenings “because I didn’t like feeling sorry for myself and sitting around going ‘oh, I’m not in a band anymore’” he recalls.
Life as a full time musician (and part-time kitchen hand, working 12 hours a week) had given him plenty of free time, which he liked to fill with various adrenaline based activities. “So I would try and fill my days with doing things like skydiving and weird little things like that and I thought I’d do a stand-up comedy gig, because I liked stand-up and (thought) I’ll do that just for fun, so I can always say that I did it,” he says.
That first gig had gone well enough for him to undertake another couple, which is what gave the then 23-year-old the idea to dabble post-band, until he figured out what it was he really wanted to do with the rest of his life. He started gigging obsessively. “Obviously, the more you do something the better you get at it and once you get good, you start to enjoy it,” he says. For Acaster, he really started enjoying performing once he realised it was more than just ‘go on and make them laugh’. He soon realised “there’s loads of different laughs you can get out of them and different emotions you can elicit and steer things in certain directions and I really started getting into it then, started focusing on getting better,” he says.
Since then, in addition to the Best Comedy nominations (he was also nominated for Auckland Comedy Festival Best International Show Award in 2012), his comedy, which has been described as “an artfully crafted study in mild lunacy” has seen him appear on television shows such as Nevermind the Buzzcocks, Russell Howard’s Good News and Chris Addison’s Show and Tell, among many other TV appearances.
His show for this year’s Melbourne International Comedy Festival, Lawnmower, despite the title isn’t about gardening. “I just like the word, I don’t speak about them,” he says, adding that it is a collection of his favourite material from his past three shows.
BY JOANNE BROOKFIELD
Venue: Melbourne Town Hall – Cloak Room, Cnr Swanston & Collins St, CBD
Dates: Currently playing until April 20 (except Monday)
Times: 8.30pm (Sundays 7.30pm)
Tickets: $25.50-$33
