So how’d Dunham end up doing it? “I didn’t give myself an escape route,” he says. “I didn’t plan anything else, didn’t want anything else. As a kid I knew this was going to be what I was doing.” Being an only child with “nothing better to do” he learned to throw his voice at the age of eight and a month later, performed his first show. “It was a book report. I did two or three minutes on the report, and the rest of the time I picked on my classmates, the school, the teachers, the food,” he says. “That game has pretty much stayed throughout my career: I do two or three minutes of meaningful things, and make fun of stuff after that.”
With no set structure to his performances which adjust according to new material and the city he’s in, even he can’t anticipate the “stuff” he refers to when on stage. Not least because, once placed on stage, the characters “don’t exactly behave the way I want them to.”
It’s as though they’ve a life of their own, and Dunham’s just a bystander. “I don’t think it’s me,” he says when asked the secret to his success. “People love the characters. What makes good comedy is that, unlike regular stand-up, I can create tension and conflict on stage because there are two or three of us on at a time. Plus,” he adds, “developing different, highly identifiable characters.”
For example, Walter the Grumpy Veteran, one of Dunham’s earliest and most beloved creations. Or Bubba J, the beer-fuelled redneck. “People in Australia love Bubba J,” says Dunham incredulously. “I thought those kinds of people were isolated to (stupid me) a certain part of the US but no, everybody has a town they make fun of where people live in trailers. He goes really well in Australia, so I’m looking forward to bringing him back.”
He’s also looking forward to introducing his newest puppet: Coffee Guy. “I felt that the coffee craze had gone ridiculously nuts everywhere – so there’s a new guy who’s addicted to coffee,” reveals Dunham. “I’m interested to see how he goes in other countries, but from what I understand a drug is a drug. He’s nuts and you have to see it. So come on to the show and tell me what you think.”
BY STEPHANIE YIP
