Rose Matafeo and Guy Montgomery are friends. Being such good friends, the two decided to share the risk and the financial burden of putting on a show in MICF so they’ve made themselves a double bill show. The two have been performing together already on an improv show, Snort, which is also in MICF, as well as sharing the stage in FanFiction, the New Zealand stand-up show that caught Wil Anderson’s eye. “Guy is really a surreal comic,” says Matafeo. “He has real charisma on stage. He can do a ten minute rant about cows and you’ll be listening with bated breath.” Matafeo’s comedy, she says, is more self-effacing. “I’m nervous,” she says. “I’m just not a cool person; I’m a real nerd. I’d rather stay in and watch Netflix than go out and talk to people. I’m boring!”
She can’t be that boring, she was the host of FanFiction for quite a while. Matafeo says she does stand-up because she’s a control freak and likes to manage what happens to her writing. “I just got into it by accident and now it’s out of control. Just getting the opportunity to perform for more than five people is fun.” She’s definitely downplaying herself now – a career writing for television and becoming involved in writing a feature film are things not to be sniffed at. The two young performers are products of the youth driven comedy boom that New Zealand is currently enjoying. “The comedy scene here is just shifting,” Matafeo continues. “There’s a new wave of comedy on television in New Zealand, they’re putting money in producing comedy shows.”
Montgomery made a conscious decision to get into stand-up since all his friends were catching the grown-up train and getting proper jobs and he found himself with too much time on his hands during the day. “I started taking it seriously in around 2012,” he tells. “I moved to Toronto, worked in a café during the day, and made the decision to do ten gigs a night to fast-forward my career.” It’s certainly paid off by the looks of things. “I’m blowing the trumpet for this generation of young NZ comics,” he says. ‘I’m one of them.”
Montgomery says that not being raised on a diet of North American TV means NZ comedians take from everywhere and juggle a range of influences. “We absorb so much comedy from outside. There’s just not enough money here for us to have a boatload of local content.” He reckons a general sense of silliness is what makes him funny. “It’s easy to get bogged down. I take a reasonably trivial thing and take a step back to look at it.”
Montgomery reckons the old British absurdist school is his comedic ancestry. “It’s surreal stream of consciousness. And I anthropomorphise animals.” Is there anywhere he wouldn’t go on stage? “I’m consciously inoffensive,” he says. “I’m conscious of whether people, individuals or other groups, have had a history of victimisation. If there’s a fall guy it’ll usually be me. There are things I don’t joke about but that’s just cos I don’t joke about them. I talk about things that are universally relatable; my impetus is to be as funny as possible.”
Matafeo says theirs is a friendly natural style of performance. “We just talk to the audience as if we’re friends and just try to have a fun time. We love coming to MICF. We love the comedy scene in NZ but MICF is a whole other beast.”
BY LIZA DEZFOULI
