Corey White has been performing stand-up comedy for over half a decade now and is bringing his award winning show, 'The Cane Toad Effect', to the Brisbane Comedy Festival and Melbourne International Comedy Festival.
“The show is about idea of unintended consequences,” explains Corey while lighting up what is undoubtedly not his first cigarette of the day.
“It was motivated by one of Plato's quotes that 'no man does what is evil to him', meaning that when people do evil, it's not what they consider evil. They think it's the best thing that they can do and if we do evil it's out of ignorance or an accident. I talk about the introduction of the cane toad to Australia and how it was supposed to eradicate the cane beetle but obviously that didn't happen. The government of the day had the best intentions and those intentions went awry.”
Refusing to shy away from dark, heavy or intellectual subject matter, Corey has a rich tapestry of ideas to shape his material out of. “I talk about growing up in foster care, I talk about being a drug addict, I talk about my girlfriend cheating on me.”
But if you think this would be a cynical show with a bleak outlook on the world, you would most definitely be wrong. “Basically nearly all of the bad things in the world happen from people trying to do the right thing,” states Corey. “I think the fact that people are trying to do their best should be a cause for compassion.”
Corey takes heated political and social issues, moulding and presenting them in a way that is deeply personal. When speaking about his methamphetamine use, he states: “My mother was a heroin addict, which is why I grew up in foster care and my experience with drugs allowed me to develop empathy with my mother that I didn't have before, because I realised that no one intends on becoming an addict on the outset of their experimentation with drugs,” Corey says.
“It solidified my belief that all drugs should be legalised, that it's a pointless battle that needlessly criminalises people, it should be treated as a medical issue, not a criminal one.”
While recognising the definite downsides of drug addiction, it wasn't all a bad experience for him. “I saw how bad humanity can be. I saw some very disturbing things, but I also had a lot of fun, which is not something many people are willing to concede. Meth is a great drug, unfortunately so.”
Corey also discusses issues surrounding gender equality and expresses support for the feminist movement. “Sometimes when you say the word feminism on stage, you can split a crowd because it means different things to them. But I think a lot of different people agree with what the word feminism points to, what the label is directed at. I don't actually say feminism on stage now, I just cut to the feminist issue and try and get underneath any ideological connections people have with that word,” Corey explains.
“But it is definitely a divisive word. Maybe it shouldn't be, but it is and it means different things to different people. It's like this nebulous, protean word. From a tactical point of view, you can talk about the things that feminism is concerned with without dropping in that word.”
Not wanting to be defined as a comedian that only speaks to one subset of topics, Corey explains that “a lot of my beliefs now are really grey. I used to think the world used to be very black and white, I want to say the world isn't very black and white, but that's a very black and white statement in itself.
“I have a lot of uncertainty, I feel less and less able to talk about political issues. I think I'm moving towards discussing more existential ones, more psychological stand-up rather than political stand-up.”
Corey also speaks openly about his own struggles with mental illness on stage, suffering from clinical depression. “Mental illness isn't really a taboo any more, at least not to the extent it was say 30 years ago. There's a pretty wide acceptance of the neurochemical basis of depression and that reduces the taboo element of it and I think people are more compassionate as a result.”
Reflecting upon stand-up comedy's contribution to making these issues more acceptable, Corey states: “I think stand-up is a mirror but also a flame that burns society. I think that there's an interplay with the attitude that stand-up expresses and the attitudes of broader society. I think stand-ups can reflect what the broader society thinks but it can also contribute in changing what the general population thinks.”
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Late last year, Corey had an encounter with almost every comedian's favourite comedian, Doug Stanhope. “I was supposed to open for him at his Melbourne show and I got canned at the last minute because he arranged for one of his personal friends to open for him and I, still a fanboy, sat in the front row,” Corey recalls. “During the show he asks, 'Who has a job?' I said, 'Yeah, I'm a stand-up', and he just ripped into me. He said: 'Well, you mustn't be a very good one if you're not working tonight.' And he just went at me, he insulted my plaid shirt and then I wrote a blog about it and he retweeted it and thought it was very funny. It was great and all the comics in the crowd knew it was me. It's not every day you get used as subject matter for one of the most respected stand-up comedians currently working today.”
Originally from Brisbane, Corey moved to Melbourne over a year ago, which he sees as a welcome change of scenery. “This is all very cliché and trite, but it really is; it turns out that the cliché is true. Melbourne is a much better city artistically than Brisbane. You get to gig with some of the best comedians in the country like Lawrence Mooney, Greg Fleet, Celia Pacquola, Mike Webb, all these great people are down here all the time and it can't help but rub off on you.”
Reflecting on performing in Brisbane, Corey explains how “often rooms in Brisbane, you're springing the show on them, on the audience, which is never a great thing when you've got people settling down on a parmigiana, and you're like, 'Hey, here's a bit about the political situation!' You're performing under a TAB sign and Santa's Little Helper is lagging in the seventh race and Darren's put his rent money on Santa's Little Helper.”
Corey White Tour Dates
15 Feb - MC @ Ballarat Open Mic18 Feb - MC @ Imperial Comedy
24 Feb - UNSW Open Day (Sydney)
26-28 Feb - Sydney Comedy Store
5-7 Mar - Sit Down Comedy Club
10-15 - The Cane Toad Effect (Brisbane Comedy Festival)
25 Mar – 19 Apr - The Cane Toad Effect (Melbourne Comedy Festival)
