You might've seen comedian and writer Alex Ward on 'Have You Been Paying Attention?', or on the stage at Melbourne International Comedy Festival's Gala, among other places.
She's a Queenslander living in Melbourne, and she's making her mark on the Australian comedy industry show by show.
As any live comedian (and performer in general) can attest to, the art form doesn't come without its challenges. For starters, the concept of performing to audiences is something to get used to. . . And sometimes, these audiences are bold enough to voice their opinions about what they're seeing, in real time.
When we challenged Alex Ward to pen a top five ahead of her new show 'You're Welcome', she chose to share the top heckles she's received as a stand-up comedian.
What else can we say except, you're welcome?
“This is not an invitation to heckle me. If you do, I will report you to scenestr and the cops,” Alex says. “I haven’t been heckled too much in my career – I guess because my stand-up is so good people are too immersed and mesmerised to even think of heckling. . . That must be it. Here are the five that have stuck with me.”
One
“WOO SHH”. A lady right at the back stood out of her chair and yelled “Woo!” then immediately yelled “Shh!” and sat back down. Because I was the only person facing that way the rest of the crowd assumed it was two separate people. I figured they thought that because no one was as weirded out by the interaction as I was. I wanted to say something to her but worried she might have a split personality and didn’t want to risk offending or bringing attention to it so I just moved on. On the drive home I realised I actually should have said something because even if she had a split personality both her personalities were into my comedy – they were just very different people about it. One was like ‘hell yeah!’ and the other was like ‘I agree, but let’s hear what she has to say next'.Two
“COMEDY FOR MEN AND WOMEN”. A guy in the audience pointed at me and said, “now THIS is comedy for men and women”. It was actually a huge relief because men and women do make up most of my audience. I had a marketing meeting recently and the advisor asked me what I wanted, I said, “I don’t know if this is too much to ask but, men and women, be great to get them both in”.Three
“COMEDY”. Once someone just yelled “comedy” in the middle of my set and I thought ‘well they aren’t wrong'.Four
The Nose Flick. This one technically happened right before I went on stage. It was a gig in a small pub in the northern suburbs of Brisbane. There were only about ten people in the room (entire bar) for the comedy. A lady came up and says “are you one of the comedians?”. . . I suppose she could tell because I wasn’t one of the ten barflies that are in there on the daily. I said “yep”. She then goes, “well I should tell you before you go up there is something on your shirt”. I looked down at my shirt to see nothing and as I go to look back up she flicked me in the nose. She pranked me. She then yelled to the whole pub, “I got the comedian!” and wandered back out to the beer garden. To this day I’m sure I’ve done numerous gigs with stains all over me because I’m sure as hell not looking down when someone tells me there is something on my shirt.Five
“NOT FUNNY”. I walked on stage to start my set and said, “hello”. A guy then yelled, “not funny!”. And once again I thought ‘well they aren’t wrong’. I assume he thought I was the act before just checking anyone was listening. Hello? Is anybody out there? He taught me a valuable lesson: that one can drink enough Bundy Rum to not notice a new comedian has come on stage, despite the one before being a six foot man in a Slipknot shirt and not me, a five foot three woman who has never listened to Slipknot in her life.Alex Ward plays Chinese Museum – Silk Room (Melbourne International Comedy Festival) 31 March-24 April.
