Despite their best efforts, comedians George Kapiniaris, Gabriel Rossi and Tahir can't seem to stop performing their show 'Wild Wogs'.
'Wild Wogs' is a comedic insight into what it is like to be of non-Anglo ethnicity living in Australia. Yet George and his fellow performers have made sure to create a show that anyone can laugh at. “Personally, I do have a big Aussie following as well as a wog following,” George admits.
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“When my Anglo fans come and see ['Wild Wogs'] they love the show as well. At the start, my humour was heavily 'wog' and I had people coming up to me after the show saying, 'That was good, but I only understood 80 per cent of your material'. So I made an effort to kind of mainstream it, and not make it too Greek so everyone understood what I was talking about as opposed to a few.
“I also do a bit of music on stage with the boys, but especially Gabriel Rossi in the show. We love musical parody, so we are doing a whole music set. The '80s verses the music of today. The Justin Biebers and One Directions verses the George Michaels and the Pseudo Echos. So that's a lot of fun for the audience who isn't from a wog background and just a mainstream audience.”
The show's popularity has take it from only a short tour, to one that has now spread over two years. “Originally we were meant to do four shows. We pulled [the show] together just for a bit of fun and I think it mostly worked well and people liked it. We're just a bunch of mates and comedians that got together and made a show, and it's now getting close to the 50 mark for number of shows.
“It's been very popular, and there's been a lot of demand for it. We're still going, we keep saying 'alright that's the cut-off point, no more shows', then we keep adding shows. We just have to keep putting on more shows, it'd be stupid if you didn't because of the demand.”
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George broke into the TV scene starring in shows such as 'The Flying Doctors' and 'Acropolis Now', but shares that it was “never” his intention to get into comedy. “When I started 32 years ago doing stand-up comedy as a drama student it was never my intention to even do comedy. But there's not enough acting work in this country for everyone, so thank god I had comedy on the side. Ninety per cent of actors are unemployed, and ninety nine per cent of ethnic actors are unemployed, so comedy has saved my butt and given me a living.
“So a decade ago I realised I really should start getting serious about this. Stop doing party tricks on stage, and start actually talking about who I am, where I'm going and where I come from.”
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So what does George believe 'Wild Wogs' brings to an audience? “Laughter. Lots of laughter. Lots of belly laughs. You'll leave the show with a stomach ache. We don't take responsibility for medical accidents relating to the stomach. It's a real fun show. It doesn't matter if you're a wog or any other nationality, you'll love the show.”
