Featuring 30 of the world’s best comedians.
The Melbourne International Comedy Festival (MICF) has been hit as hard as anyone by the COVID-19 pandemic. On March 12, the festival was gearing up for its biggest instalment ever – from March 25, MICF was set to feature a record-breaking 640 shows across the ensuing three-and-a-half weeks.
A day later and the whole event was called off.
Comedians all across the world who had flights booked, accommodation sorted, jokes prepared, had to forgo all of their plans. Not only was this a huge inconvenience, it was a massive financial crisis.
MICF then quickly adapted, introducing a fund for the performers and crew who had lost work as a result of the festival cancellation. Then in April when the festival was meant to be taking place, they filled the blanks by digitally broadcasting videos from festivals past. Then in June they rescheduled a bunch of shows to later in 2020 and early 2021 with the hope that the crisis would abate.
Then two months later in August, they launched Standup Sessions, a free digital stand-up series as part of the government’s Victoria Together digital platform.
As if they haven’t done enough to accommodate wanting comedy fans from Melbourne and across the world, now MICF has announced a new podcast in collaboration with Audible. Hosted by talented Australia comic Nikki Britton, Plot Twist spans six episodes and features 30 of the world’s best comedians, each of whom have come together to share a series of short stories.
Coming together in teams of five, the participating comedians were only given two hours to write their chapter, so as you can imagine, plenty of spontaneous hilarity ensues.
Some of the comedians involved in Plot Twist include Rhys Nicholson, Cal Wilson, Aaron Chen, Phil Wang, Denise Scott, Eleanor Tiernan, Maria Bamford, Zoe Coombs Marr and Mark Watson. The likes of David Quirk, DeAnne Smith, Frank Woodley, Claire Hooper, Jen Kirkman, among others, have also got involved.
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Plot Twist is now available via Audible. It’s free for Audible members and for those with a 30-day free trial. Get involved here.
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