2024 Billy T Award winner Lana Walters, and 2024 Fred Award winners Trygve Wakenshaw and Barnie Duncan. Photograph / NZ Herald
Comedians Lana Walters, Trygve Wakenshaw and Barnie Duncan final night time took residence the largest prizes in native comedy.
Walters gained the celebrated Billy T Award, given to the perfect rising comic, for her present Don’t Lick That, about her experiences elevating her first baby and their first abroad vacation by way of Japanese Europe. Wakenshaw and Duncan gained the Fred Award for finest native present within the competition for Completely different Occasion, a clowning present that parodies workplace life, following two hapless employees at a leather-based interiors firm.
The awards got out at Final Laughs, the ultimate present of the New Zealand Worldwide Comedy Pageant.
Walters joins a prestigious line-up of former Billy T winners, together with Dai Henwood, Justine Smith, Paul Ego, Kura Forrester, Mel Bracewell and Abby Howells.
She was beforehand nominated for the prize in 2021 when she was pregnant together with her first baby, and have become pregnant once more after getting the nomination the second time.
“I’m glad I can’t get nominated once more as a result of I don’t want any extra youngsters,” she joked to the Herald shortly after profitable. “It appears to be a magical sprinkle that each time I get nominated, I get pregnant.
“I might like to be a job mannequin to anybody pregnant or with younger youngsters that it doesn’t imply your profession is over, it may simply be leaping off.”
Billy T Award winners have predominantly been male, with a 10-year stretch the place ladies didn’t win. Now, Walters is the sixth lady in a row to win the prize, and she or he stated it’s one other step in direction of rebalancing the prize.
“There’s a lot sturdy feminine comedy within the scene in the intervening time, which is improbable, and there’s a whole lot of sturdy male comedy as effectively. I believe that the comedy business is in a extremely good place.”
For the Fred Award, Wakenshaw has grow to be solely the second particular person to win the prize twice, a feat beforehand solely achieved by Dai Henwood. Wakenshaw gained initially in 2014. Different former winners embrace Man Montgomery, Eli Matthewson, Rhys Mathewson, Rose Matafeo and Chris Parker.
Now based mostly in Prague, Wakenshaw stated that Completely different Occasion was a chance to work with Duncan and reconnect.
“Working with Barnie is a dream. The entire present was created due to our friendship.”
The present was beforehand carried out abroad pre-pandemic, however this was its first staging in New Zealand. And it proved to be a household affair with competition audiences, with many individuals bringing their youngsters permit to the present, which Duncan stated has solely occurred right here.
“I’ve spoken to folks within the viewers who go, it’s actually cool sitting there and there’s a 6-year-old and everybody’s laughing on the similar bit. That’s fairly pretty.”
Requested for his or her recommendation for different comedians, Walters inspired any up-and-coming performer to use for it, as the advantages and assist from the competition are invaluable.
Duncan stated the present sparked a robust response from crowds merely due to how totally different it’s to different reveals on the market.
“If you wish to do comedy, simply broaden it out. It doesn’t should be you in your T-shirt and a mic stand going, ‘Oh, effectively, I went on a date and it went unhealthy’. There’s nothing incorrect with that, however that’s not the end-point. And the top objective doesn’t should be on a panel present and that you simply’ve reached the head of life.
“Discover all kinds of issues and discover genres and types.”
Wakenshaw echoed these sentiments. “There may be a whole lot of untapped, mystical, dreamlike issues on the market. Check out your weirdest, craziest concept and it would fail and that’s okay, as a result of everybody does.”
Additionally nominated for the Fred Award this yr have been Hayley Sproull and Alice Snedden, whereas the Billy T nominees have been Advait Kirtikar, Liv McKenzie, Rhiannon McCall, and duo Powerful Tiger Fist.
Different winners on the competition included Samuel Gebreselassie and Courtney Dawson for Finest Newcomer, Rhys Mathewson for Director’s Alternative, and Australian comedian Rhys Nicholson for Finest Worldwide.
