Is it off? – My debut hour at the NZICF!

Holy shit – I just debuted my first comedy hour at the NZ International Comedy Festival! I’m legit flabbergasted and buzzing with excitement.

Bizarrely, I have always been keen on being in the comedy festival – dating back to before I even dipped my toes into comedy. To now be chilling on the couch post-Is it off? feels surreal and insane.

It has been a whiplash of a few months – shifting gears from my first solo play to my first comedy hour has been a wild ride.  A stressful but incredibly fulfilling ride!

And with my comedy hour all wrapped, I thought it might be nice to throw together a little reflection on the show, the process and where to next! Behold…

Figuring out the show

The comedy shows I adore watching are the ones where people are undeniably themselves – putting on a show they love performing and staying true to what they want to achieve.

This is something I wanted to keep in mind when pulling together my show – achingly aware that I didn’t want to create a show I thought others wanted. I didn’t want to put on the right kind of show – I wanted to put on my kind of show. And ya know what, I reckon achieved this and I’m pretty chuffed.

Is it off? is the culmination of the comedy work I have been doing over the past few years – weaving together a bunch of comedy disciplines I have been dabbling in. The bulk of the show is comprised of standup (pulled from sets I’ve been trialling over the almost two years I have been doing standup). But there’s also a character sketch, two comedy songs, a meta sketch and some improv. Woo for blending the different types of comedy I love doing together into one show – it really was a blast!

I get bored when I’m watching one medium for too long, so the key word I kept in my head when developing the show was variety. I wanted the show to feel a bit like a comedy buffet – but still tied together with an overarching theme.

The theme I chose to explore in this show was my OCD – zeroing in on how it manifests with obsessive checking of my stove/oven. The show starts and ends with the oven, and throughout I check in on the stove – along with covering a cluster of topics I have been obsessively ruminating about. I will refrain from spiralling into more detail, as I think I’ll be doing this show again and I don’t want to spoil anything for anyone who might be keen to check out future iterations.

The experience

I had the best time performing this show! Four nights, great audiences and no mishaps – I don’t think I could have asked for more.

At the start of the show, I joke that this show is my first, and maybe my last, comedy hour – depending on how it goes. And I reckon it won’t be my last one because it was such a rewarding experience. Lots of laughs, and not just from me – so I’m banking the win!

A banging team and awesome comedy community

I can’t celebrate my show at the Comedy Fest without acknowledging my truly incredible production team: Aroha Faletolu, Ralph Hilaga and Quentin Potts!

These legends shaped the show into what it was – helping tighten jokes, providing creative direction, helping make props and set, running the show on show night, and so much more! Putting on a comedy hour is daunting, but it felt so much easier knowing I had an amazing team behind me.

In addition to this, the comedy community in Wellington have been so supportive. It has been particularly awesome doing the fest at the same time as fellow first timers and friends Kipling DC and Keegan Thomas. Nothing like having people to share a ‘we did it’ beer with on closing night!

I was also lucky enough to have a couple of mentoring sessions from Brendan Green, which was incredibly valuable during the show development phase.

All in all – a huge thanks needs to go out to everyone who supported the show development, came along to watch, or provided support throughout the process!!!

So what’s next for Is it off?

This show is definitely not a one and done. I put in a chunk of work and frankly I’ve had too much fun doing performing it, so I find myself already hankering to get on stage and do it all over again. I am taking the show down to Christchurch in June for one night which will be a blast – and I hope to take it to other venues over the next year! (Just gotta figure out how to travel with a huge oven…)

And finally behold… some reviewer quotes…

"With her debut NZICF hour, Mo Munn is bringing a frantic, fast-paced show with Is it Off?, a show that draws upon the dozens of talents she’s got up her sleeve. There’s so much going on in this show, from singing to comedy to improv to licking, you’ll never get bored watching it... She jabs and slices at her audience and draws laughs instead of blood.... Thematically it's perfect"

-Wellyott, Is it off?

​"When Mo Munn is on point in Is it Off? her show goes off in very good way. It deserves to travel far and wide, as long as the oven is up for that."

-Theatrereview, Is it off?