'Comedy is an interesting road'

Kate McLennan, one of the few women comedians from Australia, is enjoying what she’s doing. Be it stand-up comedy or other shows, Kate loves making people laugh.

Kate, who was in the City recently, says, “I loved the street food here in India and experimented with everything. I also had a chance to have chai the other day and was amazed — it’s so much better than what we get back in Australia,” she says.

Is comedy a male-dominated field? “Comedy is an interesting road. Female comedians in Australia are really skilled and their standard is really high. If one wants to stick around in this field, one has to be really good and has to be on their game all the time,” says Kate. Most of Kate’s acts revolve around her parents.

“My dad is a funny person. I started off with character comedy and integrated it into stand-up. I would be often telling a story through my act and would then flip in a character into the story,” she says adding, “my sister and my boyfriend are also subjects of my acts.” Kate says that she is a relationship - humour person.

Kate has written for acts as well as for TV sitcoms. “TV is much faster, a few pages of script would finish in a few minutes. But in stand-up comedy, a few minutes are taken to get one’s point across. In TV, it’s more about showing rather than saying. TV is more concise and I do love writing for the medium too,” she says.

Her favourite comedians are Tina Fey and Amy Poehler. “They are big heroes for me and are so inspiring. When they were hosting the ‘Golden Globe’ awards some days back, it was hilarious to see them in action,” says Kate. “Women can often get bitchy and it was nice to see how compatible the duo are,” she adds.

Kate, who does a lot of character-based comedy, says that one can get away with anything in such comedy and get into territory that isn’t appropriate.

“But in stand-up comedy, it’s one’s opinion and one has to stand by anything. But what I love about stand-up comedy is that one can react more about what’s going on in the room you are performing,” she says.

Kate used to present a football podcast earlier and vouches that it’s fun. “The public hasn’t got onto the podcast arena yet. If you’re on another communication medium like Twitter, then there are high chances you’ll lose your job when you say something controversial, but here, one can say anything. It’s like no one has realised that podcasts exist apart from its dedicated fans,” she says.

This comedian, who’s travelled to Singapore, Hong Kong, USA and other places, says that she’s heard that the Indian culture has a lot of storytelling inculcated in it. “If humour was combined with this storytelling nature, then the comedy scene of India would be one of the most brilliant ones,” says Kate.