- Raw happens in every capital city in Australia.
- You enter your details and your preferred heat date here.
- You go and do a 5 minute spot of new, original comedy material at the heat. Heats are compered by a professional comedian and are open to the public - bring your own cheer squad!
- The best acts from the heats go on to State semifinals, and then to a State Final.
- The best acts from all the State Finals go into a National Final.
- The National Final is held in the main Melbourne Town Hall as a feature event of the Melbourne Comedy Festival, and recorded for broadcast by ABC television.
Are you entering a Melbourne heat?
Things will run a little differently in Melbourne in 2009. We will not be running the usual succession of heats and semi finals. Instead the process will work like this:
- We will stage four 'Qualifying Heats', which will be your first step. These are big long audition-style gigs that will go for several hours and feature 30 or more comics on the line up. There will still be a professional compere, and they will be open to the public, although priced very cheaply.
- You don't get to nominate which Qualifying Heat you enter, we allocate you to one. Of course we will take into consideration your availabilities and other commitments.
- We will select 40 of the best comics from this process to go onto one of four 'Super heats'. These will be much like the regular Raw heats in other cities.
- There are no semi finals. We will select 10 of the best comics from the Super Heats to go through to one State Final.