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NAIDOC WEEK 2022: GET UP, STAND UP, SHOW UP

The 2022 NAIDOC Week theme is “Get Up, Stand Up, Show Up”. Over the past week we caught up with some of our 2022 Deadly Funny National Grand Finalists and asked them to reflect upon the theme, how it resonates with their own lives, and how it intersects with their experiences as the next generation of Aboriginal & Torres Strait Islander comedians.


I think, in a way, the Comedy Festival tries to stand up and show up and give us a platform. This year was the most number of blackfellas I've seen in that Festival ever. That was boss! When we had cancellations in our show, we could call on other Blackfellas we knew to come and fill the spots.

The reason I turned to stand-up comedy was the coping skills for working in really hostile, culturally unsafe, shit environments, and having a way to sort of use that dark humour. Like every blackfella has that that one uncle, right? That just tells all the jokes that they've got to make you bust yourself laughing when something bad happens.

I think humour is so ingrained into Aboriginal coping and resilience. If done right, like without the self-deprecation or any of the other stuff that you see said in a lot of other humour, I think that you can address racism itself. And you know, if you can get someone laughing at something racist or ignorant you can open their thoughts up for a minute.

I've had epic feedback where someone says that they've learned so much more about topics in the Aboriginal space, and they never thought they'd be giggling, laughing and crying all at the same time. And I think that we need people to have an emotive response and humour brings that emotive response. Oh, and a good storyteller as well!

I'm really privileged. I get to watch great storytellers and they inspire me to be like them. I love seeing how they, you know, manipulate or move the people or talk to elicit an emotional reaction, gain a bit of knowledge or an understanding.

We need more Aboriginal political comedians. Like we've got a couple coming through as well alongside myself and I love it because their jokes are on point. I think with us as Aboriginal people we have Black excellence. We're unapologetic. Our families didn't fight, survive, and get to this point for us to not say what's going on now.

Ben Moodie is a stand-up comedian, Yidaki player and teacher and Cultural Awareness Training facilitator. Ben was a finalist at both the 2021 and 2022 Deadly Funny National Grand Finals. You can catch Ben performing in Naarm at Kungari Comedy and NAIDOC Week Dance Party. You can follow Ben on Instagram and Facebook.


Comedy is the ability to get up, stand up, show up and make a fool of yourself or put yourself out there. As my girlfriends told me on the weekend, they could never do stand-up comedy. They think I'm a little bit crazy.

But get up, stand up, show up is also about honouring the legacy of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people that have come before me, especially in my own family. My elders, my grandparents, my aunts, uncles and cousins that have trod a pathway so that I am reaping the benefits of that hard work and that activism and that ability and resilience and strength to keep going in a political and social climate that didn't honour them, as First Nations people in this country.

To me, it's also about my own parents, especially my dad, because he was a Vietnam vet and he fought under a flag that when he came back in, I was a little girl because in the mid to late sixties and he still wasn't recognized as a citizen of this country, but he'd gone to war. And how he was left out of RSLs and how he wasn't allowed to drink with his mates. So for me, it's about continuing that legacy in my own personal way I guess. It's about all of us as a community standing up and showing up together, not just Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people, but all our friends, you know, our allies that we rely on to support and love us.

There's something about performing that is intrinsically in my blood, I guess. I think we all seek that entertainment, we want to give something back that makes people laugh and to get where they are for a moment in time and to show up, you know?

But you show up. And this is what I've learned through comedy, no matter how big or small the audience is, this is what I've learned from working with Kevin Kropinyeri and another, Vanessa Larry Mitchell, who I did my stand-up comedy course with, is that you show up even if the crowd is under 10 people, which you know, is not many people. Then you show up when it's a crowd of, you know, 500, as we did at the Melbourne International Comedy Festival, you show up for a crowd.

I use humour to turn politics on its side a little bit. I’ve talked about suicide and depression and post-traumatic stress disorder and how it lives in your blood and in your DNA. But we've overcome that with comedy and laughter. I grew up with parents who were very poor, family that was very poor. But laughter is in those political times of the sixties and seventies when we didn't have any rights. You know, laughter got us through a lot of stuff, you know, and my parents taught me to laugh with a lot of things that hurt me growing up.

All Australians should look into whose land you're on. You can learn so much on Google, you can go to Facebook, Instagram, there are so many avenues for people. But also going into your own library, in your local library or your state library having a look there. But as well as knowing whose land you’re on, connecting. It's not hard these days to connect with community and mob.

Janty Blair is the winner of the 2022 Deadly Funny National Grand Final. Janty’s career has been in nursing and midwifery before enrolling in a performing arts degree and mid-way through, catching the comedy bug earlier this year. She is performing alongside fellow Deadly Funny alumnus Kylan Ambrum this Saturday at the Fraser Coast NAIDOC ball.


Jessie

Well, David and I actually do get up, stand up and show up all the time. And that's part of why we actually do stand up comedy. We believe that you should have a go.

Dave

The very first heat of the Deadly Funny I went to, there was only me and one other person showed up and luckily, I got through to the finals. If some more people showed up, maybe one of them would get in the finals, you know?

I've always said that to people too. Even when I was writing for Black Comedy, turn up! Make sure you turn up. One time in Taree, I was about to chicken out. I was halfway across the road and I said, ‘I can't do this’. And Steph Tisdell spotted me and called me back and said, ‘Nah, you've got to do this’. So, yeah, show up and do your best.

Jessie

When I first got with Dave, he used to know a lovely young man called Quaden Bayles and David always used to say that Quaden had a saying, ‘Don't be shame, be game’.

Dave

Yeah, ‘don’t be shame, be game’.

Jessie

So I guess Get Up, Stand Up, Show Up is just being brave enough to actually face, I guess, a bit of anxiety to get up and perform. And the whole idea of stand up comedy is to make people laugh, so to help them to forget their worries and their troubles for a few minutes. And if we can do that by facing our own little demons, I think we're at a win.

Dave

I actually took up standup comedy in the first place to battle anxiety. I used to have really bad anxiety, and I couldn't go out in public without throwing up. I just couldn't do it. So the best way to fight that was to get on stage in front of a bunch of strangers, talk absolute crap for five minutes and hopefully make them laugh.

But the most important part of that is to get up there. That's the battle won.

Dave

I once had a conversation with Sean Choolburra about what do you do when somebody asks you to comment on something political? And I like to do this: I'm a comedian. But my daughter's actually got a coupla degrees in government and politics and stuff. That's who they should go and ask. Let's use them, talk to them. They're trained for it. I'm a comedian. I'll just make jokes about it when politicians make the wrong decisions.

Jessie

I'm not very political and I think that politics has a time and a place. If you have a message to put through your comedy, I think you have to be very aware of what type of message you're trying to portray through your stand up comedy and be careful of the words that you choose in the way that you deliver it.

So I see, quite culturally, I guess you could say informed and educated, I use a lot of Wiradjuri language and things like that.

There's a word that a lot of us should be living by, which is in Yindyamarra, which is respect, and it's respect for each other. It's respect for everything, the community as a whole.

I think that if we could focus on cultural aspects and how beautiful our culture can be, instead of focusing on, I guess, a political message every time we get on stage and keep it a bit more lighthearted too. But yeah, politics aren't me.

Dave

But I do like to throw in a little political something or other along the way, even if it's none of my business. But hey, we're blackfellas. We've got to stand up for something.

Jessie

Yeah, we do.

Dave and Jessie Rabbit-Human are a married comedy-couple living on ​​Dunghutti and Gumbaynggirr Country on the Mid-North Coast of NSW. Dave is a three-time Deadly Funny Finalist who received a special mention from the judges at the 2022 National Grand Final. Jessie is a first-time National Finalist this year, and the pair made this hilarious teaser for their appearance competing against one another ahead of the Festival. They have since launched Human Rabbit Entertainment, an Indigenous-owned business dedicated to bringing communities together through laughter. Follow them here.