Dank Presents is a series of exper­i­ment­al com­edy shows cre­ated by Wel­ling­ton comedi­ans and pro­du­cers. Hos­ted by Fringe Bar this Fringe, every show is dif­fer­ent. I saw The Nation­al Aver­age, based on an award win­ning routine in BATS Theatre’s Late Night Knife Fight. Jonny Potts and Matt Pow­ell are broth­ers Cosmo and Carl, left a whisky/whiskey bar and a pian­ist by their late par­ents. There were a couple of ask-fors but oth­er­wise it was unscrip­ted. The audi­ence were invited to con­trib­ute an opin­ion to the Hat Full of Opin­ions and this was reg­u­larly and hil­ari­ously employed through­out the show. Potts and Pow­ell are both exper­i­enced per­formers with com­ple­ment­ary per­form­ance styles. They used one of my favour­ite impro­visa­tion tech­niques – an idea is used then keeps resur­fa­cing in dif­fer­ent forms.  Everything seemed to be logic­al and it wasn’t until after­wards that I remembered it was all made up as they mixed everything togeth­er (mostly) seam­lessly. Musi­cian Amand was stuck at the back of the stage. He had a good pres­ence with appro­pri­ate music and the occa­sion­al level stare at the audi­ence. An excel­lent fun even­ing out.

There are two more Dank Com­edy shows this Fringe.

Tonight! A Com­edy Show With Good Comedi­ans In It: a one-of-a-kind show fea­tur­ing some of Wel­ling­ton’s hot­test comed­ic tal­ent – and it’s back with a bangin’ brand new line up, includ­ing the inter­na­tion­al sen­sa­tion – Sameena Zehra!

Tomor­row! Dank 18! Win­ner of the Wel­ling­ton Com­edy Awards Best Show in 2016. The leg­acy con­tin­ues, show­cas­ing up and com­ing New Zea­l­and Com­edy Tal­ent, the show focuses on vari­ety, cre­ativ­ity and ori­gin­al­ity, being host to some of New Zea­l­and greatest young (and old) comed­ic minds.

 

Start your week­end right my friends, give them a go.