Aregular visitor to Australia, the suave and sophisticated Stephen K Amos will be unleashing a new show at this year’s Sydney Comedy Festival. Adding to his repertoire, he has just hosted his own two-night Talk Show in Melbourne, supported by singers, dancers and other performers.
So does the future spell his name out in (bigger) lights? You might recall Amos’ frequent quip about having to wait for Lenny Henry to die before he gets his own show.
“Oh, a talk show with your name in the title – that’d be so much fun, wouldn’t it? I think I’d need a big stroke of luck for that to happen.”
Amos’ performances are often praised for his audience interaction. He is a warm and charming communicator, with an artful way of weaving spontaneous banter around the structure of his show.
“I do have the framework of an idea in my head,” Amos explains. “But I don’t want to end up doing a theatre piece. It’s not like we’re presenting a play. I try to keep things fresh and if anything happens during that day, I just try to run with it so the audience knows there’s something genuine happening there and then for the first time. It also means they don’t get bored with me saying the same thing over and over again. And yes, I’ve been known to constantly change my material night to night. You would be amazed at how the addition of one extra word can make a joke make much more sense.”
Described by the comic as a “walk down awkward street”, his new show, Welcome To My World, will tackle some prickly topics. While it may be a satisfying jab at the uptight Englishness of his home country, Amos is also looking to challenge a set of prejudices that are often left untouched. “The mood of the room changes – you can literally hear the clenching of the buttocks,” he says of his performances thus far.
Having ventured Down Under more than a few times, Amos
has some insightful comments on Australia’s political landscape. “It’s always good to challenge your audience, particularly
here in Australia,” he says.
“For example, there are marches on at the moment about the closure of indigenous communities in Western Australia. Historically, these people have been on this planet for a very long time. And if your Prime Minister is saying that it’s a financial thing, that it’s a ‘lifestyle choice’, perhaps he should have a look in his own backyard where his daughter received a scholarship that was unavailable to anyone else, a scholarship he could clearly afford. That’s a lifestyle choice we should be concerned about.”
Amos certainly doesn’t shy away from voicing his opinions. “This is the thing about social media. I don’t feel I need to explain that ‘these views are my own’ because they are my own. And I think more often, because of social media, people are looking to be offended,” he says, identifying the online world as constantly ripe for controversy. “They will latch onto a buzzword without hearing the context of the joke and start a campaign.”
He may occasionally sound irritated, but Amos is essentially an optimist. No longer focused solely on telling jokes, he speaks to his audience on a deeper level (and not at the expense of a laugh). “The obvious thing that comedy can do to drive change is bring together people of different cultures and backgrounds,” he says. “At the end of the day, we all have stuff that happens in our lives and people’s lives are intertwined. So if you can get an audience to laugh and think, well I think you’re well on your way.”
Stephen K Amos’Welcome To My World is on at Enmore Theatre, as part of Sydney Comedy Festival 2015,Thursday April 23 / Sunday April 26.
