Why cult favourites Aunty Donna are back in Melbourne – just in time for pud season

3 months ago 5

Aunty Donna, YouTube sensations and cult comedy figures, aren’t so cult any more.

They’ve just returned home from a huge world tour, including three nights at the largest theatre they’ve ever played – the Hammersmith Apollo in London – and are about to begin a seven-night run at the Palais with their show, Drem.

“When you get to a certain audience number, audiences aren’t coming to see you do a first date,” says core member Broden Kelly. “They’re coming to form a more nuanced, rich kind of relationship with you. So we take things much further. We have the self-confidence now to know that if we find it funny, we can take it somewhere that works.”

For Aunty Donna, finishing the tour in their home city was always the goal.

“We as a group would not exist if we weren’t forged in Melbourne,” says Kelly. “Melbourne had the right chemicals, the right chemistry to make good art. Not that we’re good art,” he quickly adds.

The troupe met at the University of Ballarat (now Federation University Australia) in 2011. A little over a decade ago, they had their first show at the Edinburgh Fringe. Going to the other side of the world, the thinking went, gets you noticed in Australia.

“Unless you’re being authentic, the audience don’t remember you.”

Broden Kelly

“We thought that was the way to grow,” says Broden Kelly. “The model to that point had been, you win the big award at Edinburgh, and then come back here, and the ABC will give you a TV show.”

The model has changed. While a Netflix show did give them a new audience (their ABC show less so), Aunty Donna have mostly made their name on their own terms. Their YouTube presence, countless hours of sketches, podcasts and undefined bits of weirdness that wouldn’t fit anywhere else, has over 600, 000 followers. They’re reaching this global audience and selling out venues in the US and the UK because of their unfiltered Australian-ness, not despite it.

“It’s an incredibly Australian show and it’s an incredibly Melbourne show,” says Kelly about Drem. “The references are for Melbourne people, but we’ve done it literally everywhere but here. And it’s connected with people. Which is really cool.”

Kelly grew up on The Simpsons and Monty Python and only understood a fraction of the cultural references.

A scene from Aunty Donna’s Big Ol’ House of Fun.

“But I still understood the frequency and the energy and the vibe of what they were putting out,” he says. “Australians often think that we need to pander to resonate with people elsewhere.”

This is a recurring theme in Aunty Donna’s approach: compromise does not make good art. “The best thing is truth on stage,” he says. “Look at the success of a band like King Gizzard, who are only doing what they truthfully enjoy. Or someone like Amy Taylor from Amyl and the Sniffers. She’s her authentic self.

“And so we’ve made TV shows that have gone out to 70 countries with references to Car City Ringwood, or to one guy in Ballarat. Unless you’re being authentic, the audience don’t remember you.”

This is the philosophy behind Grouse House, their online platform where they help develop and show off other comics’ work. Much of the profit from this lucrative tour will be ploughed back into Grouse House, and the work of peers like Demi Lardner, Greg Larsen and Jordan Barr. Lardner’s So You Wanna Win A Penis Pump and Larsen’s unhinged The Greg Larsen Show already have a following.

“Greg’s written on so many TV shows and he’s so burnt out by the laborious task of working through network notes,” says Kelly. “So we just said to him: ‘Go and make whatever show you want to make.’ The result is incredibly divisive, but the audience who like it just adore it more than anything else.”

After this final sprint at the Palais, Aunty Donna will be taking time off touring to focus on these new endeavours. But they’re in it for the long haul.

“The only reason we’ve stuck around is that the only people we were answering to were the audience and ourselves,” says Kelly. “If enough people want to see more, then we’ll keep making it.”

Aunty Donna’s Drem is at the Palais Theatre from December 12 to 20.

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