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Why Aunt Donna wants to build a ‘Mini Netflix for Australian Comedy’
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Why Aunt Donna wants to build a ‘Mini Netflix for Australian Comedy’

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In 2014, Aunty Donna’s promising comic career was on a knife edge.
After he had been nominated for the prestigious Golden Gibbo Award for their first live show, the then-four-person sketch comedy-crew was a member and wondered if they could work as a trio.
To add salt to the wound, the location they had brought in for the Melbourne International Comedy Festival on the outskirts of the CBD was far away from all action.

“It was an impasse where it is: this will fall apart or get Momentum,” says Broroden Kelly about how he and the other two members of the group felt at the time.

In the early years of their comedy career, Aunt Donna acted as a quartet. Credit: Isabelle Clara Mason

After “white buttons” to create a show that they were really proud of, SBS comedy gave them a less than favorite review.

“They hated it”, Mark Samual Bonanno recalls.
“We had a sit-down in Lygon Street and we went around a circle and said something that we like to like-that is how much it influenced us.”

While that second star review hit their self -confidence, Zachary Ruane credit it with “a very important step in our journey”.

“The big lesson we came out was that we might work very hard to get on that stage and make a good thing, but when people come to watch, they have just worked hard on something that is much more than what we do,” he says.
“They don’t come to us to see us working hard; they come to us to forget the hard work that they have just done, to forget their struggles … So we just have to come there and have fun.

“That kind of conversation and that realization, I think, has informed so much about what we do.”

Find non-traditional paths to success

A decade on, and aunty donna – made up of writers and performers bonanno, kelly, and ruane, along with head writer and stage director Sam Lingham, director Max Miller, and composer Thomas Zahariou – Have Toured All over the world, worked worked, Relased Micalleff, Tony Martin and Weird Al Yankovic, and published a coloring book.
Much of that success is thanks to the loyal supporters they have built online via their YouTube channel, with more than 639,000 subscribers, their titll-free podcast and their Patreon.
“When we started, there were three or four people at festivals and networks who had to like what you did, and if they didn’t like what you did, then good luck for you,” says Ruane.

“We were a kind of first generation that could go then:” Well, you don’t like us, but we’re going to look for an audience. “

With 2018’s Always Room for Christmas Pud, a largely improvised sketch that is perhaps the most famous of Aunt Donna, they had their first taste of something that was approaching virality.
The original upload has viewed more than 4.3 million times on YouTube and Pud has also become a current gag and annual cultural celebration among their fans, a pannettone spawn Version (a nod to Bonanno’s Italian heritage), a family -friendly version, a picture book and a mockumentary about making the sketch.
While the enormous work of the group varies in its themes and Toon, their sparkle lies in their ability to accept a universal experience – such as dealing with terrible brokers, forgot to bring your reusable bags to the stores, having a picnic as an adult, and loading cake at the end of a party – and an absurd skimper edge.

One thing Aunt Donna is generally away from it is openly political.

But Kelly rejects the idea that they “never say anything”.
“I am really struggling with that because I think everything we do really says something very simple, and that is” if you are a man, it’s okay to look crazy or be stupid. It’s okay to be weird, “he says.
“The world I now lean with Footy [Kelly hosts an AFL podcast] There is also so much negativity and laying down and just kind of tropics that are male, and just try to reconfirm by giving the example that it doesn’t have to be the case.

“We do that a lot with our things – but I think if things are too didactic or too educational, you lose a lot of people if you could get them.”

Given how many Australian references are littered in the work of Aunt Donna (everything from Hey, Hey, it is Saturday to Eagle Boys Pizza), it may be surprising that the global streaming gigantic Netflix was willing to give their own show for local TV networks.
Aunty Donna’s Big Ol ‘House of Fun, which was produced by Office Star Ed Helms’ Company Pacific Electric Picture Company, was also the only time they received the free rein to make the show they wanted.
“Every other time it was very tough:” You can’t just do what you want to do. It must be, it must tick all these boxes, “says Bonanno.

Kelly adds: “Often we have seen in places that we have made before, the shows they make for everyone at the same time, and there is an argument that is not the best representation of diversity … Maybe it gives opportunities to represent what they want to represent, instead of placing a square pin in a round hole.”

A woman and five men with expressions of shock and surprise on their faces. Three of the men are dressed in judicial robes and wigs, while another is dressed in the outfit of a blue burglar.

Aunty Donna’s Coffee Café, the TV series they produced for the ABC, contained a long list of guest start, including striking star Richard Roxburgh (center) and Matt Doran (second from the left), who played mouse in the matrix. Source: Delivered / ABC

Asked if they thought they had to make it abroad to be taken seriously at home, Aunt Donna does not bump.

“It is almost as if we don’t have to answer that question; the world answered the question for us,” says Ruane.

Bonanno adds: “That’s Australia. That’s music, that’s TV, that’s comedy, that’s all the art in Australia. We tend to lift people until abroad says:” This is great “.”

Build a ‘Mini Netflix for Australian Comedy’

The risky character of the local screen industry has encouraged Aunt Donna to invest their own money in cherishing talent that does not necessarily fit with a mainstream mal, through their production company you did not do well and comedy Network Grouse House.

“We have just seen a kind of entrepreneurship that there was a gap in the market and that every network in the country did not work in the platforms of really good people,” says Kelly.

“We just thought:” Let’s see if we can build something that can eventually compete “, so we hired a whole team around us that build this platform and builds shows and rolls out, and it’s really nice to see.”

Although they start small by financing comedians with which they have worked in the past, including Demi Lardner and Greg Larsen, they hope in the long term that Grouse House can become a “Mini Netflix for Australian comedy”.

“We see these people who are really, really good … they only need that opportunity,” says Ruane about their desire to help other Australian comedians create sustainable careers.
“While we expand that community and fold more people, we will hopefully end up in a place where we [people say] “Well, if the Grouse House works, then it’s good.”

“The goal would be that in five years there will be fans of Grouse House who have never heard of Aunt Donna, they just love that brand.”

The end of an era

Never to rest on their laurels, Aunt Donna is back on the road with Drem, their first live show in two years.
The show promises to be just as stupid and with energy as the group’s audience expect, while they also offer something new.

“I would claim that Drem is our freedom show when it comes to the ideas in it and how we have merged the show a bit. In terms of production I am the most enthusiastic about [it] Because we do things that we have never done before, “says Bonanno.

Three men performing on a stage

Aunt Donna’s live shows are known as a high octane, attack on the senses – in the best way. Source: Getty / Roberto Ghosti

It is also the first time in their career that they have no plans about when they will tour again.

“We are a bit fine with the idea that we will not tour a little bit below, because at least it feels like a real bookmark of this era in which we have learned all these lessons about how the audience can make laugh,” says Kelly.
Ruane adds: “It’s nice to just have a little ambiguity there. We don’t have that for a long time.”

Aunt Donna tours until the end of December through Drem around Australia, New Zealand, Ireland, the UK, the US and Canada.

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