What We Can Learn From Adam Hills

Theme:

Do you have a favourite comic? What makes them good? Can comedians do more than make us laugh?

The Inflatable Adam Hills

Each week on ABC radio Bernadette Young and I have a little thing we do called Brave Souls where people ring in to have a conversation. The only thing is they do not know what the topic of the conversation will be, thus they need to be Brave Souls, folk prepared to think on their brave feet.

As part of Brave Souls we also have Brave Thumbs where the not quiet as brave folk get to text through a comment on a topic we give them.

Recently we incorporated another body part into Brave Souls – the Brave Bum. This is where a studio guest gets to sit their brave bum in the hot seat and be prepared to think and join in on the general playfulness of this talkback radio FLIP.

Our first Brave Bum was host of the wonderful ABC television program Spicks & Specks, comedian Adam Hills. Apart from the fact that I love Adam’s work and looked forward to meeting him, there was an added bonus in that he arranged two complimentary tickets to his live show called Inflatable. I had already seen some of Adam’s other shows and welcomed the chance to see him again.

As a professional speaker myself, there is a lot to be learned from Adam Hills.

The Sub-Start

On taking stage Adam does ‘stuff’ before he starts the guts of his show. Often the stuff is a response to something or someone he sees in the crowd. He tells us (in a nice frame) that he has a show prepared and eventually that we will get to it but there are some things he just has to do first. In his final Australian tour show at Perth’s Octagon Theatre show he did several things:

1. He spotted two girls wearing t-shirts saying ‘Was it a Shark?’ a reference to one of Adam’s gags from another show
2. He then drew attention to 11 girls sitting together who have made singlets saying ‘We Love Adam Hills’. He brings them on stage for a photo
3. He introduces us to Maria a woman who has seen 12 of his shows in a variety of states this year and who has seen Adam 70 times in the past two years. He calls Maria his ‘resident stalker’ and she seems to love him even more for it
4. He introduces us to his AUSLAN sign interpreter and the joys of signing
5. He spots a young lad and asks him his age and name. The lad is an eleven-year old named George. It turns out that one of the t-shirt girls is named Georgina and another lass he has chatted to is Gina – short for Georgina. Plus there is a guy in the front row that is also a George. Adam delights in the Georgeness of the crowd and night and now has a spontaneous running gag.

The Involvement

Adam’s sub-start has set up the premise that this is a night where members of the crowd, and sign language itself, are as much the stars of the show as Adam. Involving a crowd can be risky but the risk gives the show a chance to bounce spontaneously.

When Adam was in the studio for Brave Souls we chatted that our radio FLIPPED talkback had at its core a belief that everyone has a story and that people will come through – basically we had faith in folk. Adam’s comedy has the same foundation belief.

The Premise

Adam’s show’s title is based on an old and popular joke about the Inflatable Boy who let’s his school down and himself down… Adam is able to make the joke work because of the story he tells building to the gag (meeting a perky 19 year old), the second punch line (the 19 year old lass tells him it is a ‘Dad Joke’) and where he then takes it all.

Author Dale Carnegie outlined his ideas in public speaking fifty years before Adam Hills was born. Carnegie believed that great speakers tell stories that have a point that link to the theme that they are on about: Story-Point-Link.

Adam’s Inflatable show does Old Gag-Point-Link. He makes the gag his own by then relating it to a pretend duologue with his future son. The point being that our purpose on the planet is to inflate others so they swell up and feel good as opposed to deflating others. This then links to an on-going Adam Hills theme: his comedy has compassion.

Finally, A Foot To Stand On

The ‘Was it a Shark?’ t-shirts the young women wore refers to the fact that Adam has a prosthetic foot and when people outside of Australia hear this they ask ‘Was it a shark?’ It wasn’t.

Adam was born without a right foot. Perhaps this is why he made such a great commentator for the Para-Olympics and why he is such a great commentator on the human spirit.

Perhaps being sans a right foot has taught Adam a deeper level of empathy. Or maybe he was just raised to have a sense of humour balanced with a sense of respect. Whatever, it helps his shows touch people deeper than a series of continuous belly laughs – they uplift and inflate. They help us become better people (and have fun at the same time).

Everyone can benefit from an Adam Hills stage show. Professional and public speakers can get another layer of benefit from watching they way Adam weaves his prepared show and his spontaneous ‘thinking on his foot show’ together as a living organism.

Adam finished (teaching us about climax) with his Advance Australia Fair anthem to the tune of Jimmy Barnes Working Class Man. As he did so, the t-shirt girls, the singlet lasses, Maria, Gina and 11 year-old George joined him on stage holding big purple inflatable balloons.

It was simple, memorable and beautiful: the music, respect and humour were in deed alive with the sound of Adam Hills.

Where to from here:

• Which comedians have you seen live on stage?
• Do you have a favourite comic or two? What makes them good?
• What have you noticed about how comedians craft their shows? Do they have a plan and stick to it or do they bounce spontaneously? Do they blend the prepared with the spontaneous?