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'Talking Point'
Insight Magazine (The Age)
By Dan Harrison
14 January, 2007

"Having no pets, plants or particular penchant for segregated colours in my washing machine, I didn't think I could contribute much at all.
However, as my car is permanently parked outside, I've recently purschased a car cover, thereby aving water AND dollars. Ironically - it looks like a giant shower cap!"

Arts in the City
November Edition

Janelle Koenig Interview

How'd did you start in the comedy circuit? What brought you to it?

My performing background was straight theatre (although more often than not the comic roles!). When I was studying at Monash I was in a musical and during one of the breaks, everyone was horsing around and I started telling stories about my family and doing impressions of them. Someone commented 'That's stand-up!' I told them not to be ridiculous, and then gave it some more serious thought and realised that stand-up meant no director or producer, and I got to write the script! I did about half a dozen gigs, but chickened out - the industry was very male-dominated back then, and there was rarely another girl on the bill. As a relatively young girl, I must admit that was a bit threatening, so I gave it up. Years later (2002), I was surfing the net and by pure chance I came across an advertisement for Jeez Louise - a women's comedy forum (the brainchild of Linda Haggar - an Australian comedy icon). This weekend was part of the Melbourne Fringe Festival and involved everything from mic technique, to writing, to dealing with hecklers, and at the end if you liked you could get up and do a 5 minute set. I did and was booked for three future gigs at different venues on the spot, and my comedy career has literally snowballed from there.

What's it like being female in the comedy world? We hear it's tougher, but is there discrimination?

I can only speak for myself, but can honestly say that it's fabulous being a woman in the comedy world these days. I think promoters are really booking people who are funny - regardless of your - er, equipment, as it were. And that's what it's about. Comedians respect other comedians who work hard and get laughs - male or female. I think the biggest prejudices come from the audiences. I often hear things like 'Normally I don't find women funny but you're great' or 'Most chicks aren't funny but you are!' So that's the biggest thing that the female comics have to overcome, the pre-conceived notion that women aren't funny and that all our jokes are about breast feeding, periods or hating men. So not true.

Any situations where you've turned the discrimination/heckling around and got the better?

Plenty, but I don't think any of them could be printed here....I haven't been heckled very often at all, and have noticed through 4 years of going to live comedy that more often than not, audience will more readily heckle male than female comics. I don't know why that is. The problem is that sometimes hecklers actually think they're helping you b \y shouting random things out, God love 'em. Ah - you're not.

Some of your comedy is apparently quite raunchy, what sort of response do you get?

Some of my stand-up comedy is absolutely raunchy. And I love it. I talk about all the things that girls talk about with their friends - or if they don't, then they should be. The fabulous Bev Killick and I are core members of a constantly touring show called 'Life After Dick' which is touted as the 'Ultimate girls' night out - Wild wicked and very naughty' and it totally is that. We tell it like it is and we recently toured the show throughout deepest, darkest Western Australia, and the audiences there were wild. Most had not seen live comedy before, let alone female comics and some had driven for hours, literally on dirt roads, to get to these shows. These women were up for it! It was such a celebration and it was so liberating for them and for us as performers. They were yelling and whooping and aching with laughter and afterwards when we went out to meet them, the overwhelming response was that they were thrilled to see women up on stage telling it like it is. Sometimes people ask me how I feel about possibly having family in the audience when I'm talking about naughty stuff, and I'm fine with it. Once my Great Aunty Mary turned up a gig I was doing at the Comedy Club in Melbourne and I didn't know she was there until after I got off stage. I was a bit abashed afterwards, but Aunty Mary said 'Don't worry about it -I'm 75 - it's nothing I haven't seen, heard or done before! I loved it!'

That said, I also perform and teach improvised comedy with The Crew, and most recently wrote and performed the G-rated play 'Call Girls' (about Call Centres) with Vanessa Bennett for the Melbourne Comedy Festival to sell out houses. Sure my stand-up is raunchy, but I think it's important to present myself as more than a one-trick pony. I've got more feather to my bow.

What are you working on at the moment?

Based on the success of Call Girls Vanessa and I are working on developing it into a pilot for T.V.. I think it would really exciting if something eventuated with that - I believe, apart from Kath and Kim, that there's a real need for an Australian sit com - some really exciting things are happening on telly like The Chaser's War on Everything and Thank God You're Here which are reminding the country that there are funny people about, but I still think this country has the talent and ability to produce great sit coms. So we should, at least we wouldn't have to keep watching re-runs of the American ones!

Apart from that, there are plenty more Life After Dick shows in the pipeline and The Crew are going great guns. You'll always find me somewhere around the old comedy traps.

The Pun
20 April, 2006

As the lyrics of the classic ABBA song played-'Ring, ring, why don't you give me a call'-we were officially introduced to the 'call girls', known to their family and friends as Janelle and Vanessa. We were thrust into a world where the topic of gossip was the last male we wished to have a sexual rendezvous with.

Not only were we entertained with the unorthodox topics that are on every female's mind, but with all the things that we wish to say about those fondly-thought-of calls from the ABC telemarketing company who wish to know just how your husband came to his untimely death within 24 hours of its occurrence.

Their short but sweet theatrical performance, definitely for the ladies, hones in on all the things that we are thinking, but would never dare to say. It takes phrases like 'Oh Mah Gawd!' and 'Seriously babe, he's so not good enough for you' to new, hilarious levels. And what would it be without that hysterical, typically 'clueless', totally exaggerated tone?

So always remember that no matter how rich, good looking or fantastically wonderful you think a guy is, 'Darling! You can just do soooooooo much better!' For all ladies out there: if crash diets, long gossip sessions, "hot or not" males of the moment and all those hilariously embarrassing moments only worthy of your very close female friends take your fancy, this could be the show for you.

Josie Pennicott

Short Order Impro
Adelaide Advertiser February 28, 2006

Quintessential Fringe Humour

Place? Wine bar. Time? Late. Mood? Relaxed. Game? Make hilarious fun from random ideas. Loose and laid back, this show is an ideal way to round off an evening of Fringe fun. Adam McKenzie and a handful of solo comics in group formation are engagingly funny working closely with each other and a happy crowd sprawled on soft couches and perched on barstools. Anyone can make up a story around a bent theme but these are professionals at home with each other and really on top of the impro game. Quintessential Fringe in a nice atmosphere.

Ewart Shaw

CAPPER'S STOP GO CAREER
City Weekly 31-MAR-2005

Dressed in skin-tight shorts with his long flowing mullet, Warwick Capper wooed the crowd with his spectacular speccies. He was a football hero.

But stardom in football is often short lived. While Capper's footy stardom faded, his hair and his attitude did not. The life of Capper and his wife crashed on to the TV in the reality show The Cappers. Later he appeared on Big Brother, where he was swiftly booted off. Then, the man who was once deemed as a sex god (remember it was the 80's) took a job as a road worker holding the 'stop go' sign.

Now Capper, again seeking the spotlight, is in the comedy show Life After Dick. The show by Bev Killick, Christine Basil and Janelle Koenig, was the warm-up gig for Puppetry of the Penis for the past few years.

But for the Melbourne International Comedy Festival the ladies are out on their own and need their own fluffer (warm-up act).

That's where Warrick comes in.

'I offered him double what they were paying at the roadworks to get him off the road and back...to stardom,' Life After Dick producer Melissa McCullagh said.

They have paid Capper to warm up the audience with a lollypop dance and dressed - for a short time only - in his roadworker gear.

Life After Dick in on at Crown Casino until April 17.

POTTY MOUTH MAYHEM
Port Phillip Leader
By Kate Hagan
29 MARCH 2005

When Janelle Koenig couldn't get any acting work she thought she'd give stand-up comedy a shot to kill some time.

"It was a lazy actor's dream job - there were no lines to remember, no director telling me what to do," the St Kilda resident said, "And because I had done a lot of acting on stage, I never got terrified the way some comedians do."

It wasn't until she took part in the Jeez Louise development program for female comedians that she took it seriously.

"We could chose to do a five-minute routine and I thought 'Why not give it a go'," she said "I walked away with three bookings so clearly I was doing something right."

Koenig, 30, has developed into a brazen, outspoken comedian who one reviewer described as a "promising little potty mouth" and her new show is no departure.

She has teamed with Caulfield's Bev Killick, and Christine Basil in Life After Dick, billed as Sex and the City meets Desperate Housewives.

"We give a woman's perspective of love, life, sex and men" she said.

Life After Dick, March 21-April 17, Crown Showroom, $26.90 adult, $21.90 concession. Bookings : 9292 5103 www.ticketek.com.

Hard Not to Laugh at Dick Jokes.

by Mary Bolling
Thursday, 17 March 2005
MX afternoon paper.
URL: news clipping

Dick jokes have been around as long as, well, a pretty long time. But comedian Janelle Koenig isn't about to get sick of them any time soon. "They will always be funny to me... and if it makes me laugh, it should make the audience laugh," she said. Koenig is spending the comedy festival contemplating the humourous side of male genitalia in LIFE AFTER DICK. And she said it's all pretty funny.

She's working with comedy icons Bev Killick and Christine Basil, wo got plenty of experience opening for the Puppetry of the Penis show as 'Fluffers'. But Koenig said she didn't need to do much catching up. "I saw Puppetry the first time it came around - I wouldn't say it inspired comedy, but it certainly inspired something," she said. In the new show, the ladies will cover all aspects of penile experience.

"The original basis of it was that all the girls were fluffers (a person who keeps a male porn star in a constant state of erection off camera), but now it's just about three different women in different social situations and their experience with dick... whether or not it's with puppetry," she said. "Christine is the long-term married woman, so she's kind of had dick... there's Bev, who's pregnant and has had enough dick and then me, who's got none."

* Life After Dick is at the Crown Casino Showroom from March 24 to April 17 (except Mondays). Bookings 9292 5103 and www.ticketek.com

Naughty, But Nice, Night Out for Girls.
by Ann Peacock
Tales of a Modern Woman
Sunday Herald Sun, March 20 2005

With a title such as Life After Dick, it may not be the best show to introduce the younger people, dear Aunt Charlotte or your local priest to the world of comedy, Melbourne Comedy Festival Style. But for a fun and perhaps different night out with the girls, pencil this production in the diary and get ready to laugh. more»

Laugh on the other side
By Luke Benedictus
The Age, March 20, 2005

Janelle Koenig, who is performing in the show Life After Dick, points to the success of shows such as Kath & Kim for helping to promote female comedians. "It's not a gender thing," she insists. "If you're funny, then you're funny." more»

Not Drowning, Dating
by Helen Razer
April 16, 2004
URL: http://www.theage.com.au/articles/2004/04/15/1081998280147.html
Janelle Koenig and Jon Levene are candid in their abhorrence of love. Fuelled by skit and song, they attempt to decode the puzzle that is modern heterosexual love. While the young, peppy players show some finesse, their plaintive search for meaning often turns plain vulgar, thanks to a tide of obscenity and whining. Koenig and Levene are, however, promising, little, potty-mouthed brats.

Last laugh for stand-up women
by Fiona Scott-Norman
March 26, 2004
URL: http://www.theage.com.au/articles/2004/03/25/1079939771255.html
"There are at least 10 graduates of the inaugural Jeez Louise workshops performing in this year's MICF. Besides Thomas, there is ... Janelle Koenig in Not Drowning Dating."

Turning Dating Lows into Comic Highs
The Leader Newspaper
URL: scanned clipping
Janelle Koenig has made a big impact on the comedy scene since being thrust onto the stage by friends in late 2002. She has made it to the ranks of state finalist at the 2003 Raw Comedy Festival and was also selected to support Richard Stubbs throughout his comedy festival show last year.