RAW Comedy Finalist and TV writer John Dore is mounting Revolving Dore for a strictly limited five night run at The Butterfly Club. After debuting to sold out crowds and rave reviews, Revolving Dore is an observational hour of stand-up, character work and storytelling that has received critical acclaim, with critics heralding this up-and-coming comedian as ‘Oven-ready for mainstream success’ and ‘having honed his stand up skills to an exceptional level’ his season at this Melbourne institute is sure to please…
Let’s start off, how did this show come about?
I’ve been doing comedy for five years, and it’s all the best parts, jokes and stories put together. For this show, I guess you could say it’s like a first album, its observations about my dad, my partner, nothing to crazy or out there as far as concepts go, but there discussed in a really funny way. I did this show for 11 nights at the Grand Mercure on Swanston St, it went really well, I got people in and a couple of good reviews, so I wanted to keep doing it and making it better, so I booked into the butterfly club for five nights…
In five years, what have been some career highlights, and on the flip slid, what are some of those moments you’d rather forget?
Highlights would be performing with comedians I respect, David O’Neill, Laurence Mooney, or Randy – you know that puppet, getting to perform with them in the same show or getting to talk them back stage. But the lowlights, the low lights would be all the gigs where there are two people in the audience, or when you just bomb, or when your performing some strange weird place.
Give us an example of some of those strange weird places you’ve performed in?
When I got to Melbourne there was this place called fish face comedy, which doesn’t exist anymore but it was in Footscray, it was an Italian restaurant slash video store. They would serve a lot of deep fried bain marie food, so they had this restaurant and this little raised stage with a microphone, but behind that it was all video store. There would be people eating you know, parmas and schnitzels with all this oily fry up smoke in the air, but to try and take away from the fact that there was a video store behind, the guy at the counter would turn the lights off.
You’d be performing for people and hear the “ding” of the front door opening, the guy would lean over and ask while you’re on stage “are we allowed to use the video store”, so he’d keep the lights off and give customers a lantern to navigate the store.
Tell us, what kind of situations do you draw upon, are they mostly situations from everyday life?
Well, when I was 11 years old my dad let me have a pet red back spider, which is already a bit strange, but it laid eggs in my room and the whole room turned into a giant web, which was horrific, but when you go deeper you start to think “what was my dad thinking to let that happen” why didn’t we get rid of the egg sack” “what are the dangerous of red back spiders” and all of a sudden it blows out to some bizarre ten-minute analysis of some crazy thing.
Observations or contradictions are funny too, like in sports fishing, when they kiss the fish, that’s a strange thing already, after torturing this fish, that’s strange and just weird.
What was life like before you started as a comedian?
I worked in kitchens, where you’re working in a confined space with a whole bunch of crazy people, but in the kitchen the humour is just insane, dirty and shocking stuff, when I started comedy, 99 percent of my ideas where just pure filth, the dirtiest shit you can imagine, and I thought this it was funny, because I had made a bunch of alcoholics and drug addicts in the kitchen laugh, so I had to work hard to weedle that one percent out, you know the observations on normal, real life stuff…
The show opens this Wednesday at The Butterfly Club, jump on it, book your tickets here
