Attempting a joke among friends can often cause a red face, but for a year nine student cracking several in front of a large crowd could be the “toughest thing they ever do”.
Trafalgar High School year nine students will face their fears when they perform stand-up comedy at an event headlined by comedian Fiona O’Loughlin to be held this month.
In the lead up to the event, students are participating in workshops with Melbourne-based stand-up comedian Mick Neven and are putting themselves in the limelight to put a humorous spin on their every day lives.
“Kids might be bullied, they might have trouble at home and if you can look into those situations and find humour within it and share that with people then it’s a really good way of dealing with stuff,” Mr Neven said.
“It’s kids telling their own stories and learning how to find humour within their own lives and doing stand up comedy gives you confidence to tackle other challenges in their lives; it’s an important skill to have.
“The main thing to teach them is that they can be funny if they want to, there’s a pretty high attrition rate so if I’ve got a class of 16 kids, probably four of them will only perform at the show but the others will still do writing and standing up in front of the class, talking and learning skills.”
Trafalgar High’s Inquiry to New Knowledge program teacher Richard Morrison was surprised to see which students took to stand-up and which students did not.
“It’s always amazing watching the kids who are such good hecklers in an audience suddenly stand in front of a microphone. Sometimes the loudest boy will fall apart and the quietest girl will be at ease with being in front of a crowd,” he said.
Mr Morrison referred to studies which showed public speaking to rank as one of the most common fears among people.
“They’ve shown in recent studies that one of people’s worst fears apart from terrorism and death is standing up and speaking in public so it’s profound,” he said.
The comedy night will be held on Thursday, 28 November at Trafalgar High School from 7pm. Tickets can be purchased from the school by phoning 5633 1733 and are priced at $10 per adult and $5 per child.
