A life less ordinary

Two of the more physically distinctive, eccentrically attired and floridly spoken comics at the Fringe, Paul Foot and Asher Treleaven are as elusive as quicksilver. Scan their surreal show titles for clues as to their content and you’ll be none the wiser.

Paul Foot – Kenny Larch Is Dead contains absolutely no reference to the unfortunate Larch. “With the content of the show, like all my shows, it's entirely independent of the title and indeed any publicity material,” the capricious standup explains, “it’s sort of a posthumous honour and a posthumous dishonour. The ultimate insult really. But Kenny Larch is definitely dead. I thought it one of the best reasons not to mention him in the show as he had the opportunity to make his mark on the world and he didn’t take it. He should be grateful really.”

Similarly, Asher Treleaven: Troubadour, is just the latest of the Australian’s solo shows featuring “door” in the title, inspired by the secret doors of the magic theatre in Hermann Hesse’s countercultural novel Steppenwolfe and a sign—reading 'Secret Theatre for Madmen’—he stumbled across in Melbourne: “with a head full of mescaline, it was one of those moments that kept coming back to me”.

Growing audiences and critical acclaim notwithstanding, not everyone has the patience to follow Foot and Treleaven down the rabbit hole and through the looking glass to find unlikely laughs. Those that do are a select band, literally so in Foot’s case, as he convenes secret events for his Guild of Connoisseurs.

A congress of the incongruous and the inexplicable, he’s uncertain whether his comedy is “moving in a good direction towards career success or a bad direction towards artistic notoriety”.

“Every year I move towards something increasingly abstract and intangible in terms of why it’s funny and why people are laughing” he ventures. “In parts of the show, I’m leaving things open for as many different interpretations as possible, mix-and-match comedy, aiming to get people laughing at the same thing in different ways and for different reasons.”

Treleaven too, usually favours a seemingly disjointed, chaotic narrative of “chunks”, jarringly “crashed together”, with a logic emerging gradually or not at all. Yet Troubadour is his most personal show to date, recounting chapters from his life.

“Maybe it’s a pisstake on the whole arty self-involved thing, thinking everything you do can be turned into art” he muses . “But essentially, I’m asking the audience to vote on whether my life is interesting enough to talk about for an hour. Writing it, I set out to make fun of people who tell their boring life story badly. But in the process, I realised it was actually turning into a life-affirming show, and that it was about making the most of what you have."

Reconnecting with his estranged sister, who sent him a copy of Edward De Bono’s meta-conceptual problem-solving technique Six Thinking Hats, afforded Treleaven the colour-coded, millinery-based framework for his latest hour. De Bono’s premise, that different problems require different modes and “hats” of thinking, corresponds with various chapters in the comedian’s autobiography.

“It’s an antiquated problem-solving method usually used by big business to solve sweatshop problems in developing countries, applied to a one hour, postmodern comedy wank by a ponce in various hats” he clarifies. “But that wouldn’t fit on the poster.”

Foot wears “plenty of different hats” in everyday life but is irked by the idea of comedians’ “personas”. “When I go on stage, a little switch flicks on inside of me and I just get on with it, it just comes organically from me.”

Although you can discern his influence on his friend and sometime collaborator Russell Brand, you’d be hard pushed to isolate his influences and inspirations in comedy. Even so, he’s not spurred by being seen as original. “I’m just writing the most obvious show to me at this moment. Then of course, it’s up to others to say ‘ooh, how unusual’. But I don’t plan that. I don’t break any rules out of rebellion, I just do it because that’s what I like.”

A former circus performer who retains a mastery of his gangly physicality, Treleaven used to think that standups were conservative “jerks”.

Meanwhile, he was “an act on the edge of the edge, I was so far out you can’t even ... I guess I just wanted to be different for the sake of being different.”

An introduction to Robin Ince and a series of spots at his Book Club gigs acquainted Treleaven with “people like Stephen Merchant, Stewart Lee, Josie Long, Danielle Ward, Isy Suttie, Tim Key. I saw all these really interesting, hilarious, bizarre comedians.”

A misstep in Australia later, “a series of book gags, really just me trying to do Asher Treleaven’s Book Club, it got absolutely caned”, he resolved to write a new hour of comedy each year “and just keep going on blind faith till something happens.

“I’m still finding my voice, still playing a role. But I’m slowly locking into what makes me unique and gives me the honesty to do these things that no-one else would think of.”