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For the past five weeks, however, Dullard's wit has waxed and waned. Writing a solo show for the Melbourne Comedy Festival is a traumatic business and now, with previews about to start, she's feeling the heat.
"Deciding to do 16 45-minute shows is what really frightens me," she says. "I mean, what if it's bad the first night? How do I keep going?"
Tracy Harvey, last seen in Mum's the Word, shares Dullard's anxiety. The one-hour comedy she has written, Wonderful Ward, is set in a cancer ward. It was first pitched as a TV sitcom. Now it's emerging as a fully fledged production.
"It could be a nice little piece, it could be a clanger, or it could really take off," Harvey says.
"My hope is people will just say: `That was terrific, they took risks and it worked.' "
Tripod have a vision for their show too. They want to make lots of money.
And with Thriller, their third Comedy Festival production, Tripod (alias Scod, Yon and Gatesy) have just the vehicle to do that.
"Buckle up," they say, "for a fast-paced onslaught of comedy and music rolled into a colorful, lovable and, let's face it, downright sexy bundle."
But like Dullard and Harvey, the Tripod trio won't know what the public really think until they land their first punchline.
"The insecurity never stops," says Comedy Festival director Susan Provan. "Every performer is always asking him or herself: `Is this funny and will they laugh?' That's a good thing. It means they're always wanting to do their best possible work."
A record number of acts (154 at last count) are tickling funny-bones this year but Dullard, an outreach worker, had only one thought when she attended the festival's summer workshop: how to get in on the comedy act.
Three hundred dollars later (that's the registration fee) she had the answers she wanted.
"Our job," Provan explains, "is to create the environment in which audiences see shows which they wouldn't normally see other times of the year."
This support extends to advice on marketing, publicity, venues and budgets.
"It doesn't matter if you're selling Rowan Atkinson or Monica Dullard, the question is the same: how much money do I need to spend to get people through the door?" Provan says.
Back in early February, Dullard didn't even have a show. She had a title (Go Straight, Turn Left) and a couple of props (a Vespa and a piano accordion) but the comic content was still growing.
"Everything I've thought to do in the show I've cut up into little bits of paper and put on the coffee table," she says. "I'm still moving them around."
Tripod, experienced singers who style themselves as the Dukes of Haphazard, had plenty of material. Their problem was deciding which bits to ditch.
As Scod wonders: "Do you approach the festival as an opportunity to try stuff and be a bit experimental or do you see it as a trade show where you get up and do your best stuff?"
Tripod's town hall venue helped them reach a decision. It's more intimate than last year so elaborate sight gags are instantly off-limits.
Tracy Harvey, another town hall booker, is confining her "hospital" to three beds, a screen, a drip and a bedpan.
Securing these props was easy in late February. Securing the right cast took a little longer.
"The script for this show is probably the scariest and most challenging thing I've ever done," Harvey admits, "so I understand if some actors find it a bit too confronting to do."
Eventually, Harvey got her dream team: Reg Evans, Anne Phelan and Shane Connor. Wonderful Ward is also buoyed by news that the Pratt Foundation will sponsor the show.
"This means we can pay the cast a good salary," Harvey says.
Dullard pays herself, which is not much. By early March, she was playing her best lines to the bathroom mirror and taking piano accordion lessons.
"I can play with one hand but I can't play with both yet," Dullard says. "Friends tell me, `One hand's fine', but I think they might be lying."
Tripod, meanwhile, are rehearsing twice a week in a St Kilda warehouse and road-testing sketches at universities.
"We're trying to create the illusion that we're coming up with these things on the spot," Gatesy says.
"The flip-side of that is that people think what we do is easy."
It's not. Having fashioned a script she liked, Dullard realised it was too short and for one week in March battled "a mini-breakdown".
"I'm having fear counselling," she jokes. It's a black joke and one that festival organisers have heard before.
"When it comes down to it," Susan Provan says, "performers are selling themselves, and that can require a big leap of faith."
Three weeks from opening night, Harvey's faith is being rewarded.
The purpose of Wonderful Ward, she says, is to "highlight the humor that comes through when people are at their lowest ebb". This laughter-through-tears scenario is unfolding in rehearsals, thanks to Harvey's co-writer, director and her hard-working cast.
Tripod don't have a director. They debate among themselves, on stage and off, until they reach perfect harmony.
Yon says: "One of the hardest things any of us can say is: `I don't get that. Tell me why it's funny.' "
"Three is funny," counters Scod, "and usually means two guys ganging up on the other."
Dullard has a producer keeping an eye on publicity and posters, stage furniture and finances. But ultimately, this self-described "hoot on a scoot" is out there on her own.
"When you've got your scone on every lamp-post in Brunswick St, there's no going back," she says. "I still don't know if 10 people or 100 are going to turn up. I'm budgeting for 10."
According to Provan, most comedians are not in the festival to make money. "It's a chance to showcase their work to a wide audience, including their peers."
Tracy Harvey hopes Wonderful Ward can enjoy a season in another theatre - maybe even another life on television.
Tripod are confident Thriller has legs, too. A berth in the next Edinburgh Festival is one ambition. Monica Dullard, however, is content to limit her horizons to the next fortnight.
"I'm not sure how it's going to work out," she admits.
No plans to give up her day job then?. Dullard smiles: "You've got to be joking."
The lodge was stunning. When we got there, a little man in a tux offered to take our gear in. We even got to call him "my good man" a few times.
He went off us a bit when he found out we were staying in the smaller hotel down the road. But that's another story.
The gig went brilliantly, and in the foyer afterwards, we got steadily wobblier on free grog and hobnobbed with the clients.
We even spoke to an ex-model and left much wiser men.
"Some people are successful because they're good looking. Some people are successful because they're smart. When I'm old I'll be ugly. When smart people are old, they'll be stupid."
WORST WEEKEND
Booked to play two spots during the opening weekend at a venue in the snow. Problem: no happy holiday-makers, no sound guy and no snow. As always, the punters came to see some "Play that funky music white boy" cover band. Funky Tripod may be, but you can't dance to songs like "I chat up girls by telling them I'm Plucka Duck".
Showbiz tip: When they yell out "Chisel", make sure you sing Chisel songs they know!
The one high point of the evening was when snowboarders dressed as the clergy stormed the stage, in order to "bless" the new season. That was kinda cool.
The next day we were due to perform an afternoon spot. The pub was steadily filling with eager punters, and we were starting to feel good about the gig. Until we realised they were there to watch the footy on Sky channel.
If we had gone ahead and turned the telly off to play the gig, we most certainly would have perished in the cold, snowy Victorian alps.
We still haven't been paid.
Will they see in Tripod three cute and clever guys steeped in retro '80s dagdom, or a bunch of dorks?
Scod, Gatesy and Yon felt the fear but said yes to the Edinburgh Festival's invitation.
The Melbourne trio, stars of two sold-out shows here, leave for Scotland on August 2 to fill a suddenly vacated 8pm slot.
And their farewell show, sweetly named Bye-Pod, will help to pay for their airfares.
"It's an investment, it's going to cost us a whole lot of money, especially as it's a very busy time there with over 1000 shows," Scod says.
The three have pillaged the best bits from their two shows, Welcome to my Wonderwall and Tripod Are Handsome, for a festival special Scod describes as "trash cabaret".
Much of it is highly relevant to people who were kids in the '80s. But bands such as Oasis, Prodigy and the Spice Girls do not escape.
Nor does the movie Titanic, compressed into 30 seconds for easy consumption.
"We've also been doing a song about Ikea that we're enjoying," Scod says.
"This is one we're still road-testing, but it's about primary school kids finding other kids' mums attractive. I can tell you as a man, it's a big problem among boys at school."
Every Friday night the boys would play Pink Floyd covers to bored businessmen at bad bars.
The businessmen, mostly bankers, hated them and would often tell them where to "get off".
But the boys persisted.
Eventually, the bored businessmen started to find the boys funny. During songs, and in between, the businessmen would laugh at the boys and their improvised mime and banter.
The boys did not mind the laughter - at least there was a reaction. Any reaction.
But it was the businessmen's growing hysteria that convinced the boys comedy could be combined with music.
And Tripod was born.
"We started to have a lot of fun," says Gatesy, a founding member of the all-conquering trio, which has graced Hey Hey It's Saturday, In Melbourne Tonight and Recovery.
Tripod then hired out St Martin's Theatre in South Yarra, where it honed its craft in front of a quickly growing audience.
But it was not until last year's Melbourne International Comedy Festival that Tripod realised its true potential.
It invented a show called Welcome To My Wonderwall - an anti-tribute to Oasis - which received rave reviews and sold out.
Then, a few months later, the group hired St Martin's Theatre, again to showcase its next creation Tripod Are Handsome, which won Tripod more good reviews.
The show was a tribute to growing up in Glen Waverley in the 1980s and listening to Meatloaf, Cliff Richard and Duran Duran.
"It was a huge nostalgia trip," Gatesy said.
"Our heydays were between 1980 and '85, and all the songs from the show depict that era. You know, going to roller rinks and skating to Wired For Sound."
Next Saturday, Tripod will revisit St Martin's Theatre for its new show Bye-Pod, a night of entertainment dedicated to helping Tripod fly to Edinburgh for this year's festival.
According to Gatesy, the group needs "about $20,000" to make it.
"It's all been a bit rushed," he said.
"We were not going to go to the Edinburgh Festival until next year. But someone pulled out - a theatre space became free. And they asked us if we wanted to go. God knows how we're going to make it."
However, with Good Morning Australia's John "Fingers" Foreman and comedian Meshel Laurie helping out, there is no doubt Tripod will raise the necessary cash.
After next week's performance, the audience is invited to groove and schmooze the night away to the swinging sounds of party DJ Sweetback.
This, as the press release proudly states, "is everyone's chance to send Tripod packing".
By accident, the three men known collectively as Tripod found the missing link. But it hurt, it hurt.
They've been delivered from shame by a top-selling Comedy Festival show, another on the way and a bundle of guest spots on Recovery, In Melbourne Tonight and Hey Hey It's Saturday.
Yet Tripod once truly believed they could touch hearts and impart messages.
That was when they were a serious band called Ruprecht and the Genital Cuffs.
"We started off doing really serious songs, too, like The Sounds of Silence," says the third of Tripod known as Gatesy.
"We would do gigs in town on Friday nights in front of all these bankers, doing all these 'hey you' songs."
Hey you songs?
"You know, 'hey you out there'," Gatesy says, offering his gentle hand in compassion.
"We were only 19 then, so when people said 'Get off, you're depressing me', we felt awful."
"People started laughing at us when we were doing serious songs," grumbles another third of Tripod, Yon. "We thought `At last we're getting some reaction'."
"So we'd do a high kick here and there," Gatesy continues.
"It got to the stage where we were having a lot of fun doing it," the third leg of Tripod, Scod, admits, "and people reacted to that as much as they reacted to the music."
The final stage came at a wedding when dozens of enraged guests turned on them for playing the undanceable Spiderman theme at double speed.
"And that's when we decided maybe we should call ourselves comedians," Gatesy says.
It was in the same cheery spirit that they made their Comedy Festival debut last year with the show, Welcome to my Wonderwall.
"We were quite naive about it," says Gatesy.
Then Wonderwall began selling out and Tripod became scared.
How could they top it in 1998?
The answer was to play out another of their rock 'n' roll fantasies.
Tripod Are Handsome is self-explanatory. But it goes deeper than adolescent mirror-gazing.
There are songs attached to growing up in Glen Waverley in the '80s, and though many prefer not to revisit Meatloaf, Cliff Richard and Duran Duran, Tripod have a way of making people want to go there.
"A lot of it involves being in touch with the inner child - that inner nastiness," Scod says.
"There's a huge nostalgia trip that I have with Tripod," says Gatesy.
"Our heydays were between 1980 to about '85, and all the songs of that time come screaming back at you. And going to roller rinks, skating to Wired for Sound. I drove past the Caribbean Rollerama just this morning."
The official Tripod repertoire list has a dreamlike quality about it.
They can sing Bohemian Rhapsody, YMCA, I Say A Little Prayer and do a mean Duran Duran medley. They know the theme tunes to TV series such as The Dukes of Hazzard and Cheers.
But what is Everybody Perves? And what is The Ikea Song?
"Oh that," says Gatesy. "Scod wrote that about people who put the plastic tips on furniture."
"Somewhere out there, people do these things for a living," Scod muses.
"There are jobs that you've just never thought of," adds Yon. Oh, like conducting time-warp package trips on rollerskates?
THE NEW SOUNDS PAGE http://members.tripod.com/~podsters/home.html
Who are cuter than an armful of puppies, funkier than funk and prefer the interactive adventure playground to the great outdoors?
That'd be Tripod, a vocal trio with a guitar named Courtney and enough pelvic gyrations to make Hot Gossip look like the Royal Ballet Company.
Or so their site claims, and we're not arguing. This Melbourne-based trio has a patent on captivating nonsense and fabulous comedy and are building a popular momentum.
For those who haven't seen them perform, think roller-disco tribute to Cliff Richard followed by a 30-second version of the movie Titanic, with highlights from Prisoner - The Opera. You have been warned.
Perhaps three performers allow far more variation than two, three voices provide a bigger sound, the repertoire can be more extensive and the guitar can always be handed to one of the others.
Tripod (Get it? A three-legged stand.) are a cute and funny trio.
The three may not have the impeccable musical skill of Combo Fiasco nor the extraordinary, mad comic antics of the old Doug Anthony All Stars or Found Objects (they used to be a trio, too) but they do have charm and some funny material.
It is particularly the 20-something male trios which are a hit with the 18-30s audiences on the comedy scene and Tripod, alias Gatesy, Scott and Yonnie, fit the profile.
Gatesy ("dial 775 DANGEROUS") looks as though he stepped out of a K-Mart catalogue. The sleek, smart and bespectacled Scott is truly "Geek Chic" while Yonnie looks and acts like a pixie alien.
Even though the three promote the swivel-hipped Gatesy as the sexy one, all three, despite their Star Trek look-alike outfits which make them look like chemical engineering students at a fancy-dress party, will be pulling birds (or boys) after the show from the predominantly university-looking crowd. Funny is considered cute and attractive in men. Be warned gals: only in men.
Their material is uneven and parts could do with an edit and a director's eye, but there are some good moments.
Is it O.K. if I Stalk You is a clever musical parody of a stalker. Everything Fits in the Second Drawer Down hands out advice to stuff all and sundry into that drawer below the cutlery.
Scott has a fantasy of playing "furniture-based" rock music and I Wanna Be the Guy Who Makes the Plastic TVs for IKEA is the first of the series.
Their one-line folk song is a treat and Words Can't Express What You Mean to Me is hilarious.
If you are a pop music follower, you'll understand the musical gag of swapping music by Prodigy, a loud, thrashy band, with the cutesy lyrics of: I'm a Barbie Girl by Aqua, the Danish pop band.
Their physical antics go on a bit long, but their new dance craze, The Sailor Dance, is funny and the hour passes entertainingly.