Starting to sell out!
Apr 13th
Yes, the 2011 Melbourne Museum Comedy Tour is getting full – this Saturday is already sold out, and there are only a handful of tickets left for opening night tonight. You can always try your luck buying tickets at the door, but if you want to make sure you get in, book using the link above!
Interview
Apr 11th
If you’d like to hear more about Museum Comedy from the horse’s mouth, as it were, then check out this YouTube interview. In between David Heffron (It’ll All End In Spears) and Geraldine Quinn (You’re the Voice: Songs for the Ordinary by an Anthemaniac), Sam Streeter from Word of Mouth Reviews talks with Museum Comedy head tour guide Ben McKenzie about his other show, Dungeon Crawl, and the Melbourne Museum Comedy Tour.
Comedy Tour starts this week!
Apr 11th
This Wednesday, April 13, the Melbourne Museum Comedy Tour kicks off for 2011. If you’re planning on coming along, better book soon – a couple of nights are nearly sold out already!
See you in the Museum.
Museum Comedy in the Sun!
Mar 9th
The Herald-Sun, that is! Yes, you can find head tour guide Ben McKenzie in an article about comedy tours in this year’s Melbourne International Comedy Festival, alongside Rod Quantock (The History of the Melbourne Comedy Festival: A Walking Tour), Hannah Gadsby (Hannah Gadsby Celebrates NGV’s 150th) and Jo O’Callaghan (Op Shop Tour of Melbourne: Put the Op Back in Shop). In fact, we were in the Herald-Sun twice – there’s a teaser article and the main one.
It really is a bumper crop of comedy tours this year; I’m going to try and make it to all the other ones, and I’d encourage you to to the same!
You’ll also notice we’ve announced our line-up for the 2011 tour: this year, Ben McKenzie is joined by television star and character comedy queen Kate McLennan (Best Newcomer MICF 2007 and Best Comedy Melbourne Fringe 2006 for The Debutante Diaries), No Limits host and now Ramp Up editor Stella Young (two-time Victorian state Raw Comedy finalist), Australia’s Three Michelin Star comedian Danny McGinlay (Food Dude: Recipes for Disaster, The 7pm Project) and improviser extraordinary and veteran of the Mythic Creatures Comedy Tour, Amanda Buckley (Impro Australia, Beaconsfield the Musical).
We’ll be adding profiles of our new tour guides shortly, as well as noting their appearance dates in the gig guide here on the site. But for now, if you want tickets for the tour, get booking – they’re starting to really move!
Tickets now on sale!
Feb 23rd
It’s true – you can now buy your tickets to the 2011 Melbourne Museum Comedy Tour. You’ll find all the links you need by clicking on Book Tickets, above.
We’ve been busily crossing the “t”s (as in Tarbosaurus, trilobite etc.) and dotting the “i”s (iron pyrite, icthyosaur…) these last few weeks, and we’ve just about finalised our exciting line-up of comedy tour guides – most of whom have never conducted the tour before! Watch this space for an announcement this week. As part of our error-checking process, though, we’ve once again had to make a slight alteration to our schedule. As with last year, that pesky Good Friday – calculated as it is by arcane, unscientific methods – once again falls during the run of the tour. So, despite what it says in the printed programme, there’s no tour on Friday, April 22 – but there are still seven tours for you to sink your brains into, and you can get in and buy your tickets now!
Vale, Ralph McLean
Dec 31st
On Christmas day, Melbourne’s arts scene lost a tireless supporter, the much-loved Ralph McLean. You’ll find no shortage of tributes, farewells, words of heartfelt thanks and fond memories of Ralph online. He created and in many ways was the Channel 31 arts programme Yartz, and that was only the most visible of his contributions. I was interviewed by Ralph several times, and like most of us in the arts community, I found he quickly and easily became a friend.
Below is the piece he filmed with me for the 2009 Melbourne Museum Comedy Tour, one of almost 1,000 Yartz clips you can find on YouTube, and I’d encourage you to have a look through them. There’s also a lovely tribute edited together by Scott Gooding from years of archive footage, which you can find here. You’ll notice that even in an interview about something as possibly frivolous as jokes in a museum, Ralph asks questions that force your interview outside the realm of free PR; “what’s the cultural worth of seeing dinosaurs?” is not an ignorant question, it cut to the heart of the matter and forced me to consider what I do, on the spot, on camera, in a new light. And that was Ralph: he never let anyone get away with mediocrity. Do what you do because it matters, he seemed to say, and be able to tell me why.
Farewell Ralph; we’ll all miss you, and we’ll never forget you.
It’s official: we’re coming back for another year!
Dec 1st
Yes, the popular Melbourne Museum Comedy Tour will return in 2011 – bigger and better than ever before! Once again, Ben McKenzie and two other top comedy guides will show you the wonders of the Museum’s Science and Life gallery. Obligingly, as they have every year since the tours began, Melbourne Museum have updated the gallery with two new exhibits: 600 Million Years: Victoria Evolves and Dynamic Earth.
600 Million Years: Victoria Evolves is a fascinating look at the evolution of life on Earth, and the species that can be found right here in Victoria. There are fossils, models, live animals and even live dinosaurs! (No, I promise you: they move and everything.)
Dynamic Earth lays bare the secrets of our planet in an amazing collection of rocks, gems, minerals and crystals. Learn everything from the inner workings of the Earth to its relationship with the moon and how the thousands of known minerals and gems are formed and used. You might even learn what the Earth of your distant descendants might look like – assuming we don’t all evacuate to Mars or something, of course.
The 2011 Melbourne Museum Comedy Tour will take place in the final two weeks of the 2011 Melbourne International Comedy Festival. The one-hour tours will run Wednesday to Saturday at 6 PM from April 13 to 23, 2011.
Watch this space, as always, to find out more about our tour guides, and other tours, as the festival approaches!
Museums are still funny…
Nov 4th
…even if we haven’t shown you around one for a while.
Remember you can follow our Twitter stream where we will occasionally be giving you a live commentary on museum exhibits; in the last few months we’ve been to Titanic: The Artefact Exhibition, Melbourne Museum’s new Victoria Evolves gallery, the Tim Burton exhibition at ACMI and the European Masters exhibition at NGV.
And, while we’re gearing up for new projects for the new year, here’s a (very brief) snippet of our last live tour from May, when we were at the Australian National Maritime Museum talking about mythic creatures – and, in this clip, the sailors who encountered them…
“Mythical Mayhem” indeed!
May 11th
Thanks to everyone who came along to the Mythic Creatures Comedy Tour on Saturday; it was a whole lot of fun! We managed to get a little press coverage, including a piece in the St George and Sutherland Shire Leader.
There were some cameras present for the event, so hopefully I’ll get to post some photos soon; and with any luck, this won’t be the last time Museum Comedy will visit the Australian National Maritime Museum. However, there won’t be a repeat of the Mythic Creatures tour – the creatures themselves are heading off to other shore in only a couple of weeks, so if you’ve not seen the exhibit yet, get down there now!
Big thanks to Scott Andrew and all the staff and volunteers at the ANMM, and especially to my fellow tour guides, Dave Bloustien and Amanda Buckley. We had a kraken great time!
Mythic Creatures Comedy Tour update
May 3rd
It’s the week of the Mythic Creatures Comedy Tour at the Australian National Maritime Museum, and we have an important change to the program! We’re now doing one show only starting at 6PM (for complimentary pre-show drinks) on Saturday, May 8 – so if you want to come, you’d better book!
If you want to join Ben McKenzie, Dave Bloustien and Amanda Buckley for an hilarious take on some of the most iconic creatures of myth and legend, plus some of the treasures to be found all year round at the Maritime Museum, you’d better look!
Tickets are still $20 for Maritime Museum members, and $25 for non-members, and you can book by calling the Museum on 02 9298 3655. More information about the Mythic Creatures exhibit is still available at the Maritime Museum web site.