The inaugural Darwin Comedy Festival – presented by Darwin Entertainment Centre – features everyone from local NT talents and the Aboriginal Comedy Allstars (Andy Saunders, Elaine Crombie, Janty Blair, Jay Wymarra, Kevin Kropinyeri and Sean Choolburra) through to award-winning and big name comedians Geraldine Hickey, Sammy J, Celeste Barber and Nazeem Hussain.
“Comedy in Darwin is incredibly popular. There’s been a really regular stream of comedians who’ve come here and have connected really strongly. And I think Darwin audiences are incredibly warm, love a laugh and really have embraced the genre,” explains Darwin Entertainment Centre (DEC) CEO Georgia Hendy, who started in the role in January 2024.
“And what we did as an organisation was identify that what Darwin seemed to be missing in its annual calendar was this really great moment of joy and togetherness, celebrating laughter and insightful reflections with comedy,” she continues.
“And so we decided that this was … an opportunity – we all know how successful and how popular comedy is in Melbourne, in Adelaide and in other cities, and we felt like it was Darwin’s turn,” Hendy says.
The Festival’s first edition takes place this week, opening on Thursday 6 March and running though until Saturday 8 March, and is deliberately scheduled “between Adelaide Fringe Festival and before the other capital cities kick off their own comedy festivals [which] means we’ve been able to program artists that are on that comedy circuit and may not have considered coming to Darwin,” Hendy said in a media statement.
Both Darwin Fringe (11-20 July 2025) and Darwin Festival (7-24 August 2025) regularly program comedy acts, and Hendy believes the Darwin Comedy Festival will complement their existing programs and help grow comedy audiences year round.
“Darwin Festival and Darwin Fringe Festival are really important to Darwin and to the Territory, and so part of our role as a venue and as an arts organisation is to find opportunities to support them to thrive as well as creating new endeavours of our own,” she explains.
“Festivals take place at a moment in time, but what we as a venue do is offer entertainment and cultural opportunities year round. So we’re really trying to spread across the annual calendar, so that there are things for locals and tourists to do at any point throughout the year.
“So the choice of March as the time for the comedy festival was really intentional. That was to take advantage of the fantastic comedians touring the country at that time, in other festivals, like Melbourne, Adelaide and Brisbane, but that was also because it leaves plenty of air time and plenty of space for the Fringe Festival and for Darwin Festival to thrive in later parts of the year. So we really spread out the offerings and make room for everyone to thrive,” Hendy says.
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She tells ArtsHub that the new Darwin Comedy Festival is also a way “to highlight the amazing comedians who are here and really [to] become part of a pathway as well, to create opportunity to develop and grow audiences here”.
How Darwin Comedy Festival will grow the local comedy scene
Darwin-based performing artist Sarah Reuben, whose practice is focused on storytelling, theatre, and producing and programming comedy, says Darwin Comedy Festival will showcase the unique aspects of the local comedy scene.
“I think there’s something inherently amazing about Darwin. There’s nowhere else like it, and it produces comedians that are like nowhere else in Australia – or the world – that I’ve seen. And this Festival will provide the opportunity to showcase these artists in a way that I think really works for Darwin, because it is not the same here as everywhere else. So we need to recognise that uniqueness and celebrate it,” Reuben tells ArtsHub.
When asked to expand upon the unique qualities of Darwin comedians, she replies, “Darwin is such an isolated place, and the environment of Darwin, the lives that people live are not the same as the lives that comics are living in Melbourne or Sydney. It’s a really, really supportive community and the artists in Darwin have really different voices. They see different things, they grow up in a different way. And so they have these viewpoints that are really special and so engaging and entertaining. There’s a comedy to daily life in Darwin, and I think that unique point of view is really interesting to a national or international audience, just like that point of difference is something to be celebrated.
“I think sometimes there’s this idea that we need to be conforming to what everybody else is doing, the way in which the other people are telling stories or things that people are talking about. But I think really celebrating what makes the NT unique is such a special part of what live performance can do,” Reuben says.
As the producer and programmer for Darwin Comedy Festival’s Laugh Lounge, a dedicated space featuring exclusively local comedy, Reuben says the club will highlight the storytelling elements and panel shows popular with Darwin comedians.
“I think we have some amazing [talents] in the Territory with some excellent stories, wild stories and some really interesting characters – and I think storytelling is a really big part of the NT stand-up scene. So in some of the panel shows we’ve deliberately generated opportunities to allow for storytelling within them, and challenged the comedians to write new stories that really speak to an NT experience or an NT audience and in that way, hopefully, really put a stamp on what it means to be an NT artist,” she explains.
The Darwin Comedy Festival will also benefit local comedy audiences, Reuben believes, who may come to the Festival for the big name national drawcards such as Sammy J, Reuben Kaye and Celeste Barber (performing in Darwin for the first time with her new show Backup Dancer) and, in the process, discover the existence of a thriving local comedy scene supported by regular comedy rooms such as Top Floor Comedy.
“It’s going to be great to extend the local audience, people that don’t know about Top Floor Comedy or all of the amazing comedy offerings [in Darwin]. They’ll come in to see Celeste Barber, and they also see all these other opportunities that exist for them, week in, week out. They don’t have to wait for the next Darwin Comedy Festival next year. We’re all very excited about it,” Reuben tells ArtsHub.
The inaugural Darwin Comedy Festival, presented by Darwin Entertainment Centre, runs from Thursday 6 to Saturday 8 March 2025. Darwin Comedy Festival is supported by the Northern Territory Government and NT Major Events Company, City of Darwin and AANT.
