We’re currently 17 days into the Melbourne International Comedy Festival and I’ve seen 19 shows so far. There are 11 more on my shortlist, and I’ll most likely end up going to a few more spur-of-the-moment ones as well. It’s madness, really. Accidental madness.

Before I lived in Melbourne I didn’t think about stand-up comedy very much. There isn’t much comedy of any kind in Canberra, live or otherwise. I saw it now and then on TV, and later at a few comedy clubs in London, and yeah, it was fun at the time, but there didn’t seem to be much to it. One guy makes some random observations for ten minutes, then another guy comes out and does the same thing, followed by another, and another, ad nauseum. Entertaining, but ultimately shallow and forgettable.

Oh, my pre-Melbourne naivety.

The comedy scene wasn’t something I consciously chose to become involved in, but sort of fell into when I moved to Melbourne through a friend of a friend of a friend…and before you know it, everyone I know is either a comedian, a fan or a reviewer or all three. And it’s brilliant, not only because they’re all wonderful people, but because I’ve been exposed to a comedy scene I never knew existed, and it’s introduced me to all sorts of innovative ways to tell a story.

I’ve recently remembered something that Chuck Palahniuk said when I saw him speak a couple of years ago. After some early forays into writing terrible Stephen King rip-offs, he apparently began to develop his own writing style after it was suggested that he try to just write the way he and other people tell stories orally. The part that stays with me is when he said that he sees a lot of stand-up comedians as they’re the only professional oral storytellers left in our culture and that writers can learn a lot from the way they use timing, delivery and rhythm to tell a story.

Now that I know how comedy works in Melbourne (festival comedy, at least), this means a lot more to me. It’s rare for me now to see a festival show that doesn’t have some kind of theme or plot or idea tying it all together – that isn’t, essentially, about telling a story. There’s even a Storyteller’s Club for just that purpose. And when I talk to the comedians I know about their shows and their intentions, it seems clear to me that what they’re primarily focused on is the story or the message they want to get across, not the jokes. Obviously jokes are a vital part of anything that calls itself a comedy show, but I’ve started to think of these comedians as people who want to say something meaningful about their world, their society, themselves, but just happen to focus on the humourous aspects of their story. So far this festival I’ve seen shows about politics, war, cancer, and the end of the world – all potentially humourless topics made hilarious by performers who see the funny side of the stories they feel driven to tell. As Chuck suggested, the delivery has a lot to do with it. The stand-ups I see now are light years away from the ones I used to see on TV – they use props, multimedia, music, lighting, as well as their own physical and vocal talents, to craft their story. And that’s not even taking into account the sketch shows, the musicals, the plays, and even the museum tours.

There’s also something very compelling about the ‘oral storytelling’ factor to a live comedy act. In a culture where everything is recorded in some way – written, filmed, conversations blogged or held over email or facebook – there’s an added lure to a show that you know you may never see again. There’s an immediacy that isn’t there with something like film, where you know you can just pick up the DVD if you miss it in the movies. Even seeing the same comedy show on a different night can lead to a slightly different show and experience. And even if these shows are never performed again after the festival ends, they can still live on in true oral storytelling tradition, passed from person to person, evolving as they go. As much as we try to pin our stories and experiences down to the page, or try to capture them with a camera, I don’t know if anything can really replace the urge to simply tell someone a story, or the pleasure of hearing someone tell one. Maybe that sense of engagement with the performer, the sense that they’re talking directly to you, is one of the biggest attractions of a live comedy show. While this isn’t something that can be directly translated to written stories, I can’t help but feel that there’s something I can learn and use to some effect in writing.