What the Folk!

I was just curious to know whether there is anything 'out there' at the moment from the above. Clips? Videos? Anything?

Pretty much a big nope. Everything I have on them is old. And Maui ran over a year ago IIRC. Taika has been pretty busy though I am sure. He even went so far as the Oscars with his short film.

And cause its theatre, clips and videos do not abound alas.

I'm keeping an eye out for any news on them anyways.

Thanks for keeping an eye out, Sherry! I'm curious to see some of Jemaine's other work, but am not having much luck finding anything recorded. I'll just have to keep looking.

Let us know if you come across anything, Andria. After seeing Tongan Ninja a couple of times now, I'm curious to see more of Jemaine's work. Two totally different styles so far, which is really interesting.

Will do, Jones! I'm not the most skilled searcher, but if I get slapped in the face with dumb luck I'll be sure to pass the information on!

Sorry, Sherry... didn't even see this thread at all.

Here's what I posted on another thread:

I have been trying to find a clip or anything that would show me their act.

Will some kind person who has seen what they actually do, please describe it here for me? I'd really appreciate it! Please???

No problem Kate

Humourbeasts =Winners – Billy T Awards 1999

OK, its kind of hard to define what the act is really. I saw them back in 2002 and it was a comedy show of short sketches. Physical humour. Funny as hell in an out there kind of way. Really though, if you think its anything remotely Conchord like in style you would be way off the mark. The show I saw was frenetic, fast paced and just plain weird in a belly laugh kind of way. Far far removed from Jemaine's on stage presence as part of the Conchords. He was active, moving around a great deal, very very physical, animated. As was Taika. I remembering laughing in all the 'wrong' places, though wrong is not really the best word for it. It worked, even when it didn't, if that makes sense. I wish I could remember lines or exact scenes played out, but I no longer can. I can recall parts of the show, but not in depth. There is no gaurantee that liking the Conchords will mean you will like Humourbeasts. I can't even begin to compare the two acts as they are so very different. Jemaine in Humourbeasts is a very different kettle of fish. At least what I saw in the show they did in 2002. I loved it. But then I really love that wacky (sometimes surreal) stuff.

The 2002 gig poster



A review from Threeweeks on their 2002 season a the Fringe in Edinburgh said this

Launching straight into their surreal style of comedy with a run of funny visual gags, Taika Cohen and Jemaine Clement soon get their audience laughing. And they maintain momentum as they speed through sketches that skip through memoirs and minds of mad inventors, and ‘the magic of the theatre’, before an absurdly funny reversal sequence as a finale. Some of the content is downright weird, and you can’t help thinking if they were performed by less competent comedians it would be embarrassing to watch. But these boys have the ability to deliver the goods - performing both visual and verbal humour with ease. New Zealand comedy is lucky to have these two on its side.

Yet a couple of years later they did a play, The Untold Tales of Maui.



An online write up of the show said this

Award Winning Theatre Presented by Taki Rua Productions

By the “Humourbeasts” Directed by Andrew Foster

"Funniest play of the year" - NZ Herald, December 2003

".....so hilarious the audience was in stitches" - Sunday Star Times, December 2003

Humourbeasts Jemaine Clement and Taika Cohen offer the funniest, freshest burst of Maori-driven humour since the whiti repati of dear departed Billy T James NZ International Arts Festival, Dominion Post, March 2004

Taki Rua Productions and Humourbeasts (Jemaine Clement and Taika Cohen) would like to invite you to experience theatre at its very best. From October 13th to November 6th, Christchurch audiences will have the opportunity to see the smash production of The Untold Tales of Maui. With the aid of state of the art multi-media devices, massive back-projections, puppetry and computer animated characters, The Untold Tales of Maui are brought back to life through the tales of Nanny, the wizened kuia who spins fantastical stories for Kapa, our troubled youth in need of some guidance from the past...

Nanny's stories take us to a time when the sun raced across the sky like a hoiho hoha (or impatient horse), when people could take their jawbones out at will or change into different animals, when grandmothers could set things on fire with their fingernails, when you could catch fish the size of a small South Pacific nation. At first, young Kapa has no interest in these crusty myths, but as Nanny's incredible stories gather strength, the young fool is soon drawn into the mysterious and fantastical world of Maui and his famous exploits.

The Untold Tales of Maui premiered in Hamilton last November and moved to Whangarei before hitting the Auckland and Wellington stages. With the support of Mäori Women's Welfare League, Taki Rua Productions is proud to present this award winning show to Christchurch audiences.

A little more official write up (I had to type this by hand, excuse any typos lol) taken from Taki Rau Productions July 2003

This summer (2004) Taki Rua Productions and Humourbeasts invite you to enter into a new kinf of theatre experience. Join us as we bring the ancient legens of Maui-tikitiki-Taranga into the modern age and tell them in a funny way.

Young Tutaeiti, the mokopuna of Tutarnui, is a troubled teen. His alcoholic mother, has sent him to the country, in the hope that he will find himself and an new direction in his troubled life. He is a streetwise pink who has a lot to learn. his Kror, Tutaenui, a simple but wise man, is given the task of imparting to his wayward grandson, the sacred knowledge and lessons of his forefathers through the takes of Maui, our most revered ancestor.

The stories take us on a journey into ancient Hawaiiki, the birth place of the Maori, to a time when the sun raced across the sky like an impatient horse, when people could take their jawbones out at will, change into different animals and venture deep beneath the Earth to an alternate reality inhabited by dead people, when grandmothers could set things on fire with their fingernails and you could catch fist the size of a small South Pacific nation.

This is the workd inhabited by Maui-tikitiki-a-Taranaga, the mischievous, demi-god who was raised by seaweed and jellyfish and who died trying to slay the goddess of death, Hine-nui-te-Po. Centring around Maui, the tales follow him from birth to death, include all the famous myths and also one or two that have, up to now, never been heard.

At first, young Tutaeiti has no interest in these ancient myths, but though Koro's incredible storytelling abilities, coupled with state of the air multi-media devices such as massive back projections, puppetry and computer animated characters, the young fool is soon drawn in to the mysterious and fantastical world of Maui and his famous exploits.



And I really don't think there is anything 'official' out there Humourbeasts wise to download and watch. That they also did a play as Humourbeasts I find very cool. But I really don't think you will see anything of them unless you happen to see them live. As an act, they don't work together often. There seems to be a big gap between projects. A couple of years between the last two. This film they are working on atm is the most recent thing now. And thats not a Humourbeasts thing

Hope that helped I really, really don't have much more on them (well not stuff I can find ) I have so many files and so on saved, its insane. I think I pretty much have everything there was about them taken from online somewhere Will this do?

PS - Hawaiiki gets a mention. I think you'll hear Bret talking about it in Mermaids

And a review of the Maui show

The Untold Tales of Maui at The SiLo

08.12.2003
By FRANCIS TILL

South Park meets Maori legends on stage and the audience comes out the winner in this fast paced, politically incorrect, rough hewn and often convulsively funny two-hour work from Humourbeasts Taika Cohen and Jemaine Clement. It is yet another successful Taki Rua production.

Maui, a Maori demigod and Polynesia's most famous navigator, is mostly known for having fished up the North Island (Te Ika a Maui) from his canoe (the South Island) using his grandmother's jawbone as a hook.

Here, Maui is invoked by a fantastically dwarfed, beach-dwelling grandmother with a penchant for deadpan irony (Clement), who tells the "untold tales" as part of an absurdist ploy to get her Michael Jackson look-alike teenage grandson (Cohen) back on the straight and narrow.

Clement and Cohen are backed in the enactment of Maui's exotic and befuddled adventures by a variety of puppets, the most amazing of which are papier-mache heads used to represent most of Maui's four mortal brothers.

Set in the 1980s, the play uses just about every trick in the performance comedy kitbag. Directed by Andrew Foster with the help of script adviser Oscar Kightley, Untold Tales is utterly devoid of reverence, to overwhelmingly positive effect.

Clement and Cohen are able to turn even performance stumbles to grist for the comic mill as they skip through a rambling text that leaves no taonga unturned.

Untold Tales is in Auckland after performances at the Court in Christchurch and Circa in Wellington.

Next stop will be the Taupo Festival in February and then on to the NZ International Festival of the Arts in Wellington, where it should do well.

Wellington-based Taki Rua - Maori for "to go in twos" - has been around since 1997 and is earning national recognition for its productions. It won the NZ Listener 2002 Theatre Awards for Witi Ihimaera's Woman Far Walking, which also picked up the Chapman Tripp Outstanding Performance Award for Rachel House in 2000.

As a comedy, Untold Tales doesn't compare with the sterner stuff the company is increasingly famous for, but it is the funniest thing I've seen all year.

Taken from NZ Herald

I was trying to remember what I liked so much about the Humourbeasts show I saw in Edinburgh. Unfortunately, I have no memory whatsoever. Heck, I couldn't even remember half of the songs played the last time I saw FotC until they turned up again on the BBC show (THANKFULLY!!) But luckily, InDUHvidual from figwitlives kept a trip diary of her Ediburgh visit and included this blurb about the show "Our favorite part; – a hilarious skit with nothing but four straws, two paper cups, and a lot of grunting."

Okay, I don't really remember what was done with the straws and paper cups, but I do know it was bloody-well brilliant.

Yes, I realize how cruel that quote is for you Jemainiacs. muahaha!

I was just typing this to /me in IM but thought it would be better shared here with you all The paper cup and straw scene they refer to eventually became the Star Wars scene. Darth Vader and Luke, somehow it moved from whatever it was into this. I can't recall how they got it to lead into this sketch now, but the straws and cups were used to full effect. Including sounds. Grunting. How on earth they even managed to work them into the show I don't know, but I was laughing way too much at it all. Once they had moved into the SW setting Taika had his hand pretend chopped off in a light saber battle done with straws and stuck the paper cup on the end ala Darth stump stylee. Lots of sound effects and laughs.

Yeah, it was funny as.

And I liked the mad scientist skit also. I remember the white lab coats. And Taika's insane expressions during the reverse scene. And Jemaine in his socks. I have this recollection of them taking their shoes off on stage for some reason. So as to slide about in socks. Or was that a dream I had one night

And the 'invisibility helmets' *sticks hands to side of head* That had me crying. Those two chairs were never the same after I swear.

And yeah, like /me said above, muahaha!

Man, that sounds absolutely fall on the floor from laughing hilarious. Just the description made me giggle. Lightsaber battle with straws and the cup stump - brilliant!

Oh, you two have jogged my memory now -- part of that paper cup and straw skit included a King Kong scene too, didn't it? Complete with airplane flying over a building? I remember them morphing from King Kong to Star Wars and then finishing with a Western-style shoot-out and one of them floating up to the heavens at the end. (Of course, my memory could be a bit fuzzy.) All done with paper cups, straws, and strange vocal noises.

And regarding the reversal scene that's mentioned -- the show opened with a strange sort of robotic dance sequence complete with props including a balloon and a wall (which occasionally fell over), set to a very funky techno song. The end of the show, then, was that exact same sequence -- in reverse.

Oh, and at some point didn't they fling bras into the audience??

And I'll echo /me and Sherry in saying the show had me nearly rolling on the floor laughing. Very bizarre, absolutely nothing like the humor in FOTC shows, and probably not for everyone -- but I loved it.

Hehe, /me and I are talking about this, still, in IM Now you mention it I recall the scenery falling down and it having to be stuck back together. And Taika was somewhat good at the robotic dance moves (also put to good use in Tongan Ninja IIRC in the dance scene) And yup, the show ended how it began, but in reverse.

And yup, that sounds about right for the paper cup sequence. We also remembered the two chairs going at *it* and Taika getting very carried away with that

And bras? I don't remember low flying bras, but that could of happened. I'm still on Jemaine wearing thick white socks and sliding around on stage

Ummm anything else ladies? I mean, we did have front row seats after all.....

Taken from a review back in 2002 in Ed

Humourbeasts

Humouroids

Attending a comedy show in a bad mood is probably the best way to judge just how good a show it is; if you leave in a better mood than you entered with it was worth your money. I arrived tired, hungry and with a slight headache - a formidable task for the Humouroids - Humourbeasts to tackle.
From the outset the performance was energetic, creative and most importantly, funny. Using only a few props the Kiwi duo successfully drew the audience into their surreal world.
One of the high points of the show was the journey into the centre of the Earth sketch where the comics pretended to be each others inner voice and used hilarious Scottish accents. However, this high quality comedy was not continued into every sketch and produced a slightly uneven performance. Despite this, the show was generally very amusing and everybody shared a good laugh when the set fell apart unplanned.
Everyone left the show with a smile on their face and I personally felt much better, as my headache having disappeared. This pretty much sums up what the show is all about although I wouldn’t go as far to say as its the new aspirin. If you feel like some late night laughs and a guaranteed good time then this is definitely the right show for you.
3/5

Julia Brown
Taken from Hairline

Ha I keep finding more I should stop looking

Courtesy of NZ Herald
15.05.2004 By Linda Herrick

Be afraid. No, really. Comedians Jemaine Clement and Taika Cohen (Right), who work under the collective moniker the Humourbeasts, want to petrify their audiences in a future project. "We'd really like to do a theatre horror show - and make it real horror, not funny at all," says Cohen, sort of seriously. "We're really into horror and sci-fi, like all guys. It would be so good to do a show and make people truly scared."

And this great article in The Listener about Taika. Worth a read. Two pages worth