Rove at the YACK Festival

Coming to the Giant Dwarf Theatre, November 5-19 is YACK, a new festival in Sydney about banging on, featuring some of the funniest and provocative comedy, panels and podcasts. The festival will be host to some of the biggest names in Australian comedy including Wil Anderson, Rove McManus and Tom Ballard. The festival has been said to be a collection of weird stuff, smart stuff, interesting stuff and a lot of funny stuff.

Among the amazing line-up, YACK will feature Rove McManus in his first ever fully improvised stand-up show, I’ve Got Nothing. The show will see Rove hit the stage with no material whatsoever, a test for any seasoned vet of the stage.

“There was one occasion I was in a big venue but there wasn’t a lot of people in the room. The acts were getting up doing their material, which was just weird because they were playing it like there was a full house, that wasn’t there. When I got up I just started talking to the audience. Acknowledging there’s not many of us here etc. I went around the room talking to the audience and in doing so found out fascinating stuff that gave me moments and I’d just go off on a tangent. So, I do know I have it in me.” said McManus.

An improvised show could be risky business, when asked why he would want to put himself through something like that McManus replied, “One of the things behind the YACK festival is that the performers involved will be doing something different to what they would normally do, so I didn’t want to just do a stand-up show. This is unstructured and gives me more room to play. Doing any preparation at all would be cheating, it’ll be quite invigorating.”

Nov 9. Giant Dwarf Theatre, 199 Cleveland St, Redfern. $30+b.f. Tickets & Info: www.giantdwarf.com.au

By Riley Hooper.