Yawp Mag ISSUE 17: POLITICAL COMEDY | Page 3

EDITOR’S NOTES Political Comedy Edition Everyone at YAWP apologises. Alright? Do you forgive us? We missed a month. It’s not an omen, it’s not the first chapter of decline and fall. We all had exams. Ok? Can we just put it behind us?... Can you stop looking at me/the magazine like that? With that out of the way, I want to give over a big thank you to Steph Gray, Tamara Issa, Jen Van Ewyk and Jonathan Soo Ho for their efforts in the editing suite (the office) this past couple of months. YAWP is really interested in filming as many of the interviews as humanly possible and we want to extend our gratitude to all the comics who made the trek out to Northcote to give us their time and insights for this really cool edition. There are more links for your enjoyment in this issue. We hope you enjoy them. If you have any feedback on how the magazine is progressing or what you’d like to see in future, get in touch with us at: [email protected] This issue is purely devoted to POLITICAL COMEDY. When pressed, our interviewees will admit to identifying, somewhat, as political comedians in some way, shape or form. The one thing that stood out to us in this process, however is that everyone is political in their own particular way. Everyone has their ‘thing’ that they are passionate about. And they use humour to give us permission to think about social justice issues. At times, comics fear that political humour, if not crafted with care, can come across as preachy. Hence why sometimes it is not taken up by people who believe that comedy is solely to make people laugh. And certainly, if demands are put on the audience to make them think deeply, it can stir up resentment for anyone who attends comedy to forget about the outside world. But as they say, Comedy is the last bastion of free speech. This explains why it is pretty inevitable that comedy rooms become fertile ground for radical and liberal ideas for us to laugh at and ruminate on. Enjoy the issue. bEAU FITZPATRICK @beaufitzpatrick