“A new unscripted comedy…
Where people have to deliver bad news…
But they have no idea what it is…
Until they read it…”
Conceived by Matt Saraceni and Dave Zwolenski, of
Real Good Kid Productions, Written It Down began
as an exciting improv web series, which received
funding from ABC TV’s Fresh Blood project, and is
now being translated into a one-night-only Fringe
Festival show of spontaneous frivolity.
Written It Down follows a simple but exciting idea:
comedians are put into scenarios where one of them
must break bad news to the other; previous examples have been breakups, termination from a job,
or being kicked off a sporting team. The only catch
is, the bearer of bad news has no idea why until the
camera begins rolling and they read their reason,
which has been, as the series’ title suggests, writ-
ten down. From here, pairs of comedians improvise
scenes based on whatever they read for the first
time on film.
Saraceni admits that there can sometimes be “a bit of
a cultural cringe” attached to improvisational comedy,
however “Australia is a lot better with improve than,
say, the States are, because we have a lot of successful improvisers and improv shows, like ‘Thank
God You’re Here”. Along with Zwolenski, Saraceni
recalls the desire they had to create a show which
would allow “improvisers to be improvisers”, where
they could be trusted to “make up a beginning, a
middle, an end, do great characters, a funny story,
and we try to give them as little as possible”. Indeed,
the web series saw the appearance of a host of successful comedians, including, but not limited to, Liam
Ryan, Paul Verhoven, Jimmy James Eaton, and Gillian Cosgriff.