We’ve Not Been Ourselves
Lawrence Mooney & Damian Callinan decided to end the backstage flirting and cement their comedy love by collaborating for MICF 1998. Their first comedy child, “We’ve Not Been Ourselves” took everyone by surprise, including themselves, as it became one of the cult hits of the festival.
The show was an autobiographical projection of where the duo might be in the future. In this case it was performing in a sitcom called ‘We’ve Not Been Ourselves” that saw them on and off camera as 60 something hacks finally having the hit show they’d desired for so long. But the relationship is strained. As it begins to fall apart they flashback through their careers before finally falling victim to a revolutionary group hell bent on political correctness.
The show set in motion the tradition of character based narratives that was to become the hall mark of a duo that, despite several attempts, never achieved the most obvious of goals … a name.
1998 Melbourne Comedy Festival
David Lindley, Beat Magazine
April 1998
“A rustic little chamber of Trades hall provided the venue for this clever satire of the old Aussie sitcom. Damian Callinan, winner of the 1997 Adelaide Comedy Festival Make Me Laugh award and runner up in “JJJ’s Raw Comedy” teams up with Lawrence Mooney, also a Raw finalist, to create a show from one comedy style to the next, using stand-up, sit com, running jokes and at times, some odd little sub plots that manage to confuse the audience into laughter.
This uproariously funny show is about 2 lads jumping decades into the future in a muse that finds them as the main characters in Australia’s latest hit sitcom, playing a couple of old codgers dealing with the new generation and the nuances of old age. Throughout the show Callinan & Mooney do a range of acts including the backstage relationship of the two after each live screening [complete with canned laughter deliberately played over the wrong parts]
The two perform their own hilariously pathetic sound effects and Callinan squeezes in a short performance of Roman, the sensationally funny alter ego for which he won awards and recognition at the ’97 festival. For those who dare risk the risk of asphyxiating with laughter I have only this to say y-fronts and tomato sauce.”
