Whet Brekkie’s Josh Glass on sketch comedy, absurdity and escapism

Speaking to Josh Glass about his sketch comedy group Whet Brekkie, it feels like an exciting time for sketch, with Tim Robinson (I Think You Should Leave) and Aunty Donna in pop-culture ascendency. As Josh puts it, “some of the biggest names in sketch are also the best names in sketch, for the first time in a while”.

Emerging in 2016, Whet Brekkie, is “more of a comedy collective, than it is a sketch group,” Josh outlines, describing the history of the group who have produced well-remembered Canberra Comedy Festival shows, recently turning their focus online with sketches for video and podcast.

“I believe very much in the Allen Ginsberg philosophy of killing your darlings”, says Josh, explaining the group’s move into podcasting. “When I write a sketch, I’m never saving it for anything, thinking this sketch will be really good when the stars align. Instead I think, here’s the sketch, next week I’ll fart out another one.”

“Now, obviously I try – I’m not just putting a couple of words together and putting the c-word at the end – but the idea of putting out weekly sketches really appealed to me. It's hard work – and I could be working harder on it – but releasing a sketch, which is written and performed in a week, forces you to be good at it. You have no choice but to write sketches that become good somehow. It's a little bit flexing those muscles and getting the chops down, but also a little bit craving attention.”

Looking deeper at a Whet Brekkie sketch, I want to know, what makes a Whet Brekkie character?

“Phill Carruthers as a bird. We keep writing characters where Phill has to be a bird, and we don’t know why.”

“Everyone is very good at writing their characters how they want them to be. So people have real commitment to the characters they’re playing. I also have a tendency to write perverts. So there’s probably an element of sexual deviancy to most Whet Brekkie characters. Another one of the other themes would be family, and in particular, paternity. Everyone brings their own spin to characters. But it's mostly birds and perverts.”

Listening to the Whet Brekkie podcast through a pandemic year has been a series of small delights at unexpected times. Short comic scenes have offered absurd paths out of dreary realities, such as a one-hour exercise block. We discuss comedy’s current role as a form escapism, which Josh argues audiences are aware of.

“I do very much get the sense that everyone is feeling their disenfranchisement a little bit, and that’s relaying itself into this craving to see bombast and exuberance on stage and in media."

“The tone of comedy has shifted enough in the popular consciousness of people who consume comedy, so it's something else from what it was in 2010. People are over Ricky Gervais entirely. People are over a consensus on, say 'let’s just all agree these three basic assumptions are correct and continue with the bit'. People don’t want to be told what to do in a comedy audience, and they want to see things get crazy. And how much of that is conscious or not, I don’t know, but the shift in the last 5-8 years of comedy getting louder, and comedy getting more extreme and violent.”

“Borat’s back, and its just as topical. People have that craving again to see things they’ve never seen, and see things which are gross, and upsetting, and extremely horny, and I don’t think that desire was there when things were very 'nice' during the Barack Obama first term.”

Whilst the history of sketch comedy’s move to absurdism might be unfunny, at least there’s some potential for writers in the new style:

“Now you have sketches which aren’t exactly breaking the fourth wall, but the situations will become exponentially high-stakes. The suspension of disbelief on behalf of the audience becomes almost second nature. You see the I Think You Should Leave sketch where the guy eats the receipt and at no point do people think “this is dumb now”. The whole way through people are onboard with the rules of the universe. I don’t know exactly when that change happened, but I think the situations that sketch is portraying now are infinitely sillier, and the stakes are incredibly high – which is great, because you really get to play with the tension.”

Josh's investment in and care for sketch comedy is apparent, which makes sense for a former stand-up comedian who “always wanted to do sketch, did it once, and thought, “this is better than stand-up””.

“There’s a uniqueness with sketch, where you can play in the space and really take scenarios to their logical conclusion, and get people involved on the journey. Audiences really like being inside the sketch. That’s something audiences always walk away saying.”

From all Josh has told me off his experience writing – and all I've seen and heard of Whet Brekkie – their audience's sentiment is easy to understand.

You can keep updated with the Whet Brekkie at www.whetbrekkie.com, including latest videos, podcasts and live shows.