“My job really is to be the smiling face that pushes you out of the airplane,” says Thank God You’re Here host Celia Pacquola.
“It really is like working at a circus or a theme park.
“You’re feeling the tension in the air, because it is real, and that’s palpable in front of 400 – 500 people, and they’re so close, half a metre away from the performers.”
The Working Dog series returned to television last year after a 14 year break. Quickly re-establishing the fun / terror of walking through the blue door, it again proved popular with audiences. This year the season has extended from 8 to 10 new episodes.
“It was such a relief and a joy that people seemed to get on board and that the sort of core of it is the same, which is heightened stakes in a fully immersive silliness experience is still something that people were interested in watching,” Pacquola continues.
“The reason that they stopped making the show back in the day when it was hugely popular, was that they felt they had excellent people going through, but a lot of people who’d gone through many times.”
While performers such as Julia Zemiro and Hamish Blake returned from the show’s initial 4 season run, the 2023 revival saw a wave of next-gen comedians try their luck at improvisation including Aaron Chen, Guy Montgomery, Urzila Carlson, Joel Creasey, Geraldine Hickey and He Huang.
Pacquola cites Mark Bonanno, Frankie McNair and Emma Holland as examples of new players who also smashed it last season.
“I think it’s important that there’s a mix of people who did it back in the day that you love to see walk through again, but then there’s people who grew up watching it, but hadn’t started Comedy yet, or are just hitting their strength in Comedy now,” she suggests.
“It’s also a showcase and a platform for introducing the audience to performers that they might not have met before, which was part of the joy back in the day as well. Rebel Wilson and Josh Lawson weren’t big names back then. So I think they’ve held true to that. There’s a whole new crop of people.
“Aside from anything else, as a working comedian, it’s good that there’s another platform for us to work, to have a job, to be on TV. We don’t have that many panel shows, it’s amazing to have a show that employs four or five more comedians a week.”
Yet while the rules of Theatresports may adhere to ‘Yes / And’ (shorthand for don’t block, add to the story), it doesn’t necessarily apply to Thank God You’re Here.
“It’s about bullshitting. The regular rules of impro don’t sort of apply because it would just go on forever. So there is sort of a scene that’s playing out, and they’ve given ‘offers,’” she explains.
“Basically the ensemble just keeps throwing the ball in the air for them. It’s offers, and they’re sort of carried along. There’s people who go against the ‘Yes.’ I think Shaun Micallef did one back in the day where he’s like, ‘I love what you’ve done with a place, taken that wall out, had all these people put in!’ Which is definitely not ‘Yes-And’ but very funny.
“It comes back to bluffing, fake it till you make it. It’s bullshitting and pretending you know what’s going on, rather than, let’s you know, pure Theatresports or impro. I mean, I don’t really know. I am not trained in that at all.”
Scenarios are filmed As Live, without any retakes at Melbourne’s Showgrounds. Episode 1 for this season feautures Hamish Blake, Frankie McNair and first time participants, Anne Edmonds and Sam Pang.
According to Pacquola, there’s no one ‘right’ way to do approach the scenarios.
“Some performers will really take on a character, like Julia Zemiro. Some of them will just look completely shocked and will just be themselves, but in the ‘past.’ That’s very funny to see them completely not even try to be a different version of themselves and just say ‘Nup, this is who I am, but I happen to be in this world, and I’ll play it like this.’”
Yet while she loves the hosting (and the 10 episode gig), Pacquloa has never been through the door as participant, and has no plans to try.
“I was in the audience for the last season, and I’d started Comedy. So I reckon if they’d done one more season, maybe I would hav gone through. I’m sad about it but if they’d actually asked me, I would have been completely freaked out. Just being on this side of it, and seeing people have such a fun time… makes me a bit jealous,” she adds.
“We’ve talked about me doing it now, but I feel like no matter how real we made it, the audience would not believe that I wasn’t in on it!”
Thank God You’re Here returns 7:30pm tonight on 10.
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