'Comedy isn't easy," says Aaron McIlroy, though it's hard to believe him. He's already tickled the conversation with a few jokes and it has only just started. And if his track record is anything to go by, it can't really be true either.
McIlroy and his wife, Lisa Bobbert, are about to perform their third run of Defending the Planet, which won a Best Script Award at the 2005 Fools Awards. The show is directed by Sue Monteregge and features a self-help group of victims of alien abductees.
"It plays on the idea of AA meetings, except this one is the Alien Abductees Anonymous Annual General Meeting - the AAA AGM," McIlroy explains.
The idea was inspired by a character from a previous show of McIlroy's, alien conspiracy theorist Nigel Bjorn van Rensburg. "We thought he was a bit way out, but the response to him was amazing," says McIlroy. "It seems that everyone knows someone like that, you know, someone who thinks their cows were probed by aliens in the night. It's fertile ground for comedy, so we decided to take it one step further."
Van Rensburg even plays a role in this production, among a host of other characters with extra-terrestrial tips and advice.
"We're character players, so the shows are geared towards that," says McIlroy. "We enjoy exploring flawed characters and using them as the vehicle to tell the story".
So why the decision to bring the show back? Popular demand of course. "There's no sense reinventing the wheel," says McIlroy.
"Although you get a different buzz from performing new stuff, it's a lovely feeling knowing that what you're performing will work. You know, instead of asking yourself whether you should do a show or throw yourself off a building."
Hopefully that kind of decision making won't come into play for the show McIlroy is currently writing. "I'm like a workhorse," he says. "I have to keep working or my wife will whip me." This one is a sequel to his hit The Loser, which jibed at the quick-fix positivity of motivational speaking and its working title is The Healer, as it deals with "New Age stuff like feng shui".
So there is more of McIlroy's oddball humour on its way, which he describes as an extreme-sport style of interactive theatre. And we all know what that means: never sit in the front row.
- Defending the Planet, at the Heritage Theatre in Hillcrest, today to February 25.