Your visa to Gag City has been approved, chuckle f*cker

Wow! What a start to the year it has been (lol). Things got suddenly very hectic there (which is fun and all, but not rly conducive to emailing you on the reg). I have been a busy bee doing quite a bit of marketing for assorted shows happening around the city, and of course co-producing the 2026 Green Room Awards ceremony (having so many thoughts about how we celebrate art and what it means to give something a superlative trophy—but that’s a conversation for another project and another time).

What I wanted to chat to you about today is Comedy Festival which is hurtling towards the city at like, just such a concerning speed. Me and Georgie Wolfe (my best theatrical judy/comedic co-conspirator) have finished a first draft of our schedule for the festival and it is packed, with (at this stage) fifty three shows in our calendar.

For reference, in 2024 I saw 68 shows, and only 55 last year. A lesson we’ve been learning (the hard way) is how important it is to schedule days off from an arts festival and to actually rest. Marathon not a sprint etc etc etc.

Anywho, as a Comedy Festival award-winning critic, I thought I would tell you what I’m planning on doing to cover the festival this year (and how you can avoid hearing anything about it, should you wish to, you comedy-hating-heathen you).

I've been inspired by Craig Mod's "pop-up" newsletters for a while now. Mod blogs and publishes books about walking in Japan, and he uses these time-limited newsletters to document specific walks and trips—sending a strict amount of posts to a select list of subscribers at a set cadence. I love the time-limited thing a lot because it makes it feel like less of a commitment on my part; I probably can write nightly if it’s just for twenty days you know? And, since it exists just for a moment, it feels like a place that I might be able to get more weird with my writing.

Recently I finished the latest edition of Show Pony, a zine published by Dom Blyth. The fringe edition covered their experience at Melbourne Fringe in 2025, with writing covering every day of theirs watching shows at the festival. I love how their writing didn't try to stick to writing about shows as discrete artistic happenings, instead documenting their journeys between venues, friends seen in passing, and all the ephemera that constitute an arts festival. I was so beyond obsessed at how it painted a broader picture of the sector and the vibes and the artists who we get to witness. Magic. I wanna write like Dom when I grow up.

It'll be my third year reviewing the festival, and this time around I want to write more low-stakes personal reflection on what I'm seeing and experiencing. The treadmill of posting several video reviews weekly like I did in 2024 is exhausting to maintain in the middle of the world's largest comedy festival, and my approach in 2025 to upload carousels with short little reviews didn't feel like the right move either (there’s only so much insight you can fit into a carousel lol).

So this year, I'm gonna try something new: a limited run pop-up newsletter, with daily dispatches from each night at the festival. It’s called Gag City (and you’re reading it right now).

Named for the iconic Floptropican metropolis of the same name, this newsletter will be my way of chronicling my time at this year's Melbourne International Comedy Festival. And yes, this newsletter’s aesthetic was vaguely inspired by Lorde’s newsletters circa Solar Power (great album).

My plan is to dash out a post when I get home and send it out in the morning. Some editions will probably be so long and absolutely chockas with thoughts, but some will probably be quick little notes—and I’m telling myself both are ok. I Am Allowed To F*ck Around With Content And Form!!!

I’m curious to see how the festival will turn out, how my faves are doing, who’s new that I need to catch, what will flop, what won’t, and all the new friends I’ll make across the month! I hope you'll join me for the ride!

Join me for a limited run newsletter chronicling my time at the 2026 Melbourne International Comedy Festival. Expect newsletters sent daily-ish during the festival, and never again once it ends.

Subscribe for free

Gag City will kick off on the 24th of March, the night after I see my very first show of the festival. And once the comedy festival closes on April 19th, I'll send out one final email, and then never again! I'll archive the list of subscribers who subscribed just to Gag City and we'll all return to regularly scheduled programming.

As always, I would love to hear from you—what shows are you excited for? Are you doing a show? What do we think of the Motley Monopoly on 30% of the festival? Do you like the Canva font I chose for the header? Was Solar Power the best Lorde album ever? Let me know via reply, comment, or postal pigeon.

That’s all for now. I’ll see you in March for the funn(i)est month in this beautiful city we get to call home.