Adam Vincent.
 It's gone 11 o'clock at night, and I'm tired when the phone unexpectedly rings. On the other end is an equally buggered Adam Vincent who's just completed a show proper in a club immediately after performing a trial show in front of half a dozen non-industry strangers which included three girls and an African guy who didn't speak much English.
"He seemed to really enjoy it," states a happily surprised Vincent, "which made me feel like I can even reach those tourists who want to come see my shows, which happened last Fringe when I had a lot of German and Swedish backpackers come along. I was just glad that I can make non-English speaking people laugh, but just listening to other people's laughter can make you laugh as well," he concurs. "Like, [the African guy] was very much just dragged along and to be honest he probably missed a lot of the spoken jokes, but towards the end my show gets so ridiculous and very physical and stupid that you have no choice but to laugh or hide."
Formerly from Adelaide but now based in Melbourne, Vincent had also, as part of his 'apprenticeship', spent almost a year in the UK in order to clock up more gigs to sharpen his skills. "The irony of my move is that now Adelaide has an awesome comedy scene," he enthuses. "I mean, Melbourne is still the pig's trough but Adelaide's great. There's people like Craig Egan, who basically runs the Adelaide comedy scene, whereas before there were just two main venues but now I can come over now and do a week's worth of shows."
Part of Vincent's reasoning behind his earlier rehearsal show was to primarily fine tune and tweak much of his experience and practise a more pragmatic approach towards his future. "I started in stand up comedy ten years ago," he declares, "but when I moved to Melbourne there were a few guys who introduced me to improvisation comedy and I loved it. We then formed a group called The Crew and for the past five years we've been getting together on Sunday nights and improvising away, which aside from having to make people laugh is a completely separate skill from stand up. Improv comedy teaches you so many skills that suddenly you become a writer, director, producer and actor because you have to do all those things. My new show's now structured in that I know where I've got to get to and what I want to say, but I also capitalise on my improvisation skills so it's still very loose and will always be changing, and that's part of the fun for me.
"I still improvise but I also have a lot of characters in my show, and when it comes to being in character for some reason I just keep going with it and seeing what I can get out of it. There's definitely no script, but what I've now done is bracketed everything so that my point comes across but still remains in the moment."
Over two hours later a much welcoming bed beckoned but by heck, that Adam is such a nice guy; get along and see him.
Steve Jones
 | Adam Vincent performs 'Better Off Shouting' at Bin 273 (Rundle Street) until Sat 11 March |
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