The pair, Colwyn Buckland and Filip Lescaut, are a real-life couple who make sketch comedy about modern gay life through different characters, scenes, songs and dance, but also in moments as themselves.
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“I thought that was really funny and interesting,” Bonanno says. “I wasn’t just watching some people be silly, I was watching these people who really love each other.
“My first thought was ‘I just want to be friends with these guys’ … and we did end up becoming really close friends. And then just through that, they asked me one day [to direct].”
Bonanno set ground rules: he would never order them around, and he would never suggest a joke.
“I don’t want their show to become my show,” he says. “They have to make the committed decisions. It unequivocally needs to be their voice. My rule is: ‘only if they ask’.”
But he could bring an objective point of view to questions like: does the shape of the show work, can this punchline work harder, does this sketch need something more to it?
One of his most significant pieces of advice was that in between the funny characters, they should have honest, real moments that “give the audience the chance to fall in love with them”.
Another tip he brought from the Aunty Donna writing room: to write far more than they’d ever written before. They would write 10 sketches for a show; he advised them to write 30 sketches and cut half.
“[Aunty Donna] is very much about writing three hours of material and bumping it down into 50 minutes,” he says. “Except for our current show, which is two hours long.”
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And separate to the show, he’s passing on lessons learnt writing for and pitching to TV and streaming services (“I’ve done pitches in America and here, and Aunty Donna have attempted and failed at a wide variety of comedic pursuits in this country and others.“)
But in the end, it’s up to Woah, Alyssa!, and that’s a good thing, says Bonanno, because comedy is so subjective.
“There have been times when I have been like, ‘I don’t think that punchline’s quite sticking’ or ‘I don’t think this bit of the sketch is quite working’. And then they get it in front of their audience and it sings and it’s like: ‘Great, I don’t know what I’m f---ing talking about.’
“Which is good, and humbling and important because none of us really do, right?”









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