With the number of local comedians quadrupling over the past two years, three monthly comedy rooms now running, and a barrage of performers coming from interstate, Canberra's comedy scene is finally being taken seriously.

National Green Faces winner and stalwart of Canberra comedy, Jay Sullivan, says the scene is feeding of its own success as it becomes interconnected nationally.

“More of our comedians are travelling to cities like Melbourne and Sydney, and our reputation is changing as a result - more comedians are coming here,” Sullivan says.

Sullivan has worked hard in building the scene and runs two four-week comedy courses a year.

One star pupil is Greg Kimball, who has performed regularly around town since he first stepped under the hot light last year.

“The course identifies what is a joke and how to put it together, and actually gets people up on a stage with a mic, under a hot light, and talking,” Kimball explains.

As a result, there’s been a stack of fresh comedians come out of the woodwork in the last year alone, performing to regular strong crowds at Civic Pub, the Front Gallery and Café, and more recently, the Tuggeranong Arts Centre.

“It’s a huge rush and we all have a great time performing,” Kimball says. “The crowds that come get involved and they love it too.”

Local comedian Dayne Rathbone performed for the first time in May last year at the Front, and says the laid back atmosphere was welcoming to a first timer.

Rathbone performs as a “strange and very different” character which he finds hard to explain.

“I’m still trying to figure [my act] out myself,” he says. “I guess you do the things that make people laugh, and over time my material has gotten weirder and weirder.”

The comedian made a hugely successful appearance at Melbourne International Comedy Festival earlier this year, and, as he steps out on the national scene, he attributes some of his success to the teeth-cutting he received at home.

All three men have stories of what it was like starting out, whether it is Kimball performing to a 12-strong crowd - six of them drunk hecklers - or Rathbone freaking out that his material was rubbish and rewriting his whole show the night before a gig.

But all three have lived to tell the tale, thanks in part, says Rathbone, to the local atmosphere.

“Canberra’s a great place to start out,” he says. “The venues are cosy, with everyone packed in close together, which is good because laughter creates more laughter.”

Monthly comedy nights are held at the Front in Lyneham, Civic Pub in Braddon, and the Tuggeranong Arts Centre. Check venues for details. To take part in one of Jay Sullivan’s comedy courses, contact the Tuggeranong Art Centre.

Canberra Youth Theatre has been committed to developing young playwrights in the ACT for some years now, but never with as much scope and opportunity as in its new Writers Unite! workshop for young playwrights.

Aimed at developing the expertise of up and coming local playwrights, the 15-week course will feature expert tuition from the Head of Playwriting at NIDA Jane Bodie, as well as technical advice from prominent Australian playwright Angela Betzien (Hoods, Children of the Black Skirt), and script developer Peter Matheson.

Artistic Director Karla Conway says that Writers Unite! is an exciting new program for Canberra Youth Theatre.

“We designed this course to try and encourage new playwrights to come out of the woodwork and provide them with exceptional training, to help them craft the stories that they want to tell, and let us start to hear the voices of young playwrights more clearly,” Conway says.

While Conway will be taking on much of the tutoring and mentoring throughout the semester, she’s calling in expert assistance for some of the finer points of playwriting from industry heavyweights such as Bodie, who will help the students to develop their personal experiences into an engaging play.

“Jane will take the playwrights through how to mine their experiences, and explore them to come up with the idea of the play,” Conway says.

“It’s dangerous for a young writer to write things that they’re going through at the time, because it’s not objective. Jane will help the writers to re-contextualize ideas so that they’re not writing purely autobiographically.”

Script developer Peter Matheson will also assist students over two sessions focusing on problems of structure and form, while playwright Angela Betzien will discuss the process of working with actors and seeing a play through to production.

The Writers Unite! program is run in collaboration with a wider, national program, Artists Unite. Participating youth theatre companies around the country will run similar playwriting courses, and each company will be able to choose one new play from an interstate theatre company to see through to production. If a local student’s work is chosen, Canberra Youth Theatre will pay for that student to travel to Adelaide and see their play through to production.

Anyone between the age of 14 and 25 with an interest in developing a play from the basic idea stage right through to production standard should apply for Writers Unite!

Enrolments for the course close on July 16, and Conway urges aspiring young playwrights to make the most of this quality program.

“It’s a really great opportunity,” Conway says. “Not only will we take playwrights through the writing process, but there’s a genuine potential to see their work produced, and really get up and running in establishing themselves as emerging playwrights.”

For details and enrolments head to www.cytc.net or call 6248 5057.

Perhaps the friendly Taro Harasaki has been told that BMA has a young, hip readership, or perhaps it’s my young, hip phone voice, or perhaps Taro’s been burned by Japanese-drumming purists in the past. Whatever the cause, Taro goes to great lengths to tell me that Drum Tao is very modern and not at all like the traditional stuff.

“How can I say it? The numbers we are playing on stage are made by ourselves and the choreography. The numbers are modern rhythm. Our show is very entertained and innovate. And the costume is totally different to traditional ones.  She (Maki Morifuji, the group’s designer) blends Asian style of clothes with modern pattern of clothes.”

Taro is one of the thirteen drummers in the Drum Tao group, which is touring Australia in June with a new show, The Samurai of the Drum. The group, first established in 1993 by founder and director Ikuo Fujitaka, blend Taiko drumming with high-end choreography and production values. From what I can gather, the show is to traditional Japanese culture what Lord of the Dance was to traditional Irish culture. It’s more sexy and less boring than what you’d find in a village.

“We dance, and we play drums, and bamboo flute, and Japanese flute, and trumpet from New Zealand,” say Taro. And they do it with sass and bare torsos. Or to borrow words from their press release, they “summon the spirit of the Samurai as they beat with precision, vehemence and persistency on their huge Wadaiko-Drums”.

These drums are quite different from those that Westerners bang. “The sound is very natural. It doesn’t hum.” They’re also larger.

“The biggest one is diameter two meters and the weight is over 400 kilograms. It’s so huge, actually. It makes a very, very loud sound. The people say the sound that this – we call it Big Mama drum – people say the sound of Big Mama drum is just like the mother’s heartbeat. We often see the babies sitting in the first row sleeping while we are drumming.”

What else do you need to know about Drum Tao? I suppose you should know that one member, Natsuko Kuroyanagi, has the “vigour and force” of a “tigress”. And you should also know that drummer Ryohei Taki has “more shining muscles than should be allowed for one human being”.

“He’s a hunk,” says Taro of Taki. “He’s one of the guys who has the most beautiful muscles in Tao.”

Drum Tao bring their show The Samurai of the Drum to the Canberra Theatre Centre on Tuesday July 13