Dylan McBurney is the founder and executive producer of a national program helping young comedians launch their careers. They spoke to Matt Hewson about how sometimes, to better help others you need to listen to who you are and what you need.
At age 23, Dylan McBurney is still classified as a youth by most government offices and services; they could still, for example, call Kids Helpline, contribute to the National Youth Survey or collect Youth Allowance.
But despite being a young person themselves, Dylan, originally from Lara, has made it their mission to provide a leg-up to other young comedians.
In 2023, aged 20, Dylan and fellow young comedian Ethan Gallagher designed and created Pilot, a national creative development program that supports young comedians to develop their skills, improve their process and take the leap into developing full-length solo shows for the Melbourne International Comedy Festival.
The idea for the program came to Dylan while they were producing a show for two friends who were doing a double bill for the Comedy Festival that year.
“I remember thinking, it’s a good thing these guys know each other, they have someone to collaborate with, they know me to produce it…and they’d both put in a thousand bucks each to produce it,” they said.
“The idea literally came to me on the tram to the theatre: what happens if you’re a young person and you don’t know how to put together half an hour of material, you don’t have connections to a venue or contacts?
“And particularly for young people, who are probably saving to move out or have moved out, investing money in a show and waiting months to get that money back is just not an option for a lot of people.”
Programs certainly exist for certain cohorts of young people; Class Clowns (which Ethan participated in) and Up Next provide performance and development opportunities for high school students and young adults, respectively.
“I was interested to see what we could create in between those spaces,” Dylan said.
“We try to give comedians everything they need to take the next step in their career, so we start with a two-day intensive workshop and we go through the fundamentals of how to create a solo show.
“What’s the hero’s journey or structure you can use? What themes do you want to explore, and how do you want to explore them? What do you want to make the audience feel? When the audience see you and hear the first thing you say, what do you want them to think about you?
“And then over the next months, every week we get together as a group and talk about where we’re getting stuck and what’s been going well. We hook them up with open mics or booked spots where they live so they can test their material.”
The program culminates with the Melbourne International Comedy Festival, where the ‘Pilots’ headline in their first solo shows.
“It’s really handing them the tools and letting them go away and write their show,” Dylan said.
“When you’re a comedian, so much of it is about your own work ethic and your own writing ability, so there’s certainly a big responsibility from the artists as well as us.
“Also, there’s no costs for any young person to be involved. We’ve got folks from Perth and Sydney this year, we pay for their flights, we set them up with somewhere to stay in Melbourne
“It’s particularly about those underrepresented groups, which I’m really passionate about representing. But really, for us, it’s about whose show do we want to see the most? Whose show do we want to go and buy a ticket for?”
While Dylan’s background was not originally in comedy, but rather in singing and acting, they were always the class clown at Hamlyn Banks Primary School and then Matthew Flinders Girls Secondary College.
“I was always making jokes and distracting everyone,” they said.
“I think you see that a lot in people who…I came out as trans when I was 14, and before then I didn’t have a super strong sense of self, I guess.
“I was very confident, in that I did whatever I wanted, but I certainly felt out of place. Going to Matthew Flinders, I didn’t feel like I was like the other girls, in a way that I didn’t understand.
“It was like, all these people are girls and they just do it effortlessly and they don’t have to try. And I feel like my legs are kind of bumpy and weird, just all the things that kind of made me stand out.
“I think comedy was definitely a big part of that. I’m a very empathetic person as well, so I think making people laugh was something that I liked to do, but also part of my identity.”
Since leaving high school, Dylan studied sound production and stage management, working extensively doing the latter.
However, a diagnosis with the chronic pain condition fibromyalgia meant the demanding schedules of stage management were not working for them.
“It’s a chronic illness that causes widespread pain; it’s your brain sending pain signals before they’re necessary,” Dylan said.
“Being in rehearsals for days, then the theatre teching the show from 9am to 11pm just became pretty impossible.
“I got to a point where I read ‘disability is a condition that lasts six or more months’, and I was like, okay, I’m feeling confident about identifying with this word.”
Dylan successfully applied for a youth traineeship with Children and Young People with Disability Australia (CYDA) that was “really lifechanging”, and and now works part-time at Murdoch Children’s Research Institute as a research assistant.
So, strangely, it was only through creating Pilot for young comedians that Dylan found themselves writing and producing their own solo comedy show.
“I never saw myself as a creative person or writer; doing musical theatre and choirs, you show up and you sing or say what’s on the page, which I was very comfortable with,” they said.
“It wasn’t until after we started working on Pilot, where I was taking lots of comedy workshops to support the comedians, where I was coming up with ideas for jokes. And I thought, okay, maybe I do have some creativity.”
Dylan’s show, Loud Jazz Will Fix Me, debuted at the Melbourne Fringe Festival, receiving high praise from audiences and reviewers alike.
It’s not all Pilot for Dylan. Next week they travel to the Green Room Awards, where they and their partner Emerson Hurley are nominated for the Outstanding New Australian Music Theatre Writing (Independent) award for their musical The Forgotten Songbook.
“My sister was very excited that Sammy J was another nominee (for the same award), so from her perspective, I’ve made it,” Dylan said.
But through all of the tumult of life, through the highs and lows, Pilot remains the thing they “always have the motivation for”.
“There are so many young people out there, particularly a lot of really disconnected young people, who have these incredible ideas and these incredible projects waiting to be brought out of them,” Dylan said.
“To be able to facilitate that is my greatest joy. Writing a show is such a vulnerable thing, and for people to trust me enough to end up creating something that’s the best version of what they wanted to do, that is the reason for me. That is so fulfilling.”
Pilot Comedy is at The Greek Centre from 27 March to 12 April as part of the Melbourne International Comedy Festival.
