Male fertility is funny business

Male comics are revealing their most intimate details for good reason, writes Fiona Scott-Norman.

Audiences are used to comics mining their personal lives for material.

Drinking, shagging and humiliating stories from childhood are the mud and straw from which many a routine/adobe hut has been lovingly crafted. What sets a comic apart, however, and really engages a crowd, is the willingness to move beyond share-houses, dating and pulling bongs into truly intimate, emotionally charged, controversial territory.

Three performers this Melbourne International Comedy Festival have been prepared to put their most precious commodity - their, ahem, fertility - on the line, and the result is three very different shows that examine the issue from the male perspective.

Matt Black's Come With Me is a call for volunteers to donate semen to the Albury sperm bank. Damian Callinan's Spaznuts is an exploration of his own infertility. And Tasmanian Ben Payne's Duopoly of One looks at how enduring IVF, and then conceiving twins, impacted on his relationship.

It's the kind of stuff that traditionally makes men shuffle their feet nervously and start talking loudly about sport, but Callinan, who found out he was infertile shortly before his marriage ended, doesn't feel that revealing such personal material is a big deal. If anything, he seems relieved that a bright light is finally being directed at such a private part of his life.

"I'm just telling my own story, and I'm comfortable with that. Some friends came and said they loved the show, but found themselves wanting to use the word ‘brave', and then hating themselves for that. It just sounds so patronising.

"I'd rather the whole world knows about it so that people stop asking why my partner and I don't have children. Those conversations are the awkward ones."

Callinan's monologue is set in a sperm-delivery clinic, with Damian engaging in occasional "conversation" with other men in the waiting room. He wanted to broaden the show by including other men's stories, such as the man who has known for 10 years he's infertile, but whose wife won't give up on IVF.

Callinan, a comedy festival veteran, two-time Barry nominee and former star of Skithouse, has noticed that the sensitive and biographical nature of the show deepens his connection with his audience. "I think that there's something about telling your own story that people are more nurturing of - the connection is very strong.