Reuben Kaye reckons you can joke about anything — 'it's just how you do it'

In a theatre dressing room, Reuben Kaye is fumbling with his phone, trying to prop it up against something so we can talk face-to-face, his image shifting rapidly between vertical and horizontal.

At one point, he disappears entirely — his phone died — only to re-emerge and begin the process again.

This Kaye, the new artistic director of the Adelaide Cabaret Festival, is relaxed, pared back. Not the one in fake eyelashes, stiletto-heeled boots and arseless chaps who struts onto the stage to kick off his live shows.

Chewing on gummy lollies, the off-duty comedian and cabaret artist is as warm and effervescent in conversation as he is on stage; an intoxicating force of personality who laughs uproariously, easily, often.

A decade on from his first Melbourne comedy festival show in 2016, Kaye has earned a dedicated following and critical praise (last month, he shared the top prize at Sydney Comedy Festival) but has sometimes spurred controversy.

A joke he made on The Project in 2023 about Jesus being nailed to the cross prompted an apology from the hosts and hundreds of submissions to the Australian Communications and Media Authority (ACMA). Subjected to death threats, Kaye was even forced to cancel a run of shows.

Three years later, Kaye is not cowed by what happened. He is as ribald and unflinching as ever.

What do you think is distinct about cabaret made by Australian artists today?

I think more than any other art form — and Australians lead the way in a lot of art forms overseas, we really do — cabaret is where we truly shine, because there is no other nation that has as its core value self-mocking, self-awareness, a self-hatred, almost.

And this luxury of distance, of separation from the world, of isolation, means that we look at art forms from other worlds and other nations, and when we parrot them, or when we inhabit them, we do so with a tilted, mocking, sardonic, sometimes absurdist lens, and that lends itself to cabaret so intently. I think Australians have a unique advantage. We've almost been doing cabaret through years of being maligned by the rest of the world.

Part of that is the larrikin spirit. Australia loves an oddball. You think about someone like Yahoo Serious — we love these weird people. We have at our core one of our national heroes, Ned Kelly, whose team wore dresses. We have Captain Moonlight, the gay bushranger. We've always had camp at the centre of our identity. Because we have had such a macho identity, the flip side of that has always been a man in a dress.

And we love to take cultural icons and turn them into musicals: Phar Lap , Schapelle Corby, Shane Warne …

I'm sorry, Schapelle Corby is just a concept that sings. What can you say?

"I think cabaret shapes the world or helps to heal the world in some way," Reuben Kaye says. "Being a political artist isn't a choice, it's dictated by the art form." ( Supplied: Claudio Raschella )

So, why did you want to take on the top job at the cabaret festival?

Originally, I didn't want to. Well, I did, and then I saw what the job entailed and I pulled my hat out of the ring real quick. I saw what Virginia [Gay, who ran the cabaret festival last year] was doing, and saw how in everything Virginia was, and I thought, no, no, no, I can't do that.

But then at the end of Virginia's tenure, the festival approached me, and I thought, I have something I want to do with this festival that feels relevant, exciting, a new direction for the festival, while also still true to the festival's ideals.

Also, I don't have anything else to get from Adelaide after doing the Fringe and the cabaret festival for 10 years now. If anything, I have something to give back. So, this festival really feels like a love letter, a return on investment, for the 10 years Adelaide has been investing in me.

What's the new direction you wanted to go in?

All festivals, especially arts festivals, are trying to balance the existing audience while finding new audiences, getting younger people excited about the arts. I felt, given my audience, I'm uniquely positioned to juggle those two concepts, to be able to provide programming that intrigues and excites the existing audience, who are super worldly, who know what they like, who have seen everything, while at the same time bringing in new audience members, making the festival more accessible.

Because I think some people perhaps have the view of the cabaret festival as, "oooh, a classy lady sings ballads, entertainment for people who have a beach house who are going to be adversely affected by the budget".

For me, cabaret is a punk art form; it's inherently groundbreaking, rule-breaking, multidisciplinary, queer, tilted. It's an art form of the people, because it doesn't obey, or it has its middle finger up at all of the establishment, and I knew the artists I wanted to program who served all of that.

Cabaret is a political art form, first and foremost, before it's indulgent, camp, queer. For me, it is a stridently political art form. I…