Before Dillan Oliphant debuts his one-man show this weekend, he spoke to Helen Herimbi about Eldos and the elephant in the Mzansi room
“The thing that I love about Trevor Noah is that he works hard. His commitment to hard work is amazing,” Dillan Oliphant offers after careful consideration.
The 25-year-old comedian who steps out for his first one-man show, The Oliphant In the Room, over two days at the Market Theatre this weekend, might share Noah’s commitment.
Since he won the Best Newcomer award at the Comic’s Choice Awards in 2012, Oliphant has made an even bigger splash on the stand-up comedy circuit with his dry humour that’s often peppered with one-liners. He opened for Noah’s national tours That’s Racist and It’s My Culture in 2012 and 2013, respectively then held his own as an act alongside Noah last year.
“It was affirmation,” he shares of that experience, “it confirmed that I am improving and that my hard work is paying off.”
He says Oliphant In the Room reflects his “best work over the past four years” – work he chose based on what he genuinely still finds funny all these years later as well as what the audiences have gravitated towards.
When asked how he reacts to a gag that doesn’t get as big a laugh as his others, he chuckles and says: “Cringing is a reaction I have come to not mind because it’s still better than no laughter.”
During the show, Oliphant will put the spotlight on something close to his heart, his hometown, Eldorado Park.
“I feel like it has kind of been ignored,” he explains. “When I speak about Eldos, I’m speaking about myself. What I want to give the audience is myself.”
The show’s title is obviously a play on his surname, but does Oliphant feel that there are any elephants in the room that South Africa has been ignoring?
Oliphant seems stumped for a moment before he says with that signature slow tone: “We are always talking about Jacob Zuma so he can’t be the elephant in the room, but I guess something we aren’t talking enough about is our education system is bad and how our future relies on it.”
While he plans to take The Oliphant In the Room to venues in Cape Town, Durban and elsewhere in the country, the lanky comedian says he specifically wanted to start at the Market Theatre.
Having chosen up- and-coming comedian, Ebenhaezer Dibakwane as his opening act, Oliphant reminisces about a time before he committed to comedy.
“The Market Theatre is the place I went to to watch live comedy for the first time and it was the Just Because Comedy Festival,” he explains. “I didn’t do comedy at all at that time but I said: ‘I wish I was on that stage.’”
This weekend he will be. And he will bring his trademark wit and more.
“It hasn’t grown harder to come up with those one-liners,” he says matter-of-factly, “but I have grown more so I want to tell more than that.”
• Dillan Oliphant is in The Oliphant In the Room at the Market Theatre in Newtown on Saturday and Sunday. Tickets are R135 at Computicket.