Los Trios Ringbarkus
Los Trios Ringbarkus were an Australian stand up comedy duo prominent in the late 1980s. Despite the name there were only two performers, Neill Gladwin and Steve Kearney, formed in 1979 when they were drama school students at Rusden State College, Victoria, Australia.
Their crumpled suits and awkward, stilted delivery style gave them a unique act on the international live comedy circuit.
Their brand of comedy theatre, a kind of cross between Samuel Beckett and Buster Keaton saw them on the world art festival and comedy circuits over the next 13 years, working in theatre, film and TV.
They described their work as ‘anti-tainment’, a kind of dada inspired disaster act in which they played two stage frightened clowns who couldn’t greet the audience without creating a mistake. Their humour depended on making the audience laugh through making them feel uncomfortable and not through generating confidence. This original theatrical construction was simultaneously hilarious as well as confronting. Like all great clowns, their work was dangerous, volatile, funny and never complacent.
They were winners of the Perrier Comedy Awards for the Best Comedy at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival 1983, the first Australian comedians to have won this award.