James Roque: Boy Mestizo (Photos: Supplied)

Pop CultureMay 12, 2022

James Roque: How I made my comedy special, Boy Mestizo – then sold it to Three

Guest writer

James Roque: Boy Mestizo (Photos: Supplied)

For years an hour-long comedy special felt like the impossible dream. Tonight, it premieres on Three. James Roque tells the story of how it happened, and what he learned along the way.

In 2006 I got a bad case of gastro from eating undercooked chicken at a friend’s high school party. I didn’t realise it at the time, but that bout of gastro turned out to be a pretty pivotal moment in my life.

While I was bedridden at home, my mum went to Civic Video and rented me some DVDs. One of them was Chris Rock’s 2004 special Never Scared. It was the first stand-up special I’d ever watched in its entirety and I was immediately hooked. I ended up memorising the whole thing word for word.

When I eventually started doing comedy myself a few years later, I spent my first year or so pretty much just trying to emulate this special. I don’t think I actually wanted to be Chris Rock, but I was trying to capture that rockstar energy of a comedian who could kill it onstage for a whole hour. The reality of starting out in comedy was quite a different picture – less “crushing in sold-out theatres” and more “crushingly sad open mics to four or five audience members”.

Flash forward 12 years and several career-induced existential crises later, I’m proud to say that this week, after three years in the making, one of the nation’s biggest broadcasters is premiering my debut stand-up comedy special, Boy Mestizo.

A quick synopsis: Boy Mestizo is about my first trip back to the Philippines since moving to Aotearoa 20 years ago. It unpacks how I feel about myself as a Filipino person who grew up here, and my relationship with my Filipino-ness. Basically, it’s a show I wish my younger self could have seen. It’s also a show that questions the effects of colonisation on the psyche of the people dealing with generational trauma as a result of it.

If you’re reading that going “how the hell is that comedy?” then welcome to my own personal hell of trying to market a stand-up special about decolonisation.

James Roque: Boy Mestizo (Photo: Supplied)

I first performed this show for a year around New Zealand, Australia and Indonesia in 2019. It seemed like it struck a chord with Filipino audiences and allowed people to unpack their own internalised trauma. And for the non-Filipino audiences, it served as a digestible way to learn about the insidious lasting effects of colonisation. I felt certain it had life beyond the small rooms I was performing it in.

So when 2020 came around, I partnered with a producer friend of mine, Yee Yang “Square” Lee, to plan a tour of the show for later that year. We’d start in New Zealand, then take it to Australia, then Asia, then the rest of the world. That didn’t end up happening, for the obvious reason, but I couldn’t just let the idea go.

The goal was to try to reach more people with the show – but if we couldn’t travel, how could we do that? I half-floated the idea of taping it as a special, not really thinking it would be possible – there isn’t really a culture of taping comedy specials here in New Zealand. But the more we talked about what that might look like, the more I thought… why not? Let’s just do it!

This is where all the lessons I’ve learned during my comedy career kicked in. I know from the outside I might look like this huge go-getter who talks a big game about “just going for it!” and “following your dreams!” but the reality is it took years of failing in the comedy industry to adopt this mentality. I spent most of the first half of my career feeling bitter and resentful about being rejected from the opportunities it felt like all my friends were getting.

One of the best pieces of advice that helped change my mindset came from my counsellor Sonia: “If one door says no, that’s actually a good thing. It means you know that door isn’t right for you. Go knock on a different one.”

So that’s what I did – over and over again. We applied to several funding bodies to try to get this special made, but it turns out filmed live stand-up comedy doesn’t really fit cleanly into any funding box. Was it a TV show? A film? A live event? It was all those things, but none of them at the same time. Every “no” felt like a dagger, and I started to lose hope that this project would ever get off the ground.

Eventually we just said “screw it – if they can’t see the vision, we’ll do it ourselves”. Our production team had a meeting and decided to crowdfund most of the costs instead. I’d cover the rest out of my own small savings. It was a huge risk, but I believed in this show so much it was a risk I was willing to take.

This was all before the second lockdown in August 2020. When that came along we had to cancel a planned tour, then our venue for the taping fell through and we had to keep pushing the record date back because of scheduling issues. We were rejected again in yet another round of funding. But by this stage my mantra had become “get on board or get out of the way” – we just took it on the chin and kept knocking on more doors.

Around the start of 2021 we launched our crowdfunding campaign to help cover the costs of filming the show. I know I literally just said my attitude was “get on board or get out of the way”, but in reality that was only the attitude I was projecting outwardly – on the inside I always had this tiny voice telling me no one else cared about the project other than me. What finally helped me overcome this was seeing all the donations to the campaign and all the love and support from people who believed in the work and wanted to see it get made. It was overwhelming to receive so much support, and I’ll forever be grateful to those people. We ended up raising $15,000 – more than double our original goal of $6,000 – which helped cover costs.

On the morning of the taping, our core team – Square, myself, tour producer Eleanor, assistant producer Danielle and the live show’s director James Nokise – had a team brunch. I remember looking around the table at all the faces that helped me make it all happen and feeling a deep gratitude. Later, as the crew was packing in the theatre, I took a second to sit quietly on my own in the empty stalls and take it all in. I watched as the final piece of the giant LED background screen was assembled, and they dimmed the house lights and threw on one of the beautiful graphics (made by Mardo El-Noor) to test it out. I sat in the dark having a quiet little cry to myself, so happy that it was actually happening. I thought about all the failures and rejections of my career, and how none of them really mattered now.

We recorded two shows back-to-back, and they felt like two of the best shows I’ve ever performed in my entire life. It was, for the lack of a better word, special. I thought to myself: this is just like Chris Rock! (With way less people, but still.)

I spent the following months in the edit suite with our editor Luke, combining the best parts of both shows into one. When I watched the whole show as a special for the first time I felt a sense of quiet peace. I was trying to think of a similar feeling to it and the only one I could come up with was that scene at the end of Avengers: Infinity War where it shows Thanos finally retiring on a farm after achieving his goal of wiping out half the population of the universe. I wish I could come up with a better analogy.

We spent most of the long 2021 lockdown coming up with a strategy for who to approach and the best way to pitch the special. We’re still executing that strategy now, but at some point I got the heads-up that Discovery was interested in broadcasting the special in New Zealand. That brings us to today.

I learned a lot during this process. I learned that with enough hard work and good luck, manifestation can work. I learned that you can’t make things alone – I couldn’t have made this show without SquareSums&Co, Kevin&Co and all the Boosted donors. I learned to make sure you tap people’s shoulders with your ideas, no matter how wild and impossible they might seem. I learned that sometimes you have to be your own biggest cheerleader – something that we as a country struggle with a lot.

And I learned that you should make the things you want to see – growing up in New Zealand, I never saw a Filipino on primetime TV. I hope I can be that person for a younger Filipino kid.

Most importantly, I learned that I probably owe my counsellor Sonia a percentage of this show because of how much she taught me about how to deal with failure and rejection and just keep knocking on new doors.

I’d love to see more comedians make specials like this in New Zealand. I’d love to see networks and funding bodies realise the value that these shows can have. The US, UK and Australia have all done it, it’s about time we caught up.

As for Boy Mestizo, the goal remains the same: to deliver the show’s message to the Filipino diaspora of the world. Which means getting it on the biggest streaming platform we can possibly reach. We’ve already had a “no” from one of the big ones. But no biggie. We’ll just keep on knocking.

James Roque: Boy Mestizo airs on Thursday May 12 8:30pm on Three, and will be available on ThreeNow.

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Olaf Diegel with some of his 3D printed creations. (Images supplied, additional design: Tina Tiller).

New Zealand MusicMay 11, 2022

‘The future of musical instruments’ could be inside this 3D printing professor’s lab

Naomii Seah

Contributing writer

Olaf Diegel with some of his 3D printed creations. (Images supplied, additional design: Tina Tiller).

Olaf Diegel makes guitars like you’ve never seen before. Naomii Seah visits his University of Auckland lab to find out how 3D printing could open up whole new worlds of musical possibilities.

The Newmarket campus of Waipapa Taumata Rau – University of Auckland is a formidable building. The former Lion Breweries site looms large just off the busy Khyber Pass Road, its façade all glossy white and silver chrome. It would look more like a Mars base than a place of education if it wasn’t for all the university’s signage.

But perhaps the building’s futuristic appearance is fitting considering the kind of research activity inside. Inside, past a row of gleaming race cars belonging to the university’s Formula SAE team, there’s a space filled with a whole host of bizarre objects. Through the window, I spy a water feature that looks like a futuristic shower for mice, a life-size human anatomical model, a towering torso shaped from a lattice structure and many other abstract shapes in fantastical colours.

This is Olaf Diegel’s lab. Its official title is the Creative Design and Additive Manufacturing Lab, and it’s a part of the university’s engineering department. Diegel and his team specialise in 3D printing – most of the items on display have been printed using their in-house printers, which can create designs in a variety of materials including plastic polymers, metals and even food powders.

Although the lab’s experiments sound like the eccentric creations of some mad scientist type, you wouldn’t guess it by looking at Diegel. Dressed in a blue button-down and jeans, the affable Dunedin-born engineer just seems like your classic lawn-mowing, barbecue-loving dad. He speaks quickly in an accent that’s hard to place, but which I’ll later find out is a mix of New Zealand, Canadian and South African. Evidently passionate about his work, he launches straight into a tour of the lab, showing me all the machines and what the team has created over the years.

On a table by the door, several tiny models of people printed in colour are so precisely detailed that even their skin looks realistic, criss-crossed with red veins and hair-like strokes. On the wall, there are several life-size models of Diegel’s own face – they can trick Samsung and Huawei’s facial-recognition software, he tells me in a conspiratorial tone, but not iPhones. One of the replica faces has eyeballs in it that can move side to side. One of the lab’s other projects involves food printing, where powdered food can be used to create easily-chewable customised meals with specific nutritional values. They’ve also been involved in making models of the city for Auckland Council, anatomical models, and replicas of delicate artefacts.

Diegel with a 3D printed replica of his face (Image: Supplied)

But the thing we’re really here to see is sitting in the corner, unassuming among the many other fantastical objects. It’s a fuschia-pink, alien-looking 3D printed electric guitar. Well, not this guitar specifically – Diegel has been making 3D printed guitars, drums and other instruments for over 10 years now. He made his first guitar in 2011 and wrote a blog about it. Musicians around the world began contacting him, blown away by the intricate design, and the rest is history. He’s been selling 3D printed instruments under the moniker ODD Guitars ever since, producing more than 80 so far.

“If you’re going to make a plain looking, normal looking instrument, printing is a dumb way to make it,” Diegel tells me over the whirring of the machines around us. “But when you’ve got these incredibly complex shapes, that’s when 3D printing shines.”

And it’s evident that these guitars would be practically impossible to make without that 3D printing technology. Diegel boasts many designs for his guitars, but they’re all made from one piece of hollow plastic; inside, his designs boast what he refers to as “eye candy”.

“They’re almost like a diorama… the trick is always to make the body so you can see inside.”

This allows Diegel to create designs such as Americana, “a New York and American themed” guitar with a stars-and-stripes design. Inside the body, Diegel has fashioned landmarks like the Statue of Liberty, the Brooklyn Street Bridge and St. Patrick’s Cathedral. He says themed guitars like this are the most fun to design.

His favourite is his Beatlemania bass: “It’s Paul McCartney’s violin-shaped [Hofner] bass, and inside of it there’s the yellow submarine, the Abbey Road – all iconic scenes from the Beatles era.” He kept the original Beatles bass for himself, but has since sold another one to a customer in the States – those are the only two in existence.

A close-up of Diegel’s ‘Beatlemania’ design. (Image supplied, additional design: Tina Tiller).

Diegel has been 3D printing since the 90s, when he worked in product development for lighting companies. Back then, 3D printing was almost exclusively used for prototyping. But in the past decade or so, that technology has finally gotten good enough to become a viable manufacturing tool.

Not that the process is easy by any means. Diegel shows me two triceratops figurines rendered in metal. One is smoothly polished and finely detailed, and the other is almost completely covered by thin metal supports. These struts are important for structural integrity as the figures are assembled, says Diegel, and so many of the 3D printed models undergo lengthy and laborious post-processing.

“One of the guitars [I’ve made] is printed in aluminium. My hands were bleeding by the end of that one from removing all the supports inside! It took me four days to remove all these points. You have to break it off with dentist’s tools.”

The plastic-powder based instruments are comparatively easy to produce, though they do take a lot of work to paint and decorate. But Diegel can’t make them in his lab on campus – he has to outsource the job as the instrument bodies are too big for the university’s machines. Another issue is the cost: the machines use a lot of energy and materials, with designs taking hours to print. We’re talking in the ballpark of $150 per hour to run, says Diegel, and depending on the design and the speed of the machine products can take close to a day to complete, meaning costs stack up fast.

A close-up of Diegel’s ‘American Graffiti’ guitar. (Image supplied, additional design: Tina Tiller).

In addition to his many guitars made from plastic, metal, and his most recent design of compacted sawdust, Diegel has also 3D printed saxophones, drums and keyboards. He says he’s pretty content making string and percussion instruments, but in his opinion the most interesting design possibilities are actually in wind instruments.

“You can have all these weird cavities inside the instrument that modulate the air going through in certain ways. You could produce completely unique sounds that would be impossible to make any other way.”

Diegel brings out a replica of a taonga pūoro, namely a large pūtātara, or shell trumpet. It’s been printed in plastic, and he blows into it, producing a resonant call. “There’s no way to manufacture this,” says Diegel, referring to the complex spirals and hollows inside the shell. “Nature has done it in a million years, but with 3D printing, suddenly, you can [replicate] that. Now you could even go a step further and start to change the way the air circulates through the shell.”

“I think that’s where the future of musical instruments is: making unique new instruments, new sounds. I think that’s where the fun is going to be.”

In the meantime, Diegel’s next project will be redesigning the 3D printed saxophone. His first attempt leaked air, and he believes his mistake was trying to emulate traditional saxophones too closely. “I’ve already been thinking of maybe using magnets as a spring,” he tells me, eyes gleaming with the possibilities.

Diegel with a set of 3D printed instruments. (Image: Supplied)

But one big question still remains: how do these 3D printed instruments actually sound? The short answer: “they sound good,” says Diegel. Sure, he might be biased, but he does note that his instruments are basically “a wooden guitar with a small body that has a clip-on 3D printed shell”. The pick-ups do all the work, says Diegel, so the interesting body designs are purely aesthetic.

For the truly curious, Diegel is putting on a musical showcase at Devonport’s Depot Artspace to coincide with both New Zealand Music Month and Techweek. The exhibition will run for the whole of May, and at the opening (this Friday May 13 from 5-7pm) a band will play on an entirely 3D printed set of musical instruments, including a 3D printed guitar, keyboard, bass, drums and microphone. Instruments on display will include Diegel’s hand-destroying aluminium guitar and his prized Beatles bass.

“It’ll be the first time there’s a live 3D-printed band playing in New Zealand,” says Diegel. He doesn’t know what they’re going to play yet, but says he’s looking forward to the surprise.