In 2016, Chris Parker, Tom Sainsbury, Kura Forrester and Brynley Stent surprised audiences with an orgy. Now they’re doing it all again, on a bigger, shinier stage.

Eight years ago, four little-known comedians, two who had just met, ended their play thrusting, sweating and panting in an over-the-top orgy. There was no intimacy co-ordinator (or any other staff) and only one rule – not to touch genitals. The audience was rapt, and the reviewers raved.

Camping was the raunchy surprise hit of the 2016 New Zealand International Comedy Festival. Chris Parker and Tom Sainsbury had co-written a couple of theatre shows when they decided to write something camp for the festival in Auckland. Parker was “desperate” to work with Kura Forrester, and “this hot new gal on the scene”, Brynley Stent, who had just moved to Tāmaki. The two hadn’t met, but became fast friends as they choreographed the sex scene. The four are now a revolving set of characters in each other’s comedic universes. “It was the beginning of a really significant collaboration in our lives,” says Parker, “but we didn’t realise it at the time.”

Back then, Parker and Forrester were both just a year out from performing their first solo shows at the 2015 festival. Sainsbury had been busy behind the scenes writing plays and TV scripts for years, but only started performing comedy a year earlier. Stent had made appearances on Funny Girls and Jono and Ben, but was pretty fresh out of uni. The four comedians hung around Basement Theatre, part of the Snort improv comedy troupe, which for a decade held the Friday 10pm slot. They’re part of a generation of comedians that can be traced back to Snort – alongside the likes of Rose Matafeo, Alice Snedden, Guy Montgomery and Donna Brookbanks – who are still scooping up accolades and audiences.

Now, Parker has won Celebrity Treasure Island, authored a book and become an Instagram felting sensation. Forrester and Stent have both won the prestigious Billy T Award (2019 and 2021 respectively) and are working together on an upcoming show for The Spinoff, Singles Club. Forrester is in the core cast of Shortland Street. Sainsbury’s quippy character renditions using filters on social media are an internet sensation, and last year he released Loop Track, a feature film he wrote, directed and starred in. Their careers are entwined, not because they’ve all been on Taskmaster, but because, by their count, they’ve worked on another eight shows as a quartet, and more in smaller configurations. 

In October and November 2024, the quartet dived back into rehearsing the show that marks the beginning of their collaborations. They spent four weeks in a corrugated iron building shaped like a wave, the Westpoint Performing Arts Centre. When I visited their makeshift set, dominated by a double bed and a circular dining table on the paint-splattered floor, they were trying to figure out how the central thesis could fit into one snappy line. “It’s just give and take,” said Forrester, “respect and reciprocity.” Sainsbury wasn’t convinced. “It’s about servicing your partner and their desires,” he tested. “No, not servicing, that’s not quite right.”

Whatever the line, Camping is hitting Q Theatre for three weeks starting tomorrow.

In Camping (both 2016 and 2024), Sainsbury and Forrester are paired up as a middle-aged couple who have been married for 25 years. Forrester’s character Fleur is suffering through perimenopause. While she was once a vivacious pageant star in Gisborne, she is now “down in the dumps”, says Forrester. Her husband Les “loves adoring his wife”, says Sainsbury, “but he doesn’t really understand what she really needs from him”. Fleur and Les think they’ve booked a private getaway for their wedding anniversary, until newlyweds Francis and Connie Cummings turn up. The place has been double booked. 

Parker’s Francis is a “bit of a mummy’s boy”. He’s tightly wound and repressing many sexual needs. Parker thinks the most important thing to know about him is that his mum had to give up on homeschooling him and sent him to the youth cadets. Connie Cummings is “very strange”, says Stent. On stage, she is relatively subdued, balancing over-the-top theatrics elsewhere. The characters are more complex than they were eight years ago, meaning that some of the laughs are a little less cheap. “There are easy habits that we, or I, can make at the Basement to get a laugh,” says Parker. “I’ve done that in many a Snort.” But working on this second rendition of Camping he says the group wanted to “get a better laugh collectively, that still sort of holds on to our integrity”.

For Sainsbury it will be the first time performing in a production put on by a theatre company. Previously it was “just me doing it – you know – lo-fi or grunge”. This time around, there’s been more time to write and work on the play; the four (and additional team members from production company Silo Theatre) have chipped away at it for a year before coming together for rehearsals. The script has been passed around and reworked, the set has been designed and redesigned, there’s sound design, and costumes have been dreamt up and tracked down. Around Westpoint’s stand-in set table, there’s a sense of reverence for the professionalism and resource that Silo has brought to the production. The comedians keep mentioning how grateful they are – that the set is “beautiful”, that the sound is professional, that they’ve been given time to work on it. 

“It warrants the bells and whistles,” says Parker. He says self-funded shows, like the original Camping, mean that there are dreams and aspirations you have to give up on, whereas this time around he might think “it would be quite nice if I had a sailor outfit” and that could actually happen. “Our aspirations and dreams are a bit higher.”

But there’s plenty to love about a low-budget show at Basement. The action is right there, and the setting intimate. One reviewer mentioned being able to see beads of sweat in the orgy scene. Perhaps small, direct and lo-fi is good for an audacious, funny play. I look around the table at the very casual group. “Do you worry that now that it’s flash it loses some of its original charm?”

The answers come quick. “Everyday – nah, I’m kidding,” says Stent. “Why would you say that?” asks Parker in mock horror as they all crack up. “It’s a whole different thing,”  says Sainsbury. “A new thing.”

Camping is on at Q Theatre from November 14 to December 7, 2024. Get tickets here.