It’s hard to keep a straight face when talking to comedians Honor Wolff and Patrick Durnan Silva of the queer alternative sketch comedy duo Hot Property, coming to The Q next month – they’re just too funny.

These days they may be known for their high-camp comedy and weird sketches, but when they first met in a drama class at the University of Ballarat in 2012, they nearly caused havoc.

“Actually, the acting teacher had to separate us in class because we were too busy being funny. Both Patrick and I were told we weren’t allowed to do comedy and had to focus on serious drama,” Wolff says.

That meant she had to tackle sombre roles such as Strindberg’s Miss Julie while he played what he calls a “very queer Hamlet”.

Initially drawn to each other through their mutual love of the American surrealist sitcom 30 Rock, Durnan Silva became known in class for his impressions of characters from that show.

But neither regrets that time in Ballarat – it gave them solid training in comedy and drama.

When they graduated, they boldly admit, they weren’t picked up by any agents – partly because of some “very peculiar choices” in their final audition pieces.

They now see that as good fortune, because it pushed them to form a comedy ensemble called The Very Good Looking Initiative with their friend Elliott Gee, which ran for four years.

“We were all deeply immersed in theatre but were getting tired of mainstream Australian drama,” Durnan Silva says. “We wanted to do things that were a bit David Lynch-type weird.”

“We like to shock and were pushing back against naturalism,” Wolff adds. 

“Also, the repertoire in Australia was repetitive. Everyone seemed to be redoing Shakespeare, Cosi [by Louis Nowra], or Blackrock [by Nick Enright] – there’s so much other great work.”

“Then,” Durnan Silva says, “I said, let’s do a show at the Melbourne International Comedy Festival. So we went in all guns blazing and thought, ‘This is fun’.

“That was 2016, so we’ve been doing mainstage comedy acts for 10 years now.”

They’ve since opened for comedy legends Patti Harrison and Aunty Donna and performed at Just for Laughs, Soho Theatre London, Splendour in the Grass, Party in the Paddock and Darwin Festival.

Their TV credits include Fisk (Netflix), Aunty Donna’s Coffee Café (Netflix), Just for Laughs (Channel 10), Why Are You Like This (Netflix), and At Home Alone Together (ABC). They were also crowned champions of the MICF Lip Sync Battle 2021.

It’s really just the two of them and their producer, Laura Milke Garner. They make their own costumes, which are at times “a little bit disturbing”, including one, Wolff says, where she wore a weird alien outfit with space cut-outs for her own breasts – and six extra spots for six more nipples. That was for a special sketch, she insists, not a regular feature.

There is some nudity, but unlike Garry Starr, with whom they share their producer, not enough to make a thing of it. 

“What we’d rather say is that we do high-camp comedy that’s fast-paced,” Wolff says.

“We certainly do sketches, but sometimes we go into over-the-top drama. We love it, and with our theatrical background, audiences love to play along.”

There are also a lot of wigs, of which Durnan Silva says: “I need to treat them like my child.”

As for their weirder material, he mentions one sketch that ran for eight minutes about two young women involved in unrequited lesbian love at a boarding school – “a mixture of Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf and Call the Midwife” – and another about a scientist and his wife caught in a love triangle with a dolphin.

“Although we’re not musical theatre performers at all, we do love musical dramas, especially Chicago,” Wolff says. 

“So we’ve been known to do big musical numbers, a bit of dancing… theatrical and a lot of fun.”

As for their relationship, while they are a duo, they’re not a couple. “We’ve lived our lives together but our marriage is in the theatre,” Durnan Silva says.

Sometimes they have to make out on stage, but that’s all choreographed. “We don’t feel anything,” he says. “We just say, ‘Oh, it’s that kissing scene’.”

Hot Property, The Q, Queanbeyan Performing Arts Centre, February 5.