2008 Finalist: Yuk Yuk’s Great Canadian Laugh Off.

SA Comedy Award Winner: Stand Up of the Year 2007.
    
Award-winning comedian, John Vlismas is one of South Africa’s most creative, prolific international comics.
John Vlismas has entered 2009 with a full schedule but typical low-key stealth, continuing to play to a large number of corporate audiences and readying an exciting film project for release in September 2009 and to be announced in due course. John's international travel will be limited this year, due to local commitments. April sees his much-anticipated solo art exhibition, "Off The Reservation." featuring 20 oil on canvas works at the Obert Contemporary Gallery In Melrose Arch. While the work is serious in nature, Vlismas has opted to open the exhibition on April 1st, determined to reference his comic roots.

His new one-man comedy show, POW, will premiere in June, visiting both Durban and Johannesburg.

While outspoken and sometimes controversial, Vlismas is a firm favourite in the corporate market, and spends over 80% of his stage time entertaining executives and their staff with tailored material, proving that he has the ability to adapt rapidly and appropriately for diverse audiences.

In 2008 he represented his country in Toronto, finishing in the top eight at the Yuk Yuk’s Great Canadian Laugh Off, and performed at Freedom Day celebrations in Dubai, at the request of the South African Business Council. John also performed his long anticipated one-man show, entitled Lucky Plebian, in June 2008.

He produced the South African leg of Henry Rollin’s 2007/8-world tour, taking in the Baxter Theatre in Cape Town and the Bassline in Johannesburg.

In 2007, he produced and headlined Shady Okesat the Hammersmith Apollo in London. He also won the inaugural SA Comedy Award for Stand Up of the Year, with his one-man show, Gay, Black & Immortal.

Of the stand up comedians working the circuit in South Africa today, John has the widest international profile. From his 2002 performance in Berlin, at the Maulhelden Festival, to his shows in Dubai in 2006 and 2008; to 2007’s Shady Okes inLondon and at the Bulmer’s Comedy Festival in Dublin; to his appearance at The Comedy Store in London in 2005; and his four trips to Canada, where he has played at Montreal’s Just for Laughs Festival and remains the only South African comedian to be invited to return three times, having impressed in Club Soda, Globecom and Bubbling with Laughter, and performing by invitation in the prestigious showcase Talk of the Fest with Drew Carey; to his 2000 participation in the Melbourne Comedy Festival, where he enjoyed a sold out run of 28 shows in the highly regarded Best of the Edinburgh Festivalshowcase.

In 2006 he produced and headlined Have a Heart (HAH) in aid of Child Welfare Johannesburg. In 2002, he hosted and co-produced the largest ever stand up comedy event seen in South Africa, Laugh Out Loud; which played to 7000 people.

Not content with stand up and MC work, John also writes for publications and spent sixteen weeks in 2007 attempting to attract litigation for his weekly column attacking the local Idols judges, syndicated in Independent Newspapers. He also completed a year-long column in the Star Newspaper’s Business Report, called Funny Money with Ronnie Apteker, and wrote a monthly column for In London magazine, for 3 years.

John has joined up with academic friend and mentor, Jonathan Foster-Pedley to lecture on MBA “Creategy” Electives at the Graduate School Of Business, delivering his talk “The Shared World” on applied intuition.

He has scripted and performed for the FNB Life Start, and SAB Brand Power national road shows, Arts Alive festival each year and regularly performs at his comedy club, The Comedy Underground, now SA’s longest running regular comedy event.

John has enjoyed much local success with his previous one-man shows, all of which he wrote, directed and produced: Whacked in 2001, Aggravated Assault in 1999, Man in Black in 1998, and Mr Ballistic in 1997. In 2001, his two-hander with Bevan Cullinan, Grinder confirmed his ability to sell tickets.  The esteem in which John is held by the comedy industry is evidenced by such events as his role in Steven Wright’s South African tour as support act, and his performance for SA Tourism at the Sydney Art Museum in 2004.

Regarded as the “Comedians Choice of Comic.

Here are some of the comments from his peers in the industry:

“As apartheid shriveled up and died the death it deserved, the night sky of South African comedy looked empty and drab. Suddenly out of nowhere came a blazing meteor called Vlismas and our world has never been the same again.” - Pieter-Dirk Uys

“He has a wild wacky energy.  He looks like he’s the rep for red bull. It’s nice to see somebody that breaks the boundaries and is not scared to go forward.  We all have our own genres and hopefully our genres make us different and that is one of the reasons that John is so special. He is so fast and so up to date. It is nice to see a young man who still has the same energy he started with 10 or so years ago and this makes him always a pleasure to watch. He is proud that he is South African and that shows that we have world class acts in this country.  YOU GO JOHN!”  Your friend Barry Hilton

“John Vlismas, a legend, a role model and most important the best comedy brain I think I will ever come across. No one should ever under estimate what he has done for South African Comedy including the huge influence he had and still has in my career.” - Joey Rasdien.

If there were a true guru of comedy, we’d all be visiting John on the mountaintop... -Riaad Moosa.

John Vlismas is....  ORIGINAL BRILLIANT ALTHOUGH SCRECHINGLY FUNNY, SAVAGE, HILARIOUS, NOT FOR THE WEAK ARRESTING OFFICER. FEARLESS.
"Didn't think he'd get this far. . . though I always knew he had it in him." Not once apparently. - MARK BANKS