“It was an impasse where it’s like: this is either going to fall apart or gain momentum,” Broden Kelly says of how he and the other two performing members of the group were feeling at the time.

In the early years of their comedy career, Aunty Donna performed as a quartet. Credit: Isabelle Clara Mason

After “white-knuckling it” to create a show they were really proud of, SBS Comedy gave them a less-than-favourable review.

While that two-star review knocked their confidence, Zachary Ruane credits it with being “a very important step in our journey”.

“That kind of conversation and that realisation, I think, informed so much of what we do.”

Finding non-traditional pathways to success

“We were kind of the first generation that were then able to go: ‘Well, you don’t like us, but we’ll go find an audience’.”

One thing Aunty Donna generally steers clear of is being overtly political.

“We do that a lot with our stuff — but I think if things are too didactic or too instructional, you do lose a lot of people, when you could be getting them.”

Kelly adds: “Often we’ve seen in places we’ve made shows before that the shows they make need to be for everyone at one time, and there’s an argument that’s not the best representation of diversity … maybe it’s giving chances to diverse people to represent what they want to represent, as opposed to putting a square peg in a round hole.”

Aunty Donna’s Coffee Café, the TV series they produced for the ABC, featured a long list of guest start including Rake star Richard Roxburgh (centre) and Matt Doran (second from left), who played Mouse in The Matrix. Source: Supplied / ABC

Asked if they felt they needed to make it overseas to be taken seriously back home, Aunty Donna doesn’t pull any punches.

Bonanno adds: “That is Australia. That’s music, that’s TV, that’s comedy, that’s all the arts in Australia is. We don’t tend to lift people up until overseas says ‘This is great’.”

Building a ‘mini Netflix for Australian comedy’

“We kind of entrepreneurially just saw that there was a hole in the market and that every network in the country was not doing their job in platforming really good people,” Kelly says.

While they’re starting small by funding comedians they’ve worked with in the past, including Demi Lardner and Greg Larsen, they hope in the long-term that Grouse House can become a “mini Netflix for Australian comedy”.

“The goal would be that there are fans of Grouse House in five years’ time that have never heard of Aunty Donna, they just love that brand.”

The end of an era

“I would argue that DREM is our freest show when it comes to the ideas that are in it and how we’ve kind of put the show together. Production-wise, I’m the most excited about [it] because we are doing stuff that we have never done before,” Bonanno says.

Aunty Donna’s live shows are known for being a high octane, assault on the senses — in the best kind of way. Source: Getty / Roberto Ricciuti

It’s also the first time in their career that they don’t have any plans about when they’ll tour again.

Aunty Donna is touring DREM around Australia, New Zealand, Ireland, the UK, the US and Canada until late December.