Bert 'The Machine' Kreischer - the American stand-up comedian, actor and reality television star - is returning to Australia with a brand-new show.
Bert Kreischer has become an award-winning entertainment juggernaut and a master of virtually every medium he tackles: standup comedy, TV, podcasts, a memoir and album, and soon his first feature film. In the midst of a global pandemic, he’s been selling out arenas and the legendary Red Rocks Amphitheatre, and earning various comedic accolades from around the world.
Kreischer’s live comedy performances include 2020’s Hot Summer Nights tour of drive-ins and this year’s Fully Loaded Comedy Festival that took Kreischer and his favourite comedians to such open-air venues as minor league baseball parks, a racetrack and amphitheatres. He boasts two of the most-popular comedy podcasts in the world, Bertcast and 2 Bears 1 Cave (with Tom Segura), stars in his own Netflix show The Cabin with Bert Kreischer and hosts the successful The Go Big Show on TBS alongside celebrity judges T-Pain, Rosario Dawson, Jennifer Nettles, and Cody Rhodes, now heading into its third season.
Bert Kreischer 2023 Australian tour
- Melbourne John Cain Arena Friday 21 April
- Adelaide Thebarton Theatre Sunday 23 April
- Perth Riverside Theatre Tuesday 25 April
- Brisbane Convention Centre Friday 28 April
- Saturday Aware Super Theatre Saturday 29 April
Stay up to date with what’s happening in and around the region here.
Three of his four comedy specials are currently streaming on Netflix, The Machine, Secret Time and Hey Big Boy. And he stars in, wrote, and produced his upcoming movie, also The Machine, co-starring Mark Hamill of “Star Wars” fame.
The Machine, a unique story from his true-life experiences on a college study group in Russia when he was mistaken for a Russian mafia boss robbing the train he was on, represents a pivotal shift upward in Kreischer’s career. He wrote the story as a routine after returning home from a disappointing New Year’s Eve gig in Oxnard, CA where no one showed up.
At the time, he enjoyed a busy schedule touring comedy clubs, had chalked up TV credits for Bert the Conqueror and Trip Flip for the Travel Channel, Hurt Bert on FX, and other hosting and acting roles as well showcasing his routine on TV talk shows.
“When I got into this business, everyone followed in lockstep so much: It was get your tight 10 [minutes], get on Conan, get on Letterman, get on ‘The Tonight Show,’ get a development deal, get a commercial…” Kreischer explains. “Even though I did that for a period of time, the second I started listening to my own gut was when I started really succeeding.”
After writing The Machine story, Bert shot himself delivering it, posted it on Facebook, and went to bed. Bert’s wife LeeAnn woke him the next morning to announce that the clip had gone viral, with 22,000 shares. By just a few days later, it had racked up a phenomenal 33 million views, Now, at more than 85 million views and counting, The Machine became the centerpiece of Kreischer’s next comedy special.
The origin of Kreischer’s comedy career is as unique as his distinctive comedic brand of hilarious storytelling and observational humor, delivered shirtless. The Tampa, FL native first burst into the public eye when Rolling Stone magazine published a major feature article on him in 1997 as the “Number One Partier in the Nation” during his sixth year of college at Florida State University, then rated as the national number one party school. It lit a bulb in Kreischer’s imagination that standup comedy might be the career choice he had yet to make for when he finally left college. And a way to continue his genuine love for partying into adulthood.
In the wake of the article, he first tried standup at, in this case, the aptly-named venue Potbelly’s in Tallahassee: “Afterwards, I called my dad and said, this is what I’m going to do for the rest of my life. I got to be every part of me that I like being and everyone enjoyed it.”
He was offered a morning DJ shift on a local radio station as a result of the show. Instead, he moved to New York City, and at age 26 wrangled his way into both working and honing his act onstage at the seminal Greenwich Village venue the Boston Comedy Club alongside such fellow budding talents as Sarah Silverman, Adam Sandler, Jim Gaffigan, Ed Helms, and other notables.
Since migrating to Los Angeles, where he lives with his wife LeeAnn and their two daughters, Georgia and Ila – all of whom figure in his routines – Kreischer first made his bones on the standup club circuit and appearing on The Late Show with David Letterman, Jimmy Kimmel Live, Conan and Racheal Ray along with acting parts on shows like the acclaimed police drama The Shield. He wrote about his life to date in Life of the Party: Stories of a Perpetual Man-Child, published by St. Martin’s Press, and released the CD Bert Bert Bert.
“Everything about me is trying to be authentically in the moment and of the essence,” he concludes. It’s a realness and sincerity that creates considerable appeal to the masses from a near-countless variety of walks of life. “I just started doing stuff that I found fun. I found enough confidence in myself to go, ‘I got here doing what I wanted and what I loved. I’m just going to do what I love and not let people tell me what I should be doing.’”
Tickets On Sale Friday 28 October 10am. Book at Bohmpresents.com
