Wake Up, Australia! is written and created by Denver Richter, Elly McDonald, Cassidy Oreo, Vũ Thị Ngọc Hân (Jennie), and Ria Pflaum.

This piece satirises the absurdity of the alarming multitude of conspiracies popping up in society today, particularly driven by the COVID-19 pandemic. As the world is driven mad in isolation with new rules in place to ‘keep us safe’, some loud members of the population refuse to accept the pandemic exists in the first place, or rather, that it was an unprecedented or unplanned event. Denial – our favourite stage.

We chose this story because conspiracies were a common topic of interest for everyone in our group, and it was something we felt needed more exposure as they become increasingly accepted and mainstream. Initially, we planned on covering a broad range of conspiracies but decided to hone our focus to those related to COVID-19, creating a more streamlined flow for the piece. We originally planned for our segment to take a panel format, but decided that incorporating crosses to ‘experts’ and ‘correspondents’ would add an extra layer of parody to our piece. This also gave more of our group the opportunity to present in the piece, and overcame a lot of the restrictions that lockdown created. 

One of the key takeaways that we learnt throughout the process of creating this segment is that it is just as vital to focus on what makes a topic or story important, as there is in seeing the comedic value that can arise. Satire is incredibly useful for commenting on topics, rather than having to solely report on it – it provides the potential for reflection on, and even criticism of our society, and so it is important in satirising topics that there is the potential to encourage an audience to engage in higher levels of critical thinking.