Last night the Knock Knocks alumni return to the Raw Comedy spotlight.
At the grand stage of Melbourne International Comedy Festival, three graduates of Melbourne’s Hard Knock Knocks Comedy School have once again proven the training ground’s growing influence on Australia’s stand-up scene.
Performing at the Melbourne Town Hall on April 12 as part of the prestigious Raw Comedy National Final, Jorgia Rice, Elias Jambula and Aidan Mungai joined the country’s top emerging comedians after progressing through a field of nearly 1000 entrants.
Rice delivered the standout result for the trio, finishing as runner-up alongside Jake Zukerman, while Sydney’s Joshua Khoury took out the national title. For Hard Knock Knocks, the result marks another milestone in what has become an increasingly consistent pipeline to the upper tiers of Australia’s amateur comedy circuit.
The school’s presence at Raw Comedy is no longer a novelty. In recent years, six alumni had reached the national final, a figure that has now grown to nine in the school’s 10 years of operation.
The competition itself has long served as a launching pad for some of Australia’s biggest comedy names. Past Raw finalists include Aaron Chen, Luke McGregor, Ronny Chieng and Anne Edmonds, performers who have gone on to define the national comedy landscape. For emerging acts, reaching the Raw final is often less an endpoint than a springboard.
Among Hard Knock Knocks’ earlier finalists is Stella Wu, who reached the 2024 final less than a year after graduating, building a reputation for cheeky, irreverent material that belies her rapid rise. Nathan Chin, a lawyer turned comic, paired dark political humour with intellectual bite to reach the same stage, while Cameron Muratore’s affable, blokey style made him one of the more recognisable acts of that cohort.
Earlier graduates have followed similarly diverse paths. Ginny Hollands, whose sharp, self-aware comedy draws on her lived experience of blindness, earned a wildcard entry to the national final in 2023. Chetan Singh, performing as Delhi Buoy, brought cultural commentary to the forefront after winning the South Australian state final in 2022, while Gavin Sempel’s journey from teenage participant in 2016 to national finalist in 2018 helped establish the school’s early credibility.
That consistency has led some within the industry to liken Hard Knock Knocks to a de facto high-performance institute for comedy, a comparison once reserved for elite sporting pathways.
Beyond competition success, the school’s broader impact is also evident. In 2025 alone, 30 graduates produced their own shows at the festival, reflecting a shift from open mic hopefuls to self-produced performers capable of sustaining careers.
This year’s Raw Comedy results suggest that trajectory is continuing. While Rice fell just short of the national title, the presence of three graduates in a single final reinforces a pattern that is becoming difficult to ignore.
For an institution now a decade in operation, Hard Knock Knocks is no longer simply teaching stand-up, it is shaping the next wave of Australian comedy.