Maggie Looke is an award-winning comedy writer, director and producer who has worked for over a decade in the comedy industry.
Her television work has been seen on high-rating series such as Hard Quiz (ABC TV), Comedians of the World (Netflix), Have You Been Paying Attention? (Network 10), Guy Montgomery’s Guy Mont-Spelling Bee (ABC TV), At Home Alone Together (ABC TV) and Aaron Chen Tonight (ABC TV).
Maggie’s 2015 live directorial and writing debut, The Tokyo Hotel, earned a Golden Gibbo Award nomination and was turned by the ABC into a narrative podcast. The podcast was a cult success, reaching number one on the iTunes comedy charts.
Winner of the 2022 Moosehead Award, she wrote and directed the multimedia smash hit Ultimate Hollywood Tours selling out every show of its three-season run.
In 2024, Maggie co-wrote and directed the critically acclaimed Melbourne International Comedy Festival Directors’ Choice-winning stand-up show Ben Russell. The same year, she also directed comedian Bronwyn Kuss’s Pinder Award-winning show.
The Age has described her work as ‘Unlike anything even the most seasoned festival goer will have seen before’.
Maggie’s creative voice has been mainly unveiled on the live stage. Using time as a story engine, her world-building has had a strong focus on revisionist history. With an acerbic tone to her dialogue (Similar to Ianucci’s Veep), Maggie enjoys creating universes that make the audience ask where the truth lies in the narrative… blending what is real and what is not. Inspired by filmmaker Christopher Nolan, Maggie’s work configures and bends comedic timelines. Her tone is gently absurdist, creating characters that are warped and heightened but could still sit next to you on the train to work.
Maggie uses improv as a key development tool for her characters. She rarely fully scripts dialogue, instead using beats to form the story. She awkwardly sits through each show, marks the laughs, and rewrites the show the next day. This development tool means the comedy and story can be bounced off an audience, like having a focus group that pays.
She is inspired to write her next work by the comedic, tonally balanced power dynamics of Hacks and the casual, semi-improvised showbiz dialogue of The Larry Sanders Show.